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Making America White Again

The United States of America: the place that praises the American Dream, a dream that
countless people try following, but have a hard time accomplishing because of systemic racism.
Its easy to tell people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, but what if they dont even have
boots to begin with because the system denied them the right to? The American Dream is a sugar
coated lie. After hundreds of years of colonization, imperialism, mass genocide, institutionalized
racism, white supremacy, marginalization, and the white patriarchy, it is deceptive to let
minorities believe that they can be as successful as their white counterparts when the system they
live in favors white men. The United States lives in a tight hypocritical bubble that denies their
raw history and white washes it to erase the oppression of people of color. The early colonizers
of the U.S are idolized even though they committed horrendous crimes against humanity. The
British immigrants are glorified for their bravery in coming here while recently the illegal
immigration of brown people, especially Mexican people, is a huge issue in this country, even
though, for a multitude of them, their only crime is crossing a border. These two groups of
immigrants, both want that American Dream the only difference is that the first group was
cruel yet praised because of their whiteness and the second is criminalized and oppressed
because of their brownness. Although there have been efforts made towards preventing this type
of discrimination, countless things havent changed because of the fact that this is still a white
man's world that constantly oppresses people of color in a variety of complex ways. One of the
key ways to keep people oppressed is to keep them voiceless, this is done by denying people of
color, including immigrants, their rights with the racism that is still thriving today. In order for
many of the white men in the government to stay in power they keep their citizens ignorant by
expressing inaccurate rhetoric intended to prove that this is a post racial society and that racism

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doesnt exist anymore even though it does. This issue is very much about race, because if it
wasnt, racially motivated legislation wouldnt be one of the biggest things that these immigrants
have to face on a daily basis. Undocumented immigrants are being racially profiled,
criminalized, dehumanized, taken advantage of, as well as oppressed. The violation of these
undocumented immigrants rights, including those of Mexican undocumented immigrants,
happens because of relations with the United States and the racism that the United States
government and its white citizens perpetuate.
In order to understand why so many Mexican people are immigrating illegally there
needs to be an understanding of the things that are causing them to have to leave in the first
place. Its easy to just complain about it illegal immigration, but knowing the reasons why makes
it better to comprehend the situation as a whole because it gives context. When it boils down to
things the cause of the need to immigrate isnt the immigrants fault. For Mexican citizens, a
combination of drug cartel violence, corruption in the government, corruption in the police force,
no opportunity of jobs, a recovering economy, and negative U.S relations has left Mexico in a
very bad state. People dont find it pleasant or easy to just drop everything and leave the country
they have known their whole lives. Immigrants migrate because they have to, they dont have a
choice. Mexican immigrants who get to the U.S illegally go through huge amounts of danger
in order to get to where they want to be; their sacrifices and bravery are fueled by their
necessities. One of the biggest sources of despair in Mexico has been its relations with the
United States. The interventions of the U.S has done more harm than good, not only is this true
in Mexico, its also true for countries in Central and South America as well as others outside of
the Americas. An example of a negative impact that the U.S helped create in Mexico is the North
American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that was enacted in 1994. NAFTA had made huge

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promises, but only hurt Mexico's economy. This agreement was to break ...down trade barriers
between them, creating jobs and closing the wage gap between the U.S. and
Mexico(Kolhatkar). Those promises didnt live up to what they were supposed to and Mexico's
economy suffered because it could not compete well enough with the United States, as a result
people lost their jobs. Two years after NAFTA was established sixty-nine percent of the
population was living under the poverty line (Pew Research Center). Many Mexicans could no
longer make a living, so a solution for many of them was to migrate north. There is evidence that
when NAFTA's negative effects were sweeping the country millions of people migrated north as
proven by the fact that in 1995 2.9 million Mexican people were immigrating illegally to this
country, but by 2007 it had risen to 6.9 million people (Pew Research Center). Only after the
recession of 2008 did that number decrease because both economies were suffering at that point.
The U.S government has been acting very negatively towards the immigration of brown bodies
to their country and one of their biggest mistakes is failing to see the reasons why they are
coming here. The U.S has to take responsibility for some of the reasons that are causing
immigration because they arent free of fault. If the immigration of brown bodies bothers them
so much a quick fix, like a more secure border, wont be enough to fix all of the damage it has
caused over the years.
For the people who make it to the United States illegally, with the hope of living the
American Dream, life can be really hard. Life in the U.S for a minority is hard enough because
there are so many odds against them due to racism, so being an undocumented minority adds
even more of a disadvantage. Racism in the U.S influences everyone that desires to and does
preserve the inferiority of undocumented immigrants by taking advantage of their illegal status
and their race. Being undocumented can leave immigrants excluded, in fear, vulnerable,

