American Forum

AMERICAN FORUM

By Christian Ramirez

Reforming our obsolete immigration system is a human rights issue that can no longer wait. Our nation needs a clear and workable path toward legal residency for the millions of undocumented workers and families living in this country.

Some proposals, such as the immigration-reform blueprint that Sens. Chuck Schumer and Lindsey Graham are spearheading, will only generate the needed path after creating a more militarized southern border. Border communities have for generations demanded accountability and respect for their quality of life, not more of the same failed policies.

Adding more patrols, or high-tech surveillance systems, to “secure the borders” does not make us more secure. The tragic deaths of at least 6,000 migrants attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border since the mid 1990s are a stark reminder that border control policies have only perpetuated suffering. Migrants are 17 times more likely to die today while crossing the border than they were in 1998.


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Tennessee Editorial Forum

By Jaime Gonzalez

My parents are Americans. They are citizens of this great country, which they are proud to call home. They are also immigrants.

My father immigrated to this country from Mexico in 1972 when he was 18 years old. At the time he wanted little more than to provide for his growing family. My mother, then pregnant with my oldest brother, had come over a few months earlier. Before crossing the border my dad was told to squeeze into the spare tire compartment of a station wagon as they drove through customs in Tijuana. For over an hour he prayed and thought of his young wife while trying not to inhale too much of the exhaust that was seeping in from the tail pipe.

That night he slept in a country where dreams come true; a country where people from all over the world are literally risking death just to live here.