We can all agree that everyone has a lot of ideas about how to handle America’s immigration situation, and we can all agree that a lot of those ideas are bad. I’m looking at supporters of The Wall. I’m also looking at people who want to blindly accept everyone into our borders.

Let’s look at three facts:

1. America, as a country, was built on immigration (colonization, imperialism, whatever you want to call it.) The point is, unless you are a part of the ~2% of the population that is Native American, you have descended from immigrants of some form.
2. Undocumented immigrants occupy a percentage of the American workforce. Here’s the problem with saying “immigrants are stealing jobs:” in order for something to be stolen, it must first be possessed. I find it improbable that a significant amount of legal American citizens have been fired from their jobs to make room for undocumented workers. Bottom line, undocumented immigrants are filling positions of work (and yes, these jobs are often undesirable, but still provide money.)
3. Have you ever considered how much money undocumented workers get paid? Many Americans want to act like undocumented workers are snatching up six-figure jobs, when in reality, many undocumented workers receive less than minimum wage for their labor. These people are definitely being cheated out of money and are taking on these jobs anyway.

In all of this, remember that immigrants and undocumented workers aren’t coming to America for giggles. Many, but definitely not all, are refugees or asylum seekers from broken or war-torn countries. They come to America with the hope of a better life, even if all that means is the increased probability that a bomb won’t drop on their head or they won’t be shot while they sleep. These people don’t have the time to sit around and play the game of “will I be granted citizenship,” especially if they’re starving. They need to find work as soon as possible, and I think we should be grateful that our workforce has increased rather than our crime rate, because these people could just as easily be breaking into stores and homes to survive. Yes, immigrants are capable of committing crimes. Guess who else committed crimes? Jeffrey Dahmer. Brock Turner. Ted Bundy. Bill Cosby. Bonnie and Clyde. You understand.

I alluded to the citizenship process earlier, and here’s my take on that: it is absolutely necessary to have a functioning process for allowing people to enter and permanently reside in the country. The process we currently use is lengthy and unsatisfactory. Let me break it down for you:

The first step of applying to become a U.S. citizen is having a green card for five years. It sounds simple enough; however there are loopholes just in this one step. In order to apply for a green card, you must first be eligible to have a green card (a whole other rabbit hole to figure out what the specific eligibility requirements for a green card are; here‘s a start if you’re interested.) Once you have your green card, you have to pay to get it replaced when it expires or if it’s lost or stolen (side bar: how are people supposed to pay for green cards without income?) Mind you, this is step one of APPLYING for- not even a guarantee of- citizenship.

Alternatively, if you are the spouse of a U.S. citizen, you can file for immigration after three years rather than five years. Though in the year 2019 we have come a long way from 1860, some Americans still have an issue with the fact that not every American is white. This means that if you are the spouse of a U.S. citizen waiting to file for immigration, and you are not white (or “white-passing”) you will likely face difficulties in your every day life due to that fact. This is a shameful fact; the problem is many Americans are not ashamed of it.

When you file for citizenship after 3-5 years, you must be able to read, write, and speak English. I’d like to point out that in my research, I found no specific required level of knowledge of the language, which I can imagine is troubling for those seeking citizenship. I mean, I took two years of Spanish in high school and one semester of it in college, so while I understand the basics and can figure out phrases, I’m by no means fluent. If we subbed Spanish for English in the American citizenship process, would knowing that much of the Spanish language be enough to earn my citizenship? Or am I hopeless unless I’m fluent? Or is the bar significantly lower than even what I’m capable of?

Also, considering the United States has no official language, and ~20% of current U.S. citizens read, write, or speak a language other than English, this requirement seems unnecessary. Sure, many Americans speak English and it would be helpful to pick up on some English to lower a potential language barrier, but your primary language really just depends on where in the U.S. you live and your line of work, doesn’t it? Why should a skill that would be helpful at best be considered a requirement for citizenship?

There are other requirements to meet that are more or less necessary, but you get the gist of my point. And after going through all of that, you get to do more paperwork and more waiting around, and keep in mind that after all of this, you can still be denied citizenship because it’s only an application, not a guarantee.

Let’s not forget the 10-question American history and civics test you must pass. Let’s also remember that there are several videos of American citizens who learned American history and civics in school and don’t know the answers to the questions. (Seriously. Youtube it.)

Here’s a quick opinion: The Wall is not feasible. It will do more harm than good. We don’t have the money or the labor (or the patience, to be frank) to undertake such massive construction. And no, we cannot force other countries to build The Wall for us. Also, has anyone considered the ecological effect of The Wall? Did you know that it could be detrimental to certain animal species, some of which are on the brink of extinction, whose migration patterns are localized to the border area? The entire food chain would be forced to adapt to the loss of species such as the ocelot, and adaptations don’t take place overnight. This wall could bring destruction to life as we know it for years to come.

