Tony S. Illinois

Thoughts on Immigration

My purpose for the letter is to give you an idea of what building the wall could cause and how our country could respond

Dear President Trump,

“Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.” A quote by former president Franklin D. Roosevelt by him stating that we shouldn’t deny our immigrants because our family heritage has once been in their shoes. Even though I have always lived in the United States and have never been considered “illegal,” I feel like the wall is too much. My dad’s parents were from Cuba. They both came at separate times and eventually met up in New York. They always told me that transitioning from Cuba to the USA is not an easy process. Going to work and hearing “good morning” instead of “buenos dias” is hard enough and adjusting to an average U.S. work day is just as difficult. My grandpa told me that going to his desk everyday and feeling his pencil writing down the deposited checks he has received throughout the day was too repetitive. But after a few months, he adjusted to the life and he really has enjoyed it and has been living a successful life with my grandma and raising three successful kids. Immigrating to the United States is not easy and is not comfortable to the immigrant. We should make the immigrant feel comfortable, loved, and confident to the United States and to not threaten them with leave with the wall.

I don’t think the wall is a good idea. I feel like it will cause a lot of internal problems in the United States and will cause riots. The wall may help block out all the immigrants that are illegally coming in with drugs and weapons but it also blocks the immigrants that want to come in with peace and for a fresh start in life. I also think the wall is going to cause a lot of debt in our economy. The wall is going to cost a lot of money and we are already in debt with health care and other United State organizations. To add on, the wall will cause a riot. In the United States as of today, there are about 33.7 million Hispanics in the United States. That is about 10% of our population. They will get frustrated about the wall and will riot. We want to create peace with our citizens and to not start any internal problems in our country. This could be an effect to destruction to our nation and army and could lead to external countries that have issues with us to come and get us.

Now, someone reading this may be against what I am saying. They make say that the wall protects the drugs and weapons that come into our country and destroy our population with it. My solution to that is have higher security around the border. We have currently 1.4 million people serving in our military and we can use a portion of them on our border. The same person may also say that the United States could host a fundraiser for the wall to be built so we won’t be in debt. My question to that is why haven’t we done fundraisers for all the other United States programs we already have debt in? We can’t just do a fundraiser to fix a recent debt problem when we have a lot more to handle first. Lastly, the person may say we have a strong enough army to defend the riot and we have the numbers, experience, and strength. I would say that our army will weaken from the wars, causing outside powers to come after us for “revenge.”

I have great respect for you, Mr.Trump, and I have been doing research on some of your plans and I feel that you will change our economy in a positive way and we can avoid debt. But on the other hand, I feel that the wall shouldn’t be built. The wall will cause more debt and 33.7 million and counting angry citizens. Try to think of Roosevelt’s quote on immigration and try to imagine if no immigrants came to this country. We would have a smaller nation and true native american tribes would still be roaming the lands. To finish off, I would like to ask ‘What would America’s future be like without accepting others into our country?’

Sincerely,

Tony Sanchez

Metea Valley High School

Metea Valley Sophomore English

All sophomore students at Metea Valley High School wrote letters to President-Elect Trump, voicing their issues on ideas that are important to them. These letters were part of a three-week project, where we learned about rhetorical situation; types of claims; types of evidence; and embedding quotes.

All letters from this group →