We have many recurring anti-immigration stereotype talking points that are continually being heard here in the united states. One of them being Undocumented immigrants commit more violent crimes. That’s a stereotype that's debunk-able because if you are here in the united states in an undocumented manner why would you draw more attention to yourself which could lead you to being deported. Compared to someone who is in the united states legally who have no fears of being deported it's not a good Idea to draw attention to you. There are far more stereotypes like this one out there that are not all true, and people are just finding someone to blame some problems. For the topic of immigration I was able to interview a kind gentleman, let's call him Mr.Diego that’s not his real name as he wanted to keep his name confidential who happened to be undocumented. I was able to ask him about his lifestyle in Mexico like how he grew up and how hard his life in Mexico was, compared to what his lifestyle is here. I was also able to ask him about what his hopes and dreams where for him as he wanted to travel to “El Norte” is what most Mexican people call it. Besides Mr. Diego, I was also able to interview a kind young lady by the name of Nancy, about her lifestyle as a young child in Mexico as well as the process of being in the united states legally by a program called DACA.
“Since I was a little boy I knew that if I ever had a family in the future that I didn't want this type of lifestyle for them” These were the first words that came out of Mr. Diego’s mouth as I asked him the first question. As I continued, he told me the story of his life and motivations. He told me “I was born in a little village in Oaxaca called San Juan Del Estado.. I lived a cruel and poor live there .” Mr. Diego is the oldest and only male son out of 4 daughters. His parents were usually never with them, as his father was a serious drunkard and was usually never home and instead at a bar or elsewhere still drinking. While his mother would go to the city to sell food to be able to provide for her children, " I still remember to this day that my mom would wake up at 4 in the morning to prepare for the day. With a big basket full of heavy food she would walk about three hours every morning to go sell what little she had to make a little bit of money to be able to provide for five young children.” Mr. Diego told me about the hardships his mother had to go through every day to make what little money she could earn. He said that he was the second oldest child out of 5 and that he and his older sister would work and help out with his younger sibling back at home to help support his mother. He said that his older sister had given up school and got a full-time job as a maid and a babysitter to help her mother with the income. “My sister didn't even make it past elementary when she got her job. I remember that she would come to visit us sometimes on the weekends as she lived in her boss’s home”. When his sister started to do this his younger one were still pretty small, the second oldest daughter was only four years old and already helping out with the house chores while taking care of the baby. They had some animals like cattle and a small herd of goats as well as a little donkey. His job is the only male child was a shepherd. He would take the two cows they had with the goats up in the mountains to feed. While the animals were feeding, he would take his donkey with him to the forest and chop wood. Diego would come back to leave the wood on foot while the donkey carried all of the wood. After that, he would go back up in the mountains to retrieve his herd of goats as well as his cattle. “ I would come back before the sunset sometimes while other times I had to stay behind to look for a lost little goat or a cow that probably got spooked and separated from the herds. It would turn pitch black already, and I would not be able to find the lost animal, I would get worried that something might have happened to it and scared to be out there by myself.” Exhausted he would get back home only to come back to help his little sister with the house chores as well as looking after his baby sister and wait for his mother to go home. Take it that at that time he was only a young boy around the age of 10 or younger already with many responsibilities to take carry on. They say that immigrants are the bad guys, that they are the people that are bringing chaos and disruption to the united stated but some people want to be able to be here legally. Some people want to achieve something to help their families out, but there are as well people who do not want that to happen. When immigrants in the United States apply for permanent residency, they are required to have a medical examination by a civil surgeon. The doctor gives the sealed results of the exam to the applicant, and then an official see the results. Authorities may decline the applications of people found to have certain infectious diseases, addictions, or physical or mental disorders. Immigration services officers check the status of each doctor's medical license, but they are not required to look into a doctor's disciplinary past. Moreover, some civil surgeons, investigators said, have racked up convictions related to fraud, patient abuse, and neglect. While some other doctors who examined immigrants while working for the federal government had histories of diluting vaccinations, exploiting women and hiring a hitman to kill a dissatisfied patient, according to a scathing report released by the Department of Homeland Security's internal watchdog. Investigators, using site visits and records from October 2013 to June 2017, concluded that the agency lacked strong policies as officers made decisions about doctors who had applied to become what the department calls civil surgeons. People have always been debunking immigrants and still blaming them for the bad things in this country. The sentences for punishment the people got were being their doctors' license suspended for only five years and after being able to go back to work like if nothing had ever happened. As I talked with Miss Nancy, she also told me about her childhood in Mexico and how different her life changed once she got into America. Her life was way different compared to Mr. Diego's life as a child. As a young girl, she would go to school while her dad went to work and her mom stayed at home to look after her younger brother. Later on, in time work started to run dry, so Nancy’s father decided to come to the stated and work to support her family. Nancy’s fathers family took care of nancy, mother and younger brother while her father was away. She said that as time went on a few years had already passed and her dad had come back. “I remember me being asleep and hearing my mom start to cry, I didn't think much about it at the time science I was pretty young, but there was a loud noise coming from the end of my bed. As I opened my eyes, I