As I was sitting in speech class waiting for everyone to finish presenting their speech, a black girl gets up to do a speech about “make America great again.” I was just listening to what she says, trying to decipher how to feel as a Mexican and knowing how people view us.
Her statements are from what she learned in a Government class. She realized that she’s a Republican and agrees with Donald Trump, but not how he says it. So I listened to her points to see what she had to say. Her first point was that undocumented immigrants are taking government assistance while not adding anything through taxes. Her second point was on how we Mexicans are taking jobs from American citizens while her third was on how we are bringing drugs into this country. Her premise was about building the wall against Mexico and in particular undocumented immigrants.
A simple google search showed me that her first point was invalid. According to Vice.com and their sources, around 50 to 75 percent of undocumented immigrants pay around 7 billion in taxes. This keeps things such as social security viable for Americans while these types of Mexicans don’t have access to it. It also stated that government assistance usually only applies to their children. With no social security, it makes it difficult to take meaningful jobs away from American citizens, especially if these citizens have any form of education. Immigrants from Mexico usually do menial jobs that no one wants to do such as cleaning, nanny jobs, or agricultural work. They do these jobs while making less than minimum wage. Now is this a human rights violation to allow them to be paid so low yet be treated as if they were disposable? America seems to have conflicting interests in trying to protect human rights of transgender people yet still dispose of undocumented immigrants.
According to Cato.org undocumented immigrants are 50% percent less likely to commit a crime than an American born citizen. So that let’s you know that when undocumented immigrants come to the US, they only come to provide a better life for their families.
As you can see, there’s seems to be no validity to what Trump or my classmate was saying. However, for some reason, people chose to follow him and continue to condemn us. The way that our families are being broken causes lasting affects on our families. Videos have surfaced of ICE tearing immigrant families apart and then reuniting with their children who are visibly altered and emotionally shocked.
Mexicans that come to America are trying only to escape the terrible conditions of the country and the corrupt politicians. Other races and ethnicities get a refugee status to help them come into America, but not Mexicans. The most crazy part is that Americans want our food but not us. I only make these points to say that we aren’t doing what they say we are. As a second generation Mexican born on the west coast, the way some people speak of us makes it hard to be a proud Mexican-American.