Monday, April 8, 2013

Immigration for Family Reunification





When I read Bill Ong Hing’s “Making and Remaking Asian Pacific America” it really made me think about the means my family used to immigrate to this country. I was 13 when I moved to this country so I didn’t fully understand why we were moving to the United States and how we were moving to the United States. Before we moved, my father went to the country first and then later we followed. I never really knew the legalities of it, but after reading this article, I called my dad to ask how we were able to move here. I’m not going to go into too much detail on how but I do know our means of getting here was through the second preference system: spouses and unmarried sons and daughters of lawful permanent resident. In my phone call my dad told me about all the hardship he had to go through in an attempt to reunite our family in this country they call “The Land of the Free.” How could we hold our right hand over our heart and listen to the Star Spangled Banner recite the words “O’er the land and of the free” when this country makes it so hard for newly migrated people to have freedom?  I just feel that the fact that they have made so many amendments in terms of immigration just comes to show that this country is trying hard to find ways to limit immigration altogether. So my question is what steps will the government take to limit Asian Pacific immigrants from taking advantage of the family preference system?  And would that really be so necessary?

Adrienne Salvador

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