Lopez 1

Robert Lopez Jr
Professor D. Altman
English 113B
7 April 2016
Government Power
According to estimates from the 2013 ACS, the U.S. immigrant population stood at more
than 41.3 million, or 13 percent, of the total U.S. population of 316.1 million. Between 2012 and
2013, the foreign-born population increased by about 523,000, or 1.3 percent said the people in
www.migrationpolicy.org. These percentages have been unstable throughout the years due to
Government control and regulations. The lack of power the government has on the border
between countries are really underestimated, immigrants at many points can easily cross the
border by being really coordinated. Due to this, our country is over populated, jobs are harder to
find, and deportation is at an all high, this wastes more money the government doesnt have. To
this exception, countries abuse their power over illegal immigrants with jobs, threatening
deportation, and corrupt legal system.
Jobs in the U.S are really hard to find these days. People are also blaming it on
immigrants that are taking all the jobs. In my personal opinion, I think it is all lies to make
people feel more vulnerable to whoever is listening the them. Immigrants come to the U.S. to
have a better life and future for their families and themselves. In what I have seen personally,
immigrants are taking physical and dirty jobs that one will never see themselves doing. Working
hard is what immigrants do in a regular basis and that is what they will do every single day until
they cant no more. In the film, El Norte directed by Gregory Nava, a brother and sister escape a

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massacre that was happening in their home town by the army. They both come to the U.S. trying
to have a better life, but instead they were treated unfairly and made to live in this unsaturated
place. The brother worked really hard for him and his sister, but he couldnt earn enough by
himself, the sister then began to work cleaning houses to these rude and obnoxious white people.
They treated the maid and the sister very bad, but they both needed the money so it didnt even
bother them. The brother was a very hard worker, so he was promoted very fast and other
workers were very jealous and a worker was very mad and he even called immigration services
to come in and take him away. He escaped and found a new job, the brother was a hard worker
and was promoted but this time he was supposed to leave out of state and leave his sister behind.
The brother thought about it very carefully and decided stay behind. After a few days, the sister
got sick and died, the brother then went back to the lady to get his job back and he did but when
it came to leave, the brother didnt show up so the lady left without him. The brother then found
a new job in construction and became a good worker. As the movie ends, you see that any
immigrants find very dirty, physical, and dangerous jobs that a person with papers will never find
the decency to ever work there.
Deportation in the U.S., reached a record high in 2013 with a total of around 438,000.
This number is both immigrants and criminals that were deported in the year 2013. In the movie
Children of Men, directed by Alfonso Cuarn, England is one of many other cities that is still
standing due to the tragedies the world faces. Birth is at its all-time lowest and the youngest
person in the world has died. Many people around the world are migrating to England because
other places arent functioning as properly as England is. Due to Englands size, it started getting
really packed and England decided to deport any person without documents. In the movie, you
see in the background a bunch of people in cages like if they were animals about to be deported.

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It doesnt say really where they take them, but big buses come and take them all away. As the
immigrants wait for the buses, they are treated as animals, no human rights are cared for these
people. The immigrants can be dying of hunger and thirst and the guards neither the government
are doing anything about this.
The corrupt legal system can also play a big part in these actions. In the graphic novel Y:
The Last Man by Brian K. Vaughan, all the men die except one. The main character is named
Yorick and he is the last male alive except for his monkey Ampersand. Due to the men dying,
most of all the government was male so the legal system and the whole government is shut down
more the time period of the whole book. The women, on the other hand, dont fall under the
pressure and they themselves deal with the whole government problems. You cant keep hiding
maam. Youre the highest ranked woman in America now and your government doesnt even
know youre alive (Vaughan 49). The men in the government had the highest roles so as the
men died, the highest ranked woman was found and she was made president. What she doesnt
know was that people in the government were giving away information to the rest of the world.
You have not even revealed your name to me. Why should I tell you anything? Because if you
dont, I wont give you the current coordinates of Yorick Brown (Vaughan 235). This is part of a
conversation that someone from the government of the United States is having with a soldier.
The lady in the government is not shown to us as a reader. She is always in a dark room giving
information to this soldier. The government of the U.S. is not really stable so many people are
taking advantage and betraying their own country for their own survival. In a time like this, if no
one steps up to take the power, the world will fall apart and problems will get worse.
Over time, the U.S. Government has done many things to immigrants that does not look
good to many people but in other cases it does look good. On September 11, the day when the

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Twin Towers were hit by airplanes, the U.S. government found out that it was the Taliban that
were up to this, so the U.S. investigated all Muslim, Middle Eastern, and South Asian people to
see if they werent apart of this horrible accident. While there is no doubt that the US
government is entitled to enforce immigration laws, since Sep 11 it has used enforcement of
these laws as a pretext to single out Muslim, Middle Eastern, or South Asian males for special
scrutiny, to hold individuals in secret, and to circumvent the customary strictures of the criminal
justice process. Thus far, courts that have addressed these issues have held that the government's
policies of secret detentions and proceedings are illegal (J.C Salyer). The U.S. couldnt have
done what they did to these people but it happened so fast that no one knew what was happening
until days or weeks later. Many people may say that this was a good tactic that the U.S. did
because you never know how is a Taliban from those people. I and many other people say that it
is wrong to assume that we Mexicans, like Donald Trump is now saying, are all murderers and
rapist. One person does not define the rest so the people that agree with the U.S. in doing this and
even Donald Trump supporters are all wrong. This is not right but me by myself cant change
anything.
The U.S. immigrant population stood at more than 41.3 million, or 13 percent, of the total
U.S. population of 316.1 million. Between 2012 and 2013, the foreign-born population increased
by about 523,000, or 1.3 percent. These percentages have been unstable throughout the years due
to Government control and regulations. The lack of power the government has on the border
between countries are really underestimated. Immigrants at many points can easily cross the
border by being really coordinated. Due to this, our country at many locations are being over
populated. Jobs are harder to find and deportation is at an all high wasting more money the
government doesnt have. To this exception, countries abuse their power over illegal immigrants

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due to jobs, threatening deportation, and corrupt legal system. The government is doing too much
for it to happen again and again. Immigrants know that the U.S. will benefit them in their life so
they will do anything to cross over and live here. With the more protection the U.S. puts then the
harder and more strategized the immigrants have to be. If immigrants really want to come into
the U.S. then theyll find a way, no matter the price.

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Work Cited
Children of Men. Dir. Alfonso. Cuarn. Perf. Clive Owen. 2006.
El Norte. By Gregory Nava. Dir. Gregory Nava. 1983. DVD.
Gonzalez-Barrera, Ana, and Jens Manuel Krogstad. "U.S. Deportations of Immigrants Reach
Record High in 2013." Pew Research Center RSS. N.p., 02 Oct. 2014. Web. 04 Apr. 2016.
Salyer, J.C. "Abuse of Immigration Detainees: Before and After September 11." Criminal Justice
Ethics, 21.1 (2002): 2.
Vaughan, Brian K., Pia Guerra, Paul Chadwick, Jose Marzan, Pamela Rambo, and Clem Robins.
Y: The Last Man. Book One ed. New York, NY: Vertigo/DC Comics, 2003. Print.
Zong, Jie, and Jeanne Batalova. "Frequently Requested Statistics on Immigrants and
Immigration in the United States." Migrationpolicy.org. N.p., 25 Feb. 2015. Web. 17 Mar. 2016.