US Immigration

         Before taking this class I knew of immigration and had only had one experience knowing of someone who was working on getting their green card.  My friend was interested in him and she didn’t know what to do when he told her about his struggles in becoming “legal.”  So besides just hearing a little bit of information from that situation I had no idea what the process was like. 

         Reading Crossing the Wire provided me with more information on the matter which was really helpful.  I hadn’t ever thought much about why people cross other than coming to the “land of opportunities” so hearing about the financial need of just some of the characters in the book made me realize that for the most part, our population doesn’t know anything besides the biased opinion of our government which is that people crossing borders are unwanted aliens.

         Then hearing Greg talk about what he does was also really fantastic.  I had no idea what the waiting process was for people looking to get legal status in the US.  I also found it really interesting to hear about how many people Greg helps on a regular basis.  I know there is a large Hispanic population in Tri-Cities, but here in Spokane/Cheney area it didn’t seem like there would be that many, but that just shows how much I really don’t know. 

         I decided to look at a map that displayed where most illegal immigrants are in the US just to have a better picture of where people go and why.  http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/map_of_the_week/2013/02/map_illegal_immigrant_population_by_state.html this website provided a very interesting map that colored the states darker for more populated and lighter for less populated states of illegal immigrants.  Texas, Nevada, Arizona, New Jersey, and California were the darkest of the 50 states.  Nevada was the most populated out of those five, which I found interesting.  This map was based off of 2010 numbers though so its possible things have changed.

         Another great website I found was http://www.tolerance.org/immigration-myths.  It was basically addressing 10 common things we hear and that are false.  I found them very interesting to read because the writer included statistics that proved that these phrases we hear are actually false.  For example, we hear that immigrants bring violence with them.  Not true.  Our violent crime rate has actually dropped 34% since 1994.  Between 1996-2006 the nation experienced lowest crime rates in the states that had the highest immigration growth rates.  This was just one example this website provided. 

         It’s amazing to me to go from not knowing to seeing the truth behind it all.  We all feed off what the news and government portrays issues and in reality we know that politicians are wrong and are liars most of the time, and let’s be honest, the weatherman is typically wrong 90% of the time.  Yet, because we don’t know what the real facts are, and because we don’t go investigate it for ourselves, or at least not until we are stuck in the situation, we continue to listen to the lies.