Check out this letter written by my friend Abraham in Arizona

When you read this you may wonder why a student whodoes not attend the University of Arizona is writing aletter to the editor! Well, I never thought I wouldhave to write this but yesterday I was baffled when Iread Kara Karlson’s article “A day without anAmerican.”

First I would like to point out that no “teenage,pimply American kid” would mow her lawn for let’s say…$4 and hour, which sounds about right for what an illegal worker would get paid. Or tell me, would youpick tomatoes in the fields for 7 cents a bucket oftomatoes that you pick? The article also mentions Mexico and Latin America but I never read about countries like Ghana, Bosnia,or Indonesia. It is true that most of the immigrants that come either legally or illegally come from Mexico and Latin America but there are also people, not one or two but even thousands who come other countries illegally too! It is not fair that you write onlyabout Latinos. What about Canadians and Europeans? They come to work“illegally” in this country too. But maybe they are looked upon differently because their countries have stronger economies and because of the color of their skin.

Ms. Karlson should have done a little bit more research on immigration and naturalization laws before writing the article. It is a little less difficult fora parent to become a U.S. citizen if his or her child“claims” or applies for the parent to become a citizenonce the child is 18 years of age. However, this only happens in very special cases and the process takes along time. Another thing she mentioned is that the“new citizen” can then bring people over from his orher country of origin and they would then become citizens too which is true but rarely happens because it is very difficult. It takes up to 10 years for a person to become a citizen under those circumstances. There is mention of illegal immigrants collecting benefits from the government. It is true that they can receive government aid for children who are citizens but the total amount of help received by immigrants is by far less than the amount “illegals” pay on taxes. Oh they do pay taxes in case you did not know! Theamount received by the U.S. economy from undocumented workers is about $100 billion and the costs of illegalimmigration amounts to $3 billion. Of that $100 billion, $7 billion goes into Social Security alone, which will not be claimed by the people who earned it.

I know that there are drug dealers and criminals crossing the border but there are also people trying to survive. People who would rather play their last card by crossing a deceiving desert than to see their children die. And I believe that if you were in the same situation, you would do the same. And about seeing “A day without Americans”, I honestlybelieve that the possible outcome mentioned in the article would be absolutely the same as if Mexicanswere missing. Sadly enough, immigrants need jobs and employers as much as the employers need all the cheap labor that will bring money to the economy for theU.S. to go around doing “good deeds”.

J. A. Suastez PCC Student