Deportation and the Issues with the United States Archaic Immigration Policy
A common “fact” we are taught in public school within the United States is that Christopher Columbus discovered the United States. This fact has been disproven many times by many different people, but the average person still thinks Christopher Columbus was the person who discovered the United States. This article published by NPR gives a list of different people who visited North America previous to Christopher Columbus, and argues that people like to say Christopher Columbus discovered the United States because he opened the United States up to predominately white European powers. This logic, and colonization is used to justify the violence faced by indigenous people, which was essential in the creation of the United States. The consequences of this violence and colonization are still prevalent today and take many forms including deportation.
Donald Trump has utilized the anti immigrant and anti Mexican sentiment in his weirdly successful presidential campaign, with promises of mass deportations that make absolutely no sense from an economic perspective as well as a human rights perspective.
“Aren’t undocumented people taking jobs away from Americans?”
“With U.S. unemployment near 10 percent, many believe illegal immigrants are taking jobs from Americans. But when the United Farm Workers union launched a campaign offering to connect unemployed people to farm jobs, only three people accepted — out of thousands of inquiries.” -Steve Baragona (2010)
This quote shows that people born in the United States will not do the physically and emotionally demanding jobs that undocumented people have to do. So the claim that undocumented people take away jobs is bullshit.
Undocumented immigrants contribute to the United States economy through paying billions of dollars in taxes, as well as working to support the United States Agricultural economy. Undocumented people do not have a lot of options or job mobility given their lack of status, so often times they take jobs as day laborers or field farmworkers. The working conditions endured by undocumented people are unethical. According to Think Progress, undocumented farm workers on average are paid between $15,000-$17,000 annually, which is not a living wage. Currently, undocumented farmworkers are also forced to work long hours while also being denied access to earning overtime pay. This exploitation of undocumented farm workers is a violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights created by the United Nations. Article 24 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says “Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.” The United States is failing at being the land of opportunity we obnoxiously claim to be by denying basic human rights to laborers.
“Why don’t they just come here legally?”
The opportunity to come to the United States legally does not present itself often for many people living in extreme poverty in Central America. There are many reasons people flee Central America, but essentially they come here looking to escape the violence, drugs and war, that are so prevalent in many places in Central America, and to come here for a better life.
The terror and violence happening in places like Mexico and the rest of Central America is incredibly tragic and heartbreaking. “According to a study released in 2014 by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 58 percent of Central American child migrants who arrived after October 2011 fled because of violence.” (“JOIN A GANG OR DIE: DEPORTED CENTRAL AMERICAN TEENS FACE HARROWING CHOICE”) There are children coming here seeking safety and it is truly a disgusting action to send a child, regardless of where they are from, into danger.
People’s lives are ruined every day from deportation, and the process itself isn’t even safe. The ACLU, Detention Watch Network, and National Immigrant Justice Center worked together to create a report that found 56 people have died in deportation holding cells during Obama’s presidency, including 6 suicides and 4 preventable deaths. One of the deaths investigated in this report was the death of a man named Pablo Gracida-Conte, who was denied medical treatment for a treatable heart muscle condition. It is unacceptable that people die due to neglect on the government’s part.
Deporting people who come to the United States seeking economic opportunities is unethical and fundamentally wrong. We are a country who prides ourselves on being a diverse people that is the land of opportunity, so therefore we cannot continue to deny human rights to people, especially a group of people whose labor built, and continues to build this country.
