A Pleasant Surpirse

When I started reading “The Framing of Immigration” for the first couple pages I was anything but eager to read the rest. All I could think was…oh no here we go again with a long article that is just going to go over my head. That was until I came across something that caught my attention. “Unknown numbers of people have died trekking through the extreme conditions of the Arizona and New Mexico desert…Fathers feel forced to leave their families in their best attempt to provide for their kids. Everyday, boatloads of people arrive on our shores after miserable journeys at sea in deplorable conditions.” As much as I think about it I’m not sure exactly what made this stand out to me. Maybe it was just the plain old fact that it touched my heart. Just the way that it was put, something touched me and pulled me in.

Through the rest of the article I continued to find particular sentences and paragraphs that stood out to me and grabbed me. It was a pleasant surprise. I was dreading reading this article, and before I knew it I was enjoying it. I didn’t particularly love the way in which the article was written, but I was still able to get a lot out of it and take pleasure in it.

Another sentence that grabbed me was towards the middle of the article. It came in a section that was discussing security; it even mentioned the war on terror. Then this was mentioned, “Terrorists come to destroy the American dream, immigrants – both documented and undocumented – come to live the American dream.” I thought that this was a wonderful way of putting this idea. I could not have said it any better myself. I feel that many people link immigrants with terrorism, when in reality they are two completely different issues. It just happens that they both share one little similarity, that we see both of them as coming from outside this country.

“These immigrants are not a physical threat, they are a vital part of our economy and help America function. They don’t want to shoot us or kill us or blow us up. They only want to weed our gardens, clean our houses, and cook our meals in search of the American Dream.”