By the way, for as costly and consuming as this wall would be, there’s nothing stopping any future leaders or revolutionaries from tearing it down brick by brick, especially as the Trump administration is potentially reaching its end.

So the problem is that these millions of people are leaving wherever they’re coming from for whatever reason and coming to America, but America doesn’t have the space, an appropriate citizenship process, or the financial means to support such a large influx of people (look at the debt clock. If that doesn’t give you anxiety, nothing will.)

The resulting problem is America has NO IDEA what to do with these people.

Half of America wants to accept anyone from anywhere with open arms. While that is extremely ideal, it’s not realistic at all. We can’t potentially compromise the safety of American civilians for a humanitarian project. We don’t have the geographical space to take in the massive amounts of people who want to be here. (I understand that this demonstration talks a lot about poverty affecting immigration specifically; it’s the same principle.)

This half of America is okay with “sanctuary cities,” which are unofficially designated cities in the U.S. that provide protection for undocumented people. While the intention is noble, sanctuary cities undermine the law. By deciding that you are above the government because you disagree with it, you create social tensions between Americans, which prevents any progress from being made in our broken system, because we’d all rather argue about who’s right and who’s wrong than try to make progressive changes to our country. You solve nothing for the people seeking sanctuary, because even if you provide temporary asylum, they can still be arrested and turned into ICE and deported.

Listen to me closely, deep left-wingers and others offended by what I’m saying. I agree with your cause. You’re trying to do the right thing. But you’re going about it in the complete wrong way. This chaotic good mentality of “we’ll let in whoever we want to because living here illegally is better than living elsewhere legally” undermines the authority of the government that you’ll seek to take control of in the next Presidential election. You will have to re-establish credibility in a system that you spent four years destroying because you didn’t like the powers in control. You can’t just let as many people in as you want because “the government can’t catch them all.” People are not Pokémon. Don’t play games with their lives.

The other half of America wants to send away anyone who even “looks like an immigrant” but because they can’t send away all people of color, they choose to overlook things like police brutality and “tender-age camps” where children were separated from their parents at the border, many of whom still have yet to be reunited. While our President and many faces in our government, including Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, said things like “these minors are very well taken care of — don’t believe the press. They are very well taken care of,” “the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics says migrant children being separated from their parents at the border are suffering from child abuse.” We, as a country, are sitting back and watching child abuse happen on a grand scale, and it is endorsed and enforced by our government.

Not only is it still happening, these detention centers are not safe nor sanitary, as recently brought to light in a viral video where “a Trump official tried to argue that detained children don’t need soap, toothbrushes, or beds to be ‘safe and sanitary’ while in Border Patrol custody.” Agencies like ICE are absolutely necessary for ensuring the protection of our borders, but I can hardly imagine children traveling alone are secretly terrorists. No person deserves to be subjected to sleeping on concrete under an aluminum “blanket.” Even American prisoners have better conditions than that.

Representative Don Beyer of Virginia took it upon himself to visit one of those camps, and he documented his visit with a thread on Twitter. Rep. Beyer tweeted: “The prison officials and ICE officers there did not have information on which of the people detained there had children, let alone any information on where those children are or how to contact them.” Beyer went on to say that, despite what President Trump would have the public believe, “There isn’t a law requiring Trump to do this, previous presidents did not have zero tolerance policies that led to this kind of family separation. They did not punish asylum-seekers at the border like Trump and Sessions are doing, intentionally.”

Even if we want to believe or find proof that other Administrations allowed events like this to happen, we cannot allow ourselves to be distracted by playing the blame game. We cannot waste time sitting around and pointing fingers and trying to figure out who started it, especially not if it’s still going on, which it is.

Listen to me closely, deep right-wingers and others offended by what I am saying. It is 100% okay to say the law is the law and to expect for the law to be enforced. There would be no point in having laws if they weren’t enforced. But the American law that you want to see enforced so badly is in regards to acquiring citizenship (which I already talked about). The other American law to remember is the one that covers applying for asylum. If you apply for asylum outside of a protected area, like the United States, your country can see that you want to leave, and can intervene in or completely halt the process. This is a bad thing to have happen to you if you’re trying to seek asylum from said country. Logistically, one would need to first enter a protected area, like the United States, and then apply for asylum. So yes, many people do cross our border without being formal citizens, but it’s because we told them it was okay to do so when applying for asylum.

