With the walkout in protest of the rescinding of DACA, I think it’s appropriate to revisit the subject of immigration.

There are still the typical Trump apologists who, no matter how cruel or discriminatory his proposed actions are, try to find a way to justify the decision to end the program and support mass deportations that have never been seen before. I am once again here to tell you to stop it, and here’s why.

For one, I’m convinced that the majority of people who support rescinding the program don’t know what that truly encapsuates. I don’t think they really know what immigration truly entails in its entirety for that matter. To stay within word limit, I’ll just discuss immigration in general.

Myth debunker number 1: Immigrants do pay taxes. Whether you’re documented or not,  Uncle Sam will make sure you make your contributions, whether you receive all the benefits or not. To answer your question, immigrants do not receive all of the same benefits as an American citizen, or the rights. I would call that second-class citizenship, but because America does everything it can to make being a citizen damn near impossible and Dreamers aren’t afforded the pathway to citizenship through DACA, I’ll just call it second-class existence.

Myth debunker number 2: Immigrants come to America to mooch off our government. This is my favorite argument to counter. There are very few people who just up-and-leave the countries and cultures they’ve known all of their lives to go to a country where they may not know the language or anyone else there, and that is riddled with racists who tell them they’re unwanted.

They come because they want to survive. They want their children to survive. They want their children to know a life other than gang violence, government corruption, poverty or political and social unrest in general. Furthermore, there’s nothing to mooch from. Our government already won’t give them all of the benefits, even though they work just like everyone else; they won’t even afford them the documentation to get in lines to even see if they can get the benefits.

Myth debunker number 3: rescinding DACA has nothing to do with racism. Here we go. Just to remind everyone, our president called Mexican immigrants “criminals” and “rapists.” He pardoned the Arizona mayor who was convicted of discriminatory practices against the Latinx community. He proposed and is in the process of spending several billion tax payer dollars on a wall to keep immigrants from entering illegally while Flint, Michigan still has no clean water, poverty is on the rise and many school systems are severely underfunded.

There are many other myths to be addressed and debunked, but the word limit is creeping up on me again. In sum, those who continue to support the need to do a bit more research before they keep screaming to send people back to countries that some have never even been to before.

The oppression of immigrants is equivalent to Jim Crow; you have people discriminating against immigrants, the government not granting all of the benefits that immigrants contribute towards, and are often stuck in a long, uncertain process of trying to obtain citizenship and living in constant fear of being harmed solely for the status of their origin. It’s cruel. It’s discriminatory. It’s xenophobic. Yes, it’s racist. My email is always open for concerns, comments, or questions because I always have a lot more to say than the space to say it.