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voiceless, and without rights etc. Not having the proper documentation affects life in many ways
because anyone can use it against them to end what they worked so hard to get by getting them
deported. Abuses of human rights are present in the everyday life of unauthorized immigrants
and can be especially prominent in the workplace. Injustice in the workplace has been just one of
the many things that cause struggle in their lives. The majority of undocumented immigrants
come to the U.S find a job and make a living. Even though it is illegal to hire unauthorized
immigrants, employers still do its as an easy way to have expendable workers that they can
exploit and easily get rid of by deporting them when they arent complying with their harsh
demands. Their status, education level, and language barriers can cause them to enter into low
wage jobs leading to yet another problem: poverty (Gusmano).
Although undocumented immigrants are one of the lowest paid groups of people in the
U.S a percentage of their money never gets to them because, ...about half to three-quarters...pay
federal, state, and local taxes, including billions in Social Security taxes for benefits(Johnson
and Teaching Tolerance). Immigrants work so hard to make a living, but are impoverished
because they make so little and a portion of their money is constantly being given to the
government. Many undocumented immigrants have low wages, yet are not eligible for affordable
health care, cant get federal financial aid, and dont qualify for welfare (Capps et al, Planned
Parenthood Federation of America Inc, U.S Department of Education, and Johnson). Despite not
making enough money they are denied the things they pay for through taxes for simply being
undocumented. Undocumented immigrants contribute more to the U.S economy than they take
away as well, so instead of denying these people government benefits, because of their status, it
should be given to them because their hard work is helping pay for them. They deserve the right
to receive benefits just as much as any citizen does because they would benefit from them a lot

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and its highly unfair that they dont have them just because of their illegal status. It causes a
lot of hardships within their lives because poverty is a very difficult thing to deal with. In this
day and age its terrible to let people live in poverty and deny them the right to be financially
stable with government aid.
Furthermore, there is a racial aspect at play in this situation. Racism can be seen in antiimmigration laws, the criminalization of immigrants by the government, media, and citizens, as
well as in the abundance of harsh notions they all promote. The criminalization of people of
color has been historically prevalent in order to give them a bad image and justify racist acts
against them. Consequently, an AP survey conducted in 2011 showed that, ...52 percent of nonHispanic whites expressed anti-Hispanic attitudes (Associated Press). Another study conducted
in 2014 found that ...opposition to undocumented immigration in the U.S. may not be as strong
as it is currently if the undocumented immigrants appeared to be more Caucasian
(Anastasopoulos 13-14). Race has been used to give many negative perceptions of people and
has led to the thought that undocumented immigrants are criminals. Contrary to popular belief,
unauthorized immigrants do not commit more crimes than native born citizens and ...crime rates
are lowest in states with the highest immigration growth rates. (American Immigration
Council). Even after the fact that immigrants, including the undocumented ones arent criminals
there is anti-immigrant legislation that criminalizes them. A big anti-immigration law is S.B.
1070 which allows cops to be able to question people about their legal status based solely on
what they look like (American Civil Liberties Union). Anti-immigration laws heavily rely on
racial profiling, which has been known to violate the 4th and 14th amendment of the U.S
constitution. When racially profiling the 4th amendment is being violated because race is not a
valid source of probable cause for searches because it clashes with the 14th amendment that,

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...guarantees that all people living in the United States, regardless of race, nationality, or
citizenship status, have a right to due process and equal protection under the law(One America),
but ultimately people are not in equal protection under the law because race and citizenship
status are the key things that this tactic targets. Local police, Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE), and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers are known to use
any excuse to harass a brown person to check their legal status, not only by they way they look,
as in what ethnicity or race they seem to be, but also by the way they speak (accent) as well as
the language they speak (Amnesty International USA 34-39). Racial profiling isnt anything new,
it happens to so many people of color in this country undocumented or not. This is a huge
problem because if the government is letting these officials use their power with illogical,
invalid, ignorant reasoning, its unfair, inconsistent with the law, and a huge violation of human
rights because its only based on race. Race doesnt say much about a person because its like
judging a book by its cover. Its toxic to racially profile because it just reduces people into
something they are not. Humans are complex beings, not just some overgeneralized stereotype.
Similarly, the criminalization of people of color comes hand in hand with racism in the
way that it has helped the United States incarcerate twenty-five percent of the population with
sixty percent of those incarcerated being people of color (Wagner and Kerby). Mass
incarceration has become a huge plague in the United States because its a way of oppressing
people with legal justifications. Black and Latino men are getting incarcerated at huge rates
and so are undocumented immigrants, last year 235,413 people were removed and ~441,000
were detained (Department of Homeland Security,Detention Watch Network). The deportation
process is a cruel one. From the point someone gets arrested to the point they are actually sent
away many of their human rights diminish. Getting detained by an ICE or a CBP officer can be

