Dear Future President,

We as a group of young Excelsior (P-TECH) students first want to congratulate you on being elected. As our future president, we want to address you and inform you on illegal immigration, and how we think that the process to become a legal citizen is too long. We think that it should be a shorter process, so many families can stay together and live a good life. http://immigration.procon.org/. 

One of today’s biggest issues is illegal immigration. We know that illegal immigration is certainly not right, but we don’t think that building a fort or a wall will solve anything at all. We think that building a fort will just show how terrible and corruptive our U.S. government is. http://www.newsweek.com/trump-wall-impractical-impolitic-impossible-459802. 

Mariana and Rosemary have individually decided to share the personal experiences of their families with the process of becoming a legal citizen.

Hello, my name is Mariana, and I am a U.S. born citizen, but I always declare myself as a proud Mexican. In my experience as the daughter of two illegal parents, who are now residents, I wish they would’ve gotten their papers earlier. This way, when I was younger, my family and I wouldn’t have worried so much of my parents being deported to Mexico. I also would’ve gotten more opportunities to visit the rest of my family in Mexico. I had my maternal great-grandmother and my maternal grandmother over there, but I only got the opportunity to visit them a few times. My grandmother luckily had the opportunity to get a visa to visit me one time in the United States, but I was about 8 years old at that time. Now that both my great-grandmother and grandmother are gone in another world, I wish I would’ve gotten to spend more time with them.

Recently, I asked my dad to tell me of how he crossed the border. When he told me, I was very surprised at my dad’s persistence to get into the United States to be able to have better opportunities. I never would’ve imagined the things he had to pass through, and I can’t imagine how horrible these experiences were. My father told me he had to walk across the desert with a group of people and that it took like seven hours. After this, somebody picked them up, and later they stayed in a hotel. This was a process that took a lot of days to do. My father said that when he was captured and deported back to Mexico, he decided to do this whole entire process again. I think this shows the hopes of immigrants to find better opportunities.

Today, I am very proud of the father and mother I have. They both took so many risks to have better opportunities, and I have seen how hard they have worked to pay my education and give me everything they never had the opportunity for. After about 16 years, after they arrived, they both got their resident papers. Now, my mom is being paid by workers comp, and my father is finally opening his new restaurant. Even though I am very grateful that they got their papers, I think the process to become a resident should be shorter, and that it shouldn’t take up so much money from illegal immigrants.

My name is Rosemary, I was born in the United States 14 years ago. My mother and father immigrated illegally to America more than 20 years ago. They were escaping the war and violence in Guatemala. The journey was painful, exhausting, very long and many of those who were traveling didn’t survive. My parents were fortunate enough to make it here. My mom always tells me to be grateful for what I now have because it would not have been this way if she didn’t make it. They lived most of lives fearing they’d be deported back to their native country due to the lack of documents, but they managed to start a family and get married. A couple of years ago my father started working on his immigration case. It took about two years for him to be where he is now, with a working permit. The process was very lengthy and drained money from our pockets.

There are about 10.9 million undocumented individuals living in America. The population has decreased significantly since 2003. According to the Washington Post, president Obama and a couple of Democrats want to have a reform that neutralizes the immigrants that are already here. I’m positive that all of those individuals want to start their process of becoming legal citizens, but many don’t meet the requirements or have the money and time to do it. So why blame them? Thousands of people immigrate to America escaping war and violence to get the life they couldn’t have in their native country. But what help does being deported and denied the right to become legal bring? Moreover, the process to become legal is very long and difficult, it seems unnecessary and unfair to make these individuals whom want to be part of the United States of America legally, to have to wait. They’re leaving the cruel life of their native countries behind to come and search for a better one here in America, they should be able to become naturalized fairly quick and simple.

In conclusion, we hope you take our letter into consideration and spare sometime to read our stories and our opinions on making the immigration process shorter. It is a really long process that can last years. Sometimes that can destroy families. We truly believe that you can help us make a difference. Although we have our personal stories and opinions we know you can help us with this major issue. Immigration has become one of the biggest issues in America and we think that should come to an end and be solved.

We have found statistics during our topic research. According to an article by the Washington Times, the number of illegal immigrant families crossing the border has increased in 2015. Meaning no matter what people attempt to stop immigration, it won't work. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jun/17/illegal-families-surge-across-border/. The USCIS states that the number of individuals being naturalized has decreased since 2015. The number has dropped from

729,995 to 609,251. https://www.uscis.gov/news/fact-sheets/naturalization-fact-sheet. We could keep that number increasing by making the process shorter and convenient.

According to: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/09/20/5-facts-about-illegal-immigration-in-the-u-s/, “ the number of unauthorized immigrants from nations other than Mexico grew by 325,000 since 2009.” This shows the huge desperation from other places in the world to have better opportunities. Even if some people don’t value all the opportunities they have, everybody deserves a chance to demonstrate the hard worker they are.