If someone from the far future, lets say 4013, was to ask their everyday owned super computer, "Computer what was the United States built off of?", I would bet any money that that highly intelligent super computer would respond with "Immigration" as its number one answer; and if not... its not that super. I believe one of the biggest problems with our country is the fact that so many Americans are ignorant on immigration and the events that lead to so many people wanting to come to the U.S. for the same thing so many ancestors did: to earn money and make a better living for their family. When discussing immigration people should first understand that everyone in the U.S. are immigrant except this of original Indigenous decent.
When Europeans first made their "Discovery" of the Americas it was already inhabited by indigenous tribes who had been here years before. Tribes such as the Aztecs and Incas, who were far more advanced than people may know, were the ones who had their land stolen and their villages ravaged. For these tribes, in my eyes, they are the only ones who have the right to call any part of the Americas "my land." One thing that bugs me most is to hear an every day American citizen say that an immigrant of Hispanic decent, or any matter of fact, should go back to their country, learn the language, or that they don't belong here. Its wrong to deny someone the same life or opportunities that we have in this country to someone else; especially when our country, is actually one of the driving forces bringing them here, one policy being NAFTA.
NAFTA, North American Free Trade Agreement, has been a driving force for immigration in the U.S. since it was first brought about as a trade policy. NAFTA alone has allowed big business company such as "Smithfield" to totally control product production and importing for pork in Veracruz, Mexico. According to an article from The Nation...
"According to Alejandro RamÃrez, general director of the Confederation of Mexican Pork Producers, Mexico imported 30,000 tons of pork in 1995, the year after NAFTA took effect. By 2010 pork imports, almost all from the United States, had grown more than twenty-five times, to 811,000 tons."
Numbers like this caused two main things to happen in Mexico. Local pork farmers lost their farms leading them into poverty, and eventually submitting to the low wage working call of their destroyer. Now we have the situation a lot of immigrants are in as they leave their country, horrible working condition and are in need of a source of money. Eventually companies such as Smithfield, and more I'm, sure decided to promote temporary visas to Hispanic who would come and work for very low wages, a substantial decrease in what they would make owning their own local farms, and also work in horrible working conditions. This to me is abuse, exploitation, and as close to slavery as possible; but when you have no other choice coming to the U.S. to make money and be able to support your family sounds as good as it will get. Right? Yes, until you have the country, employer, and the citizens who live their all supporting deportation of these people, and recycling them because they know that there are more.
Factors are what drive immigration to our country, which many may or may not agree with, but we cannot forget that our country is built of immigration; a country of diverse hard working people who want to achieve a common goal. To deny anyone that opportunity in my eyes is wrong. I believe that if many U.S. Americans were to know the story and active factors behind immigrants coming to our countries or would change a lot of opinions of immigration and our government; but until we are all educated on the topic ignorance continues to be bliss.
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