2 November 2016

Letter to the Next President

To the Next President of the United States of America,

I congratulate you on your victory in this year’s election. I am confident that you will achieve success in these next few years.

However, like many others, I do have questions and concerns. Specifically, I am concerned about our nation’s policy on immigration. Though it is true that our nation was founded on the idea of freedom for all, including immigrants, the immigration system is nowhere near perfect and is in dire need of reform.

First off, our country needs a way to enforce its borders. In recent years countless individuals have come into America illegally. While the sound of this may not seem so bad on the surface, problems arise in ways people do not always see. Because these people are not official citizens, they are not required to pay taxes. What this means for many tax-paying Americans, is that we are not only paying for their labor, but also paying for their weight in taxes for our country to survive. Such problem can only be resolved once the borders are more heavily guarded.

Secondly, another problem shows face because of the lack of enforcement at our borders. A small percentage of these immigrants are criminals who commit such devious actions both in their home country and in our country. In April of 2010, a teenager was brutally beat up and killed by an illegal immigrant after offering his murderer a ride home from school. Another incident appears in January of this year when an illegal immigrant under the influence ran over a child. In this specific case, the Department of Homeland Security did not even issue a detainer, allowing the convict to flee. The pain and suffering both these families have faced is unimaginable. These immigrants have not even been permitted into America, yet they already commit crimes that puts us tax-paying citizens in jail for a lifetime.

However, these people are not completely at fault. Many of them are working in constant hiding from the law to better the lives of their families far away. For this particular reason, the status quo has been held for so long. This is the moral argument for keeping the law the way it is, but there are other ways in which we can improve to help these people.

Lastly the final part of this complex problem lies at the fault of us Americans. Our citizenship process is lengthy and slow, and most of the time, does not even go through. Good people should be awarded with citizenship quickly and not turned down. For example, a local helped our military in the war in Afghanistan by helping our soldiers locate the hidden minefields. He was praised and honored for standing against his people to do what he thought was right. Yet, his citizenship process, like many others, was extremely long. In 3 years, he had lost his family to the terrorist groups. He finally became a citizen, but was not able to save the people who mattered to him most. By investing in the citizenship process, we can help men like this into the place they deserve.

Therefore, I suggest that we enforce our borders to have harsher defenses against those who try the “easy way” into our country. But at the same time, I also suggest that we improve our citizenship process to one that is more efficient to reward those who belong in our country and their families. Though this may require a decent investment, such plan can help our country save money in the long run and become a more perfect society by eliminating the problems of immigration.

Sincerely,

Erik Simeon