Latin American Immigrants Essay

Submitted By Lordthomas
Words: 778
Pages: 4

Latin American Immigrants Thirteen percent of the United States' population is comprised of immigrants. “Nearly 11.6 million Mexican immigrants reside in the United States, accounting for 28.3 percent of all U.S. Immigrants. “1 These numbers only account for the documented immigrants, most Latin American migrants have illegally crossed the Mexico-United States border. The one's coming from Latin America have an especially challenging and dangerous journey to the Rio Grande river. They travel to the United States either in hopes of a better life or some come to find their mothers whom left the migrants when they were children to try to support them. Despite the commonness of this story, the underlying question still remains: is the risky journey worth it? Very simply put, no. Attempted migrants from countries such as Nicaragua or Honduras have an especially long journey to the United States. They will face crooked cops, gangsters, punishing heat, and the U.S. border patrol throughout the entire 1,800 mile journey. It's a very long journey, although many don't walk all that way. “Many migrants travel atop a large freight train known as La Bestia, or 'The Beast,' which runs from the south of Mexico all the way north to the United States”2. They risk losing limbs, or falling to their deaths riding atop these trains, and all for what? A below minimum wage job in a country that will not help illegal citizens. The life-threatening journey and inevitable suffering is not worth a slightly better version then what they had back home. It also isn't worth the journey because of the money and time it takes to travel all that distance. Very rarely will somebody make the whole journey successfully the first time. It may take years of deportation and restarting until they get lucky and make it across the Rio Grande. To legally enter the U.S.“it costs roughly $5000 and they will have no guarantee that they will be allowed to come to the US.”3 Very few have this money, and almost all will have to try to enter the U.S. Illegally. Even if they choose to attempt that, they will need to spend so much time working exhausting jobs in towns to scrap up money to spend on the smugglers once you reach the border, that it would have more rational to stay in their home country and work an honest wage their. They would have been living more leisurely at least, and with more food. They waste chunks of their lives and weeks of hard work for nothing but more suffering, no, it's not worth it. Additionally, when you consider the immoral action that many of these Hispanics commit to their families back at home in middle America, it's not worth the guilt they should be living with every day. They abandon their families for their own benefit, and they must miss the loved ones that they left behind. Many disdain their own mothers for abandoning them, but then do the same thing to there own girlfriends and kids. They run away and screw their families, then have to live with themselves. As is commonly believed, many of these migrants come to find