Amador 1
Ruby Amador-Mungaray
Ms. Chao
Writing 10- Section 7
3 February 2015
Improvements of Life from Immigration Reforms
Coming into the United States, people have a dream of having a better life. They dream
of having a job that supports their families and themselves. They want to be able to provide for
their children as much as they can. Yet, sometimes when they arrive to the United States, they
face the struggle of being able to find jobs or homes for their family. They also live with the
constant fear that one day they might have to do something drastic and risky in order to be able
to get limited resources to be able to support their family. There are many who have brought the
attention to immigration reforms to be able to give people a better quality of life and more
opportunities.
As a US citizen, there are rights that are automatically given to you based on the fact that
you were born in the United States. To be considered a natural born citizen in the United States,
you needed to be born in one of the 50 states and you were automatically given citizenship at
birth. Some of the rights consist of “freedom to express yourself, freedom to worship as you
wish, and right to run for elected office” (USCIS). People born in the United States are also able
to apply for federal jobs and jobs anywhere else they want to apply to. They are also given a
social security number that helps them apply for jobs when they get older. With this social
security number, the government is able to know what their status is. They also have a higher
chance of being able to travel freely to which ever location they want to because with a valid id,
Amador 2
people are able to apply for a passport and not worry about using a fake identity to be able to get
to different places. Those born in the US also have an easier chance of applying for different
financial aid packages when the time comes for them to choose to go to college or not. It is a lot
easier for them to get help from government as well to get different federal loans to pay back
after they have finished school.
Though people come to America to be able to provide a lot more for their family, they are
not able to do as much as they want to due to the simple fact that they were not born in the
United States. As years and years pass by, people are now refining and changing the definition of
what an immigrant is. An immigrant is a person who moves to a different country to permanently
settle there and find different opportunities (Bacon, Immigrant Labor, Immigrant Rights). Most
of the time, they come over without any resources, but the fear of being caught and deported.
They risk being caught because a lot of the times people have to conceal their true identities to be
someone else. If teenagers decide to go to college, they face many difficulties in being able to
apply to certain schools that they might want to attend. They also face difficulties in finding
scholarships because they are a lot of scholarships that are just focused on US citizens. Those
things are not fair because many times the teenagers are brought to America as a child and do not
face some difficulties until they are almost adults or have reached adulthood.
With the awareness of what they go through becoming more prominent in society, there
have been reforms that have passed or are waiting to pass that give people more opportunities to
try new things. An immigration reform is basically focused on immigrants, both documented and
undocumented, to change policies that are in the country where they currently reside. One of the
biggest reforms that people have come to know is the Dream Act. The Dream act is largely know
to be closely knit to the system of education, mainly college. It was first introduced for the
Amador 3
Senate in August 1, 2001. Though there is a bill to be able to help young people go to college,
there are many requirements that they have to reach to be able to even be eligible for the Dream
Act itself. For example, they needed to have “come to the US under the age of 16, have graduate
high school in the states while living in the US for 5 consecutive years, and would be subject to
many criminal background checks”(Miranda, Get the Facts on the Dream Act). There are many
more requirements, but those applying for the Dream Act are able to get help to apply with the
help of their school. Once a person has passed everything, they will have a much better chance at
having the opportunity to go to a college of their dreams with scholarships.
Without the reforms passing as a bill, many immigrants may not have had the
opportunities that they have right now. They would still be risking so many things that they have
earned to just be able to get a job or even get an education. These reforms also raise the level of
equality that they want to be able to get opportunities just like everyone else. The government
also benefits with having more people working more mores. The economy will be able to
flourish well because the US needs people who are able to do a lot more than what people just
specialize in. People might begin with With more people working, there is more money flowing
throughout the government. If there is not enough money flowing throughout the system, the
economy may eventually collapse, which is not a good thing to anyone.
Amador 4
Work cited:
Delahunty, Robert J., and John C. Yoo. "Dream On: The Obama Administration's
Nonenforcement Of Immigration Laws, The DREAM Act, And The Take Care Clause." Texas
Law Review 91.4 (2013): 781-857. Academic Search Complete. Web. 5 Feb. 2015.
Miranda, Luis. "Get The Facts On The DREAM Act." The White House. The White House, 1
Dec. 2010. Web. 3 Feb. 2015. <http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/12/01/get-facts-dreamact>.
BACON, DAVID. "Immigrant Labor, Immigrant Rights." NACLA Report On The Americas 47.1
(2014): 64-69. Academic Search Complete. Web. 5 Feb. 2015.
"Citizenship Rights and Responsibilities." Citizenship Rights and Responsibilities. U.S Citizen
and Immigration Services. Web. 3 Feb. 2015.
<http://www.uscis.gov/citizenship/learners/citizenship-rights-and-responsibilities>.