“Is Racism Fueling the Immigration Debate?”

Did you know that 45% of the nation’s children under the age five are racial or ethnic minorities? That is almost half of our children in this country are minorities. The Time article quotes John Gibson from Fox News. He states that “it’s our duty to make more babies…” I believe this statement is racist but I don’t believe that racism is fueling the debate. A Senate Democratic leadership aide said “There is a fear of white people being overrun by darker-skinned people.” We really can’t fight this and say that there isn’t a fear because there is, but we can’t say it’s our duty to make more babies and to make sure this doesn’t happen. There are people out there who are racist and don’t like the fact that millions of people in the United States are immigrants. The ultimate question arises, should ethnicity be a factor in granting citizenship? I think ethnicity should be the last factor in “estimating” if a person if worthy enough to be a citizen of the United States. The person’s character should be the underlining factor in deciding on their asylum. The person should be judge by what kind of person they are. By judging on character, we will have to have more tests and interview to limit the number of potential terrorist. Overall, we need to do something about our immigration system. It takes years on top of more years for a person to receive any information about if their paper work good enough. We can’t change the fact that people in our country have different opinions and views, but we can’t account for the entire country. We need a fair immigration system to where the person is judged by who they are and not by where his or she is from.

Time Article
Issue: May 17th, 2006
By: Massimo Calabresi/Washington