felt a big and strong hand caress my cheeks. It was a rough hand I take it off my head and look up to see my dad there at my bedside. I sat up and stared at him for a long while. He stated back smiling. I still remember when he left he looked so determined and young while now looked like old, as he had that gentle gaze and soft, warm smile directed at me. I never felt so happy in my life”. Nancy’s dad had decided to come back to Mexico to see his family again. It was only for a short while because he had a date already set to go back. This time he didn't go alone though, Nancy’s mother had also come with her father this time around leaving her and her younger brother alone with their grandparents. “My grandma and grandpa had always been good people to us. They took care of my brother and me when our parents left. At first, it was weird being without my mom, but my life just went on, I kept going to school my brother started to go as well, and our life never went out of the ordinary”. In a way, she may not have suffered the same thing as other people had around her or before her but she also suffered. She didn't have her parents with her. They left her and her brother behind while she just continued like nothing. As a few more years had passed, she had reached the age of 11 when her dad came back and had decided to take her as well as her brother back to the states to be with him and their mom. Recently while there have been many immigrants coming into the united states with all kinds of different people big and small, there were whole families as well, but the sad part was that if families were caught that they were separated. While the children went to different facilities the parents and grownups, were separated from their kids. Since early May, 2,342 children have been separated from their parents after crossing the Southern U.S. border, according to the Department of Homeland Security, as part of a new immigration strategy by the Trump administration that has prompted a widespread outcry. The process begins at a Customs and Border Protection detention facility. However, many details about what happens next — how children are taken from their parents and by whom — were unclear. According to the Texas Civil Rights Project, which has been able to speak with detained adults, multiple parents reported that they were separated from their children and not given any information about where their children would go. The organization also says that in some cases, the children were taken away under the pretense that they would be getting a bath. The Los Angeles Times spoke to unnamed Homeland Security officials who said parents were given information about the family separation process and that "accusations of surreptitious efforts to separate are completely false." From the point of separation forward, the policy for treating the separated children appears to be the same as existing systems for detaining and housing unaccompanied immigrant children — designed for minors who cross the border alone. Those unaccompanied minors were generally older than the children affected by family separation. This is something that is not right and something that needs to be brought more attention to while this lacks much interest to be able to solve. As time passed and Diego grew up, his fifth and final sister was born. When he got to the age of 19, he decided to get married with the love of his life, a few months after being married his wife found out that she was pregnant with a little girl! When Diego found out about this, he said he felt he was the happiest man in the world. “I was Happy that I was going to be able to experience what people called fatherhood.” He was excited for a moment, afterthought about it for a while he realized after a few months of the pregnancy that he didn't want this type of lifestyle for her but was too afraid to come to the united states and had given up on the idea. It wasn't until a two years after that his wife had gotten pregnant once again this time with a younger boy when the thought had come to mind once again. “I had started to realize that I had lived a life of cruelty and poverty, I remember all those unforgiven experiences. I didn't want this for my children, but I also want them to know their families here. I was conflicted and didn't know what to do”. While he was thinking about this, his elder sister had come back from the states to visit the family. After a few weeks, she said that she was going back to the U.S, that's when Diego decided to go. He decided that it was time and that he was going to go and work to be able to support his family. He left his kids and his wife in the care of his parents while he left to work. “Once I had gotten here in the U.S it was an experience that I would never forget.” When Diego had gotten here, he lived in a small apartment with two other cousins that were here already and with his sister. He described that each family had a small little room for themselves while another lived in the living room. He said that at first when he started it was fun but after a while, seeing his other family members together with their families he got homesick and wanted to be with his children as well as his wife. “Yes I wanted to see them, but I knew that if I went back, I wasn't going to be able to let them have a nice childhood. Over there in Mexico, it's not a place to have a life unless you’ve got money. You can't feel accomplished unless you got some money to support you”. He spent a few years working and living by himself. He was never really alone because he had his sister as well as a few more other family members. As time passed, he decided that he was going to go back and visit his children. He left with his sister back to Mexico, once he got there, he stayed for a few weeks and when he was about to leave back his wife had made up her mind of going back with him. They left their children with their grandparents, and he left once again but this time not alone. With his wife by his side this time he seemed happier than he previously was but he always had that one concern his “children,” but he knew he had left them in good hands. When Nancy had gotten into the states, she said that it was like a whole new world. “I've been to the city before when I was in Mexico, but this was a whole different level of a city. There were cars everywhere, and everybody had one”. When Nany got to the U.S, she met more of her family. “I knew the by pictures but it was a whole different story meeting them, It was awkward and weird. It wasn't until a few weeks after I had gotten here that my father told me that I was going to school”. The school was pretty hard for Nancy and her younger brother Pedro, and they would put them in that same class as all of the other students while they had no understanding of English because they came from a province where the only language they were ever familiar with was Spanish.
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