By Kourtney Husnick
Build the wall. Put up a travel ban. Deport people who have lived here for the majority of their lives. Say you’re pro-life as you deny help and actively destroy the lives of living, breathing people. The United States of America is supposed to be a melting pot. That is what we heard over and over again in our early history education, yet here we are adding restrictions once again.
Leading businesses oppose ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Apple, Google, Spotify, Microsoft and Facebook are among the many to defend the current policy. Several states have filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration in order to protect DREAMers. Many universities, including our own, have released statements in response to the suspension of DACA as well. Much like the results of the last presidential election, the majority of our country does not want this.
The attitude spreading through the right toward immigrants is unacceptable and misrepresents our population. We have seen a shift in rhetoric that makes immigrants sound like beasts to be hunted rather than people who need a place to live and work. This is worsened still by destroying protections for immigrants who came here as children and lived the majority of their lives calling this country home.
We call these people illegal aliens as though they are not already people. The language turns cold, and they become demonized stereotypes. President Trump has often encouraged some of these stereotypes in his rallies, speeches and tweets. It is no surprise that the right has followed suit on a large scale. Our classmates, coworkers, neighbors and friends are labeled out of place. With the suspension of DACA, 800,000 people will lose a sense of security and possibly their entire way of life.
It seems to have been forgotten that our country was built by immigrants. America is filled with people whose heritage originates all over the world. This diversity and mixing of cultures is part of what makes this country unique, and we should be proud of that. It is treated as a patriotic idea to protect our borders, but it cannot be patriotic to hate or deport immigrants in a country made almost entirely of the descendants of immigrants.