Nov. 7, 2016

Dear Next President of the United States,

My name is Jorge. I am a tenth grade high school student in San Diego, California. My goal in life is to become either a professional soccer player or a nuclear physicist, but the issue that concerns me now is all the problems regarding immigration that this country, and also the world, is facing and they can’t resolve. I believe that if these problems aren’t resolved now, then the problems will still continue in the future and won’t ever stop- at that point, it won’t matter what career I want to pursue if we’re living in a world at war.

Immigration, in my opinion, is the biggest problem that the United States is facing at the moment. Immigration is how the United States came to be, but now is rapidly growing into a problem. I do not want to live in a country where my own kids could be targeted for being the child of someone other people assumed came to this country illegally.

Before I begin my propositions, what are the promises you made your followers and how do you plan on fulfilling them? I heard that the deportation of those who came illegally to this country was one of them, but is that really the best choice, sir or ma’am? I mean don’t you think that would change the whole economic status of this country? Within our borders, according to the United States Census Bureau, live 324, 875, 549 people as I write this. Now let's talk immigrants. There are currently around 11.7 million immigrants living in the United States illegally, with up to 400,000 deportations in the past years(Julia, “Number of Illegal Immigrants in U.S May Be on Rise Again , Estimate Say,” www.nytimes.com) . A massive deportation act would put the United States in a worse economic situation. According to the Center for American Progress, it costs about $10,070 to deport one person. Now if you do the math, it would cost around $117,819,000,000. To make it much simpler, it would cost $117.8 billion dollars to deport every single illegal immigrant from this country. And let’s say we ended up getting deported, who is going to pay the taxes we do? Less people means less money and then the government won’t have enough to fund their armies to go put their noses in other nations’ business.

Another problem addressed was how only criminals are crossing from the other side of our borders, like drug dealers, rapists, criminals, etc. The strong belief in this has become very immense in the past years, and is mostly starting to become more overwhelming. Immigrants don’t come to this country to rob people or take their money. Yes, there are exceptions but the reason why they come here is because they want to have a better future for themselves and for their children. They risk their lives trying to get here so that their children won’t have to pass through the hardships they went through. According to Federal Bureau of Prisons, 58.7% of inmates in prison are all white folks, so the real question here is: are Latinos/Mexicans really the majority of criminals? According to statistics, the answer is no and you can not say they are wrong or not to listen to them because there is evidence to support this claim and you have said you believe what statistics show themselves, they never lie.

Many argue that Mexicans and Latinos are just robbers, criminals and that they steal many of the jobs that Americans do not have. But once you take into consideration, many Americans gets the easier jobs but Latinos are really hard working people and they do hard work labor. So before you go and say that Latinos are taking our jobs, think about it because I see many Americans struggling and not applying for those jobs that make you work harder.

With all that said, I strongly believe that this is the problem that will slowly divide the country that we live in. If there is no support from it’s people, a country can’t grow in the right direction but it’ll plummet into the mistakes we make as a whole. There’s no point for people to be yelling, “Go back to where you came from” or “Get out of our country,” because this country belongs to no specific race, this country was built on the backs of African-American slaves, Filipino and Latino farm workers, and all the hard working minorities. So tell me, when was this country ever great? Was it during the bombings of Japan? Or perhaps the wars we’ve been in? Maybe even during the slave years? Definitely not the time when the colonists arrived to rape and murder the indigenous for their land. This country was never “great” and never will be unless we take action on what is happening at the moment. The United States of America is a symbol of freedom, meaning everyone has the right to have their own say and to vote. What we as a country must do is focus what problems are going on within our borders than to focus on the outside world.

Thank you for devoting your time to reading my concerns. All I want to do is to open your eyes to what I feel about the problems my people are facing and how hard this is affecting them. If you have considered my letter offensive, I apologize, but here, señor o señora, are facts listed.

Sincerely,

Jorge N.