Immigration in America Today

Originally this was written as one of the many "letters to the editor "I have written or had published. To date I have as minimum over one-hundred letters in various newspapers and a magazine or similar entity or two. This letter was about immigration: (original letter with the "con "side published in The Free-Times (alternative journalism news source in Columbia South Carolina. Publication date was April 19-25 of 2006).

It is more than overwhelming, the organized grassroots campaign of millions of undocumented workers who are protesting the unjustness of United States immigration policy throughout the nation. These immigrants are really only guilty of trying to make a better life for themselves and perhaps a brighter future for their children, if you can call that breaking the law. I can't.

I will grant you that many people have entered the country illegally, but that doesn't make these citizens of other countries criminals any more than it would make a refugee from some war-ravaged area such as Sudan a criminal. Many times the aforementioned also enter the United States through less than legal means in search for amnesty leading to eventual citizenship.

What I am trying to say is that the largest-growing work force in America today is just trying to get and achieve what we all want: The great American Dream. In Washington, D.C., at the "Pro" immigration rights rally in the shadow of the Washington Monument, the rally's key organizer Jaime Contreras said, and I paraphrase, that we will pay the fine and we will do what we have to do to become American citizens. He went on to say that the answer wasn't in building a wall to keep people out or to line the border with minutemen.

I agree what we don't want is another Berlin Wall. The key to America's greatness has been its diversity, from the pilgrims of old to the new influx of Latino peoples to American shores. United we will stand, and, if divided, we shall certainly as a nation fall.