Reflection 4/5- Misperceptions About U.S.

Article: Misperceptions About U.S. Immigration Policy Behind Surge of Illegal Children
Author: Catherine Herridge

Bridget Michalko
8/20/2014 Reflection 4

Misperceptions About U.S. Laws

          Why are so many children coming over from other countries into the U.S.? Immigration definitely isn't a new thing. Minors coming in unaccompanied with coyotes and smugglers isn't a new idea either. Yet, recently, a huge explosion of children immigrants have started flowing across the borders into the United States. Many of the countries that these children are coming from are experiencing troubles and hardships. Violence, gang activity, and other hardships that parents want to keep their children away from are common in many of these countries, and these parents seek the U.S. for safety for their children. For a long time, this has been one of the main reasons that immigrants come over to the U.S., and it still is. This time, however, some people are suspecting that violence isn't the main cause for this huge wave of UAC (unaccompanied children). 

          A new assessment actually shows that violence in people's homelands isn't fueling the surge of children. Instead, it shows that misconceptions about the U.S. immigration policy is causing more people to think that the U.S. will help them find shelter and safety from their problems. More than 95% of the migrants that were interviewed stated that the primary reason for them migrating to the U.S. was because they believed that the U.S. immigration laws granted them free passes to unaccompanied children or to adult women travelling with minors. This poses as a huge problem because it accidentally makes many migrants end up thinking that if they cross the border into the U.S., nothing will happen and they won't be stopped. Not only is the problem misleading, it could eventually get blown up into a huge crisis. It is a critical situation that needs to be dealt with urgently. 

          One of the reasons that the immigration laws are so confusing is because of the smugglers, or coyotes, back in other countries. In the story The Distance Between Us, Reyna Grande is taken across the border into the U.S. by a coyote as well. This coyote was hired by their father to get the entire family into the U.S., unlike how coyotes are tricking parents into only sending their children right now. However, the cost to get a coyote to smuggle a person across the border remains very high and expensive, which is why smugglers advertising themselves is very common. Although many people want to get into the U.S., just as Reyna did, the price is often too high for many people. As a way of advertising themselves, they go around telling people that if they send their children to the U.S. they will be taken care of. The coyotes are able to make these rumors because of the changes made in the immigration laws after the Obama administration decided in 2012 to practice discretion in cases where individuals were brought into the U.S. illegally as minors. 

          Violence in other countries still occurs and the situations that those countries are in hasn't changed. Everything that fuels child immigration is old news, nothing has really changed. Everything except for the change that coyotes are exploiting. When children illegally cross over into the U.S., it's easy to think of a small child trying to make it across the border by themselves. It's easy to forget that they aren't usually alone, and that there is almost always a smuggler with them. Unaccompanied minors crossing the border into the U.S. is all work done by organized coyotes who know what they are doing. The coyotes know exactly what to say and exactly how to present the change in the immigration laws.

          How does the word get out about the changes made in the immigration laws? By advertising. How is it being advertised? By the smugglers that gain a profit from more people trying to illegally cross over into the United States. They practically advertised themselves, stating that they can take people's children away from poverty and danger if they let them smuggle their children into the United States. If they go to the United States, they'll be safe, educated, and taken care of. Because of this, not only is home violence pressuring people to illegally migrate into the U.S., but tricky smugglers are persuading people to sneak over as well. This causes a problem because it results in huge numbers of children crossing over into the United States and there aren't enough resources to simply send them back as easily as they came in.
          If there are so many people misunderstand all of these new immigration laws, why not put something up that better explains the law? Why can't someone just put up a "dumbed down" version of the law up so everyone can understand things? If they did that, smugglers wouldn't be able to trick people into paying them to move them across the border into the United States. Wouldn't that fix everyone's misconceptions? It would save a lot of time and trouble, wouldn't it? Then again, seeing what countries were the most common for sending immigrants made me realize that not everyone would understand even the simpler version. A lot of people that try to sneak into the U.S. don't even speak English. It would be hard to send out the simpler version in various languages as well because not everyone that's being tricked is educated enough to read or understand what is true or not. Some people simply can't be helped. There's no way to teach a person what a new law really means through a paper that they might not even be able to read. Even if the law was easy to understand from the very start, it would be hard to stop people from being tricked. Some don't know any better, others don't want to know the true meaning and want to believe that what the smugglers tell them is the truth. In the end, a simpler version of the new law would only help a select few of the people that are being tricked and the law itself would still be mistaken no matter what.