Dear Next President,

First of all, congratulations on winning the elections and for taking up the challenge to lead us in the right direction when this country is clearly falling apart. Lately, I have been noticing the topic of immigration and deportation become more and more of an issue. On that note, I think you should mainly focus on deportation and immigration. I propose we make a law or program for the purpose of helping keep immigrant families together.

By the same token, unauthorized immigrants should not be forced to leave behind their US born children. Families need each other for support. According to Pew research, in 2014 there was a record of 42.2 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States making up 13.2% of the nation's population. Out of the 42 million immigrants, 4.5 million US-born children are at risk of having both their parents deported. What I proposed you did was to work on a law or a program that allows these 42.2 million immigrants to stay with their families. Although the DACA (Deferred Action for Children Arrivals) and DAPA (Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents) has protected 700,000 children from being deported, helped 92% of applicants got a higher education, 82% got their license and 69% got a higher paying job, it is currently on pause for the next president to choose whether or not to continue with the program. Bringing back both DACA and DAPA would help keep families together as well as give them other benefits.

This is an important issue because immigrant families are constantly being torn apart due to deportation. June 2015, my neighbor was deported while driving home from work. He left behind a wife and two children, both under the age of 4. Despite the DACA and DAPA helping thousands of undocumented immigrants, people still got deported. According to Huffington, in 2013, 71,214 parents of US-born children were deported. We shouldn’t be deporting people that came to America looking for a better life, we should be helping them achieve that better life. Pew Research stated that in 2014 the Obama administration deported a record of 438,421 immigrants. Families migrate in hopes of escaping poverty, conflict/ violence, helping their children get more opportunities and to have a better life.

Others in the world may think that immigrants should be deported because they are “stealing their jobs”. In recent polls done by Pew Research suggests that 63% of Republicans are “taking the jobs of Americans.” In reality, immigrants create jobs and make U.S-born workers more prosperous. Urban’s Maria E. Enchautegui studied a cohort of 16 million American workers without high school diplomas. “These findings suggest that immigrants and native workers with low levels of education may be competing for different jobs and even could be complementing each other. Immigration status can constrain a worker’s job choices, but many immigrants are working different jobs from natives because they have limited English language or technical skills, or because they have insufficient exposure to the US workplace.” The most common jobs taken by immigrants are maids/ housekeepers, cooks and construction laborers, while the most common jobs taken by native workers are cashiers, truck drivers and janitorial work. In other words immigrants are not at all taking/ stealing jobs, they are simply doing taking the unwanted ones.

All things considered, with said law and/or program we will be helping millions of children and adults get a higher education and a higher chance at success. As well as helping adult get better paying jobs. This law/program will reduce the number of separated families and poverty levels in immigrant families.