Open Letter by Leo Lopez
This is an open letter to the people of America. I have lived here for the last 21 years and in some ways I have become one of you. Although I have always remained a little different. I have eaten your food, celebrated your holidays and worked along side you. I have watched as presidents have come and gone like pop culture icons. I watched the 9-11 attacks with you and shared in your horrors and pains. I even cried with you over the lives that were lost on that tragic day. I have been here with you through so many things but I have always remained an outsider.
Next year because of mounting legislation against immigrants I will be leaving the United States forever. I will probably go to Vancouver, British Colombia because Canada actually welcomes immigrants, especially educated ones. Imagine if that ever happened here in the US, I do believe that the Earth would stop spinning on its axis and the stars would fall from the sky. The US has made it very clear that they do not want me here. It baffles me how the American people treat their neighbors to the south and in some ways even their neighbors to the north.
Ever since 9-11 the U.S. has brought migration into the country to a practical standstill. People with ulterior motives have used the fear that 9-11 has created in order to pass laws that would have never passed before the attacks. Under the guise of "protecting our borders" these very people are slowly taking away your rights, and you don't even seem to care. While I was at ASU I took a Business Law course, my professor was a judge of twenty something years and he told me that he honestly believed that almost EVERY single part of the "Patriot Act" was unconstitutional. You would think that this would alarm a class full of college students but not a single one protested. It is ignorance that is eating away at this country...pure ignorance. Here is a disgusting example of how many Americans see their brothers to the south.
I just can not seem to understand is your acceptance of racist laws that belittles your fellow man. You approve unconstitutional legislature in the name of national security and if anyone even tries to protest you merely excuse them as being "unpatriotic". Don't you even see the irony that they called it the Patriot Act. You claim that you are "protecting your borders" but in reality you are just alienating yourselves from one of your biggest allies...your neighbors. One day the empire that is known as the United States will fall, it is already beginning to falter, and because of your ethnocentric views of the last 50 years no one will even care. As a matter of fact a lot of them will be glad to see you crumble under your own ego.
If things remain as they are, with a brain drain because you no longer allow in even the most educated of immigrants the U.S. will inevitably fall. It has been happening in the international market for the last several years and it does not appear to be changing soon. The sleeping dragon that is China appears to be waking up and there is little that the U.S. can do about it. The U.S. needs to be more open to its migrants and refugees. It needs to realize that we are all brothers in the brotherhood of man. It needs to leave its ego behind and follow a more honorable and humanitarian path. You need to realize that you are not the only people on earth that matter and that the universe does not revolve around the U.S...just ask the Chinese.