Even if the children in question are citizens and the parents are not, we should be focused on helping the parents gain citizenship or sending away families as a unit. Opinion: It makes no sense to keep immigrant children in our borders if you’re against immigration. These children will just grow up into more people for you to openly hate. Fact: A child with citizenship would be psychologically better off WITH their family and not in America than WITHOUT their family and in America. “No amount of colorful rooms with lots of great toys, regular meals, and health and education services takes away the psychological impact of losing your parents,” said Zayas, the dean of UT Austin’s School of Social Work. “The damage that will be done will last a lifetime.” And as we’ve seen for over a year now, these centers are most certainly not full of colorful rooms and great toys. I think the thing that bothers me the most about the whole situation is that when Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York likened these centers to concentration camps, many who attacked her statement argued that these centers were not as severe as concentration camps, or said she was insensitive to those who were actually held in concentration camps, but disregarded the fact that these centers are indeed inhumane. I think after this much exposure, it’s foolish to try to argue against that statement and easier to ignore it, which is exactly why so many proponents of strict border security have remained silent or disregarded the situation. One of the judges in the earlier linked video said it best- it’s not like these people are held for 12 hours and sent off to a Hilton hotel. Nor should they be. But we can do better than no soap, no dental hygiene products, no blankets, and no sleep.

This paragraph is admittedly a bit extremist. I’m just sticking this here for reference, if anyone is interested. We’ve seen this happen before, we’ve taught it in schools, we all say “never again.” So let’s make sure that it truly doesn’t happen again, especially not in our country. That starts with being willing to accept the wrongdoings of the government and other authority figures. If you, upon reading this, can think of specific events that have happened recently that fit into these categories, you’re no longer an uninformed bystander. You are an aider and abettor. I urge you to look closely at the section on “dehumanization.” If you can look at another person and see nothing but “illegal,” you’ve dehumanized them. If you are okay with knowingly separating a parent from their child and sending the parent to a potentially unsafe country because they’re “illegal,” you’ve dehumanized them. If we are choosing citizenship status as the bottom line to compare all people to, we are dehumanizing people, and we are sorting them, which is another category listed on the website.

If you cannot think of specific, recent events that fit into these categories, I appreciate and applaud your firmness in your beliefs and your unwillingness to make a mountain out of a molehill. However, I will respectfully ask you to pay close attention to the news and remember this list, because the day this molehill turns into a mountain is coming, and the world is watching.

We have to find a middle ground between “let everyone in” and “kick everyone out.”
My personal belief is that neither passing out citizenship freely nor blocking off citizenship to everyone will solve the problems of our country or those who wish to become legal citizens. I think that we should actively work to create suitable living spaces for these people in their own countries, rather than intensifying tensions with other nations, like Mexico, whether that means environmental or diplomatic or military (etc.) efforts, especially if the immigrants in question come from countries we’re supposedly allied with!

**it’s important to remember Mexico is not the only applicable country here, just a primary example**

The following plan is obviously not 100% fleshed out, but I’m also 19 and not ~yet~ a congresswoman, so that’s okay.

We should allow immigrants temporary refuge/citizenship immunity during times of crisis (some sort of documentation necessary that expires when the crisis ends; the expiration date would be announced at least three months in advance to give people the chance to get out or get a green card) and we should be actively working to diffuse the crisis. If immigrants and refugees want to apply for U.S. citizenship at that point, fine, but then they at least have the option to return to their native country and lifestyles if they want. (Note: this portion of my plan would also work for DACA kids with non-citizen parents who don’t want to be separated from their children.)

The U.S. is by no means “the police of the world,” and our history has proven that time and time again, so we can choose to follow through with this plan on our own, or we can bring this idea to the U.N. to try to garner support. Surely Americans realize we’re not the only country facing rapid immigration in large amounts, so other countries may be sympathetic and work with us in our efforts to provide stability for the people seeking it. This would put an end to our current deportation methods, which, to my knowledge, no other country has shown favor toward. That being said, our current actions may deter them from providing any help.

“But Kate, we have the groundwork in place for that. If we wanted to do that, we could be doing it now. This isn’t anything new.” That’s the point. We’ve tried different methods on the far left and far right, and neither have worked. This plan seems to be lying in plain sight in the middle. This isn’t the 100% Perfect Plan for Immigration, but it’s an idea.

As for amending the citizenship process, I have no personal experience with the citizenship process, so I have no idea what realistic changes would most benefit people interested in becoming citizens while still maintaining organized documentation. If anyone who has been involved with the citizenship process would like to reach out with some insight, I’d love to hear what you have to say. I will say that the American history/civics test serves no clear purpose and that if candidates are going to be tested over anything, it should be modern America (by “modern” I mean either major events, such as 9/11, or events from the last 10 years).

I pulled from many different sites and got several opinions before posting, so if you contributed to this post, thank you for your insight! I hope that, if nothing else, this post has been informative or thought-provoking for you, and I’m looking forward to hearing what you have to say about it! If you’re interested in a lengthy conversation or feel as if I’m blatantly wrong about something, feel free to email me at thepurplepolitics@gmail.com to discuss. Short questions and comments are welcome!

Best wishes,
Katelynn D. Haynes