Dear Mr. President,

     Have you ever imagined not living with your family and never see them again? I don’t know if you have notice but some people in the world don’t have a family to be with during holidays or ever. Some of these people are immigrants that live in America. These immigrants have families with American children and they would like to be with their children and be a family, they would also like to stay in America and see their children succeed. But something that is in the way is deportation. Deportation impacts these families and they live with fear.

     A lot of people, especially kids, have no family because their parents are immigrants and they got deported. When a family gets separated or a family member gets deported that families health changes and their lives are not the same anymore. Deportation changes everything. Knowing that they can get deported makes these families live with anxiety. If a there is a family where all the children are U.S. citizen and the parents are immigrants and at least one of the children is an adult the children might stay with them but they would have to start almost all over. That can cause the family into poverty and hunger. I don’t know if you know that more than 4.5 million children that were born in the U.S. has one or more undocumented parents. These families don’t feel safe and live with fear in their lives. They worry too much about their future.

     Something that happened recently to my family and me was that my uncle got deported about a year ago. My grandma took it really hard because at that time she was undocumented. It was a twist to our lives. Holidays were not going to be the same, they wasn’t that one family member saying all those cheesy jokes or trying to make us laugh anymore. Thankfully after few months my grandma got a passport that she could use to go to Mexico and was able to see her son again. But it would still be different in for those who can’t see him, the only way that they are able to know how he is doing or how he still looks like is by photo or people telling them about him.

     I also had another uncle who got deported. As soon as he was in Mexico he couldn’t smile again. He went into deep depression where he did want to doing anything anymore, all he wanted to see was his girlfriend and his daughter. They would visit him, as much as they can but he wouldn’t be living with them under the same roof. His girlfriend and his daughter stayed in America to have a better life which is what every immigrants who came to America want their children to have, a better life and more successful life. It affected his daughter really bad, she didn’t have that father that could spoil her or give her stuff and make her laugh, she didn’t have him by her side when it was her birthday or him teaching her how to ride a bike. Not everyone had that father as well but not everyone’s father is deported.

     Everyone wants to go home and home sometimes means family and family should be together. If any family member gets deported because they are immigrants it changes everything. In 2013 a study by Human Impact Partners made us aware that deportation scares an undocumented children mentally and their they could go into poverty and not eat or eat to much that it affects them physically as well. Researchers linked a threat of detention and deportation to poorer educational outcomes, called “U.S.-citizen children who live in families under threat of detention or deportation will finish fewer years of school and face challenges focusing on their studies.” This needs to stop.

     Deportation affect everything, families, health, and even the economy. It lowers the population of states and as well as workers in the economy but that’s another impact. What matters is that everyone should have a family to be with. If you, Mr. President, can not deport immigrants with U.S. citizen children/family members you could save more people than you think. Also in the congress you have to be at least 7 years in the U.S. to take a citizenship test and if they have been in the U.S. for more than 7 years shouldn’t they stay?

Sincerely,

Guadalupe Miguel