Upon first hearing the topic for the week’s Rose Café, I was extremely excited as immigration policy has always been a strong interest of mind. With this year being an election year and candidates vying for the nomination, immigration policy has been a popular subject of debate. Esmerelda first spoke to us about the aspects of the DREAM act, an act aimed to repair the broken immigration system. The main part of the act was that it would grant amnesty to children who had been brought into the country illegally by their parents. This aimed to solve the issue that children who had grown up their whole lives here were unable to attend college or attain a job due to their parents’ decision. I’ve heard about this act many times and have done my own research as well, but an interesting aspect that Esmerelda brought up was the criminalization of the parents in this description. Many people in the US has harsh views regarding illegal immigration; due to this, the framers of this policy constructed its advertisement this way. How could you say no to innocent children who have to suffer because of their parents’ mistakes? While this approach was effective in that it eventually became enacted through President Obama’s executive order DACA, the stigma remains the same for illegal immigrants of any age in the country. As opposed to this condemning reaction many people have towards immigration, there should be a shifted focus to a pathway to citizenship.

In my senior year of high school, the senate introduced the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, Immigration Modernization Act of 2013. As a law major in my technical high school, every senior was required to pick a piece of legislation to center their senior thesis around. I chose this act and was given the opportunity to travel to Washington DC and interview lobbyists and senator staff members to gain more insight. What I learned through this experience is that illegal immigrants has developed a stereotype of immigrants leeching off the country’s resources and providing little in return. This stereotype does not include the people who are upstanding members of society, who pay taxes, and who have been given an opportunity to thrive because of their residency in the US. This act outline a comprehensive and extensive pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants, which involved the payment of any unpaid taxes and no criminal history. America boasts this image of being the land of opportunity and freedom. However, we deny entrance to many refugees and only provide and handful of visas to hopefuls every year. In a nutshell, our immigration system is broken and there has been little traction to heal it, which continues an overall intolerance in our society to immigrants as a whole.