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terrifying because they are known for using excessive force and are rude to the people they are
arresting (Amnesty International USA 41-42). Accounts of people have said that officers bang on
doors, break in, yell, dont listen to requests, surround their homes, and disrespect people at the
scene ( Southern Poverty Law center and Amnesty USA 10). ICE officers have also lied about
their identity as bait in order to get people arrested (Planas). As a result of inappropriate actions
by officers, the arrests and the moments leading up to arrests are traumatizing. Deportation is
also horrifying mainly because its robs people of their humanity to their hard earned life. For
many undocumented immigrants deportation can mean getting torn apart from their families and
losing everything that has taken so much hard work and sacrifice. A mother can lose her children
if she gets deported, a border can become the thing that keeps them away from the better life
they could have together and from the people they love.
Once people are taken into custody, they are sent into deportation centers where it can be
heavily overcrowded, there are only 34,000 jail beds for ~441,000 people (Detention Watch
Network). In these centers people are treated unfairly in a variety of ways. Congress has set a
quota of at least 34,000 people having to be detained everyday and as a result, one of the very
first cruelties at this stage of detention is being treated as cattle by letting privately owned
prisons make profit off of how many people are in their facilities. The U.S government promotes
making money off of undocumented immigrants by setting quotas that are incentivized because
once the quotas are met, prisons receive money (Detention Watch Network, and Center for
Constitutional Rights). Thus, Congress has put a price tag on the bodies of immigrants, which is
very dehumanizing because no human should have a monetary value. In addition to being treated
as cattle, they are not given proper medical care, not given the right to a trial, they are given very
little inedible food, they sometimes dont have the chance to get fresh air, their lack of ability to

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speak English is taken advantage, they dont have little to no officials who can translate, and on
top of that they are confined in cells like the criminals they are not (Southern Poverty Law
Center and Detention Watch Network). Undocumented immigrants can be in these centers for
weeks on end desperately waiting to see when they will get deported, having to endure many of
the injustices caused by the country they thought they could call home.
In final consideration, this issue does not have one simple solution as it is such a huge,
complicated situation that has been constructed for decades. There are many things to be done in
order to bring justice to the millions of undocumented immigrants living in the United States.
One of the most important things that could help would be to educate the public for the sake of
building a strong foundation that could be built up to tackle the primary problems of this
situation. Oblivion can cause ignorance, so by educating people with the right information that
oblivion can diminish and or leave less room for racist, ignorant, and negative perceptions of
these circumstances. First, learning about the causes of migration is something important, it can
make it easier to see that the only victims of this issue are immigrants. They have fallen victim to
unjust governments that benefit from their oppression. Then, understanding the hell that
immigrants go through from the time they cross the border, to living in the U.S oppressed, to the
cruel process of deportation should make people more comprehensive because life can be very
harsh and people dont get to choose their oppressors or let alone how theyll oppress them.
Schools should also be a part of this by talking about the history of people of color in this
country because this country was built off of their backs, therefore that history would give more
context to why people of color, as well as immigrants, are where they are now and why they
dont deserve to be erased, disrespected, or oppressed like they have been for all these years.
Also, denying the fact that racism doesnt exist can only make matters worse because its exactly

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like turning the other cheek on people who are suffering and letting them suffer in silence. It may
be difficult to understand how systemic racism works, however as hard as it may be nothing is
guaranteed to be easy, especially when it as complex as systemic racism. Once people are
educated on the matter, they can become activists, advocates or supporters of this cause. Any
amount or kind of activism is valid as long as it has the cause in mind. U.S Citizens, especially
white citizens, should see that they could use their status and white privilege to help give a voice
to undocumented immigrants. As citizens, they have been given the right to have a say in their
government, so being vocal about things that affect immigrants can bring about more change
because its a right that cant be denied to them. In addition, laws in the U.S should be free of
racist origins, so when they arent, citizens can let their government know that they wont allow
it because its inhumane and illegal. Citizens need to hold the U.S government accountable for
any and all of the racist anti-immigration legislation being put to practice, not doing so is only
harming innocent people.
Displaying immigrants as criminals is highly inaccurate for the reason that immigrants
migrate out of necessity in order to have an opportunity for a better life. Crossing a border for the
sake of being safer or being able to support a family should not be a crime, but a sign that people
are in a lot of need so help should be given to them. Theyre refugees, more than anything, but
not criminals. The U.S government must give undocumented immigrants their humanity back by
not treating them as cattle and putting a price tag on them, the quota must end. Deportations must
also end, they are tearing apart families and ruining lives. Police, ICE, and CBP officers should
be heavily monitored, as their actions are highly unprofessional and inhumane. Deportation
centers are also in need of heavy monitoring and regulations. Regardless of all of the racist, antiimmigrant rhetoric out there, the truth will always be the truth even if it is the minority opinion.

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There is no such thing as an illegal person, the borders created by racist, imperialist white men
say they are, but that doesnt make it any more true. Something that is legal or even accepted
now doesnt make it morally right or humane. Countless crimes against humanity have been
legal. Now, it will be important to ask, what is making racism, detention centers, anti-immigrant
laws, deportations, etc. still legal? United, people can do anything. A wall keeping out the
illegals wont make America Great Again, unity will. All they want is to make America
white again. Dont let America become white again.

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Works Cited
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Agiesta, Jennifer, and Sonya Ross. "AP Poll: Majority Harbor Prejudice against Blacks."
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