Hola Señor o Señora Presidente,

Mi llamo es Madelyn. Yo soy 16 años. Yo soy americana.

I was born and raised in America, as were my parents and their parents. I have no Latin American, Mexican or Spanish heritage. However, I have grown up surrounded by the vivid colors, music and people of these cultures. The place I live is a place of diversity, where you walk past the first house on a street and get the warm smell of fajitas and pinto beans cooking, followed by burgers and casseroles. This creates a society with different cultures that are hardly distinct because of all the mixing of americano y mexicano. You can’t walk down a street without seeing this clear blend of cultures and people; and even though this blending exists across the streets of California and the country, we still have a problem. For many families, the topic of “la migra” is forbidden, because it means the tearing apart of families and homes, friends and neighbors. No one deserves this fear, whether they came here legally or illegally, because every person deserves the ability to make the future better for themselves and their children.

The people who flee to this country from Mexico aren’t ashamed of where they came from. They aren’t ashamed of where they’re going. In recent news, they’ve been painted as rapists, criminals, killers, and all around bad people. However, that is far from the truth for the vast majority. In reality, they are the embodiment of the American Dream. The immigrants, legal or illegal, are here to strive for an equal opportunity to achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and initiative. The fact that they’re more likely to be criminals has been proven incorrect by studies time and time again. According to a study by the American Community Survey (ACS) done in 2010, around 1.6 percent of immigrant males ages 18-39 are behind bars as opposed to the 3.3 percent of native-born. These statistics are just one of the many that show how criticism of the immigrant population for being bad is, without a doubt, false.

At the end of the day our country was founded by immigrants for immigrants, something we seem to forget to honor when it doesn’t benefit us directly. It is time for a reform to benefit the immigrants of the now, just like the reforms of before benefited the immigrants of then. 

Thank you for your time, 

M