The article, "Immigration: Obama vs. Congress" by Patricia Smith, is about the controversy of President Obama's executive order which protect 5 million undocumented immigrants from deportation and allows them to work legally in the U.S. for the first time. There are 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States from all over the world, and every time they're out in the streets they walk in fear of deportation. While the immigrants cheer, the Republicans are outraged because they believe the president abused his authority by passing the executive order without consent from Congress. Democrats believe in legalizing the people who came to U.S. illegally, but the Republicans, on the other hand, work to tighten border security, with some already talking about increasing deportation. Throughout the article, the author talks about both sides of the argument, however, the author seems to lean more towards the fact that the executive order was great.
The author clearly believes that President Obama did the right thing to pass the executive order.The author portrays her views by using narratives from immigrants stating their opinions/ feelings. One of the immigrant, Paola Fernandez, who came to the U.S. illegally from Mexico at age 4, says, "We've been here close to 25 years. On a very personal level, this is a very amazing moment." This shows that the immigrants were very happy. Many of these immigrants came to America in desperate hopes of earning money for their family back in their national country; For many years, some of these immigrants weren't able to see their families. Throughout the article, the author wants me and other readers to feel the sadness and fear the immigrants feel of getting deported and how content they feel about the executive order.
Overall, I believe President Obama did the right thing to issue an executive order protecting undocumented immigrants. Immigrants are part of our society; they're shopping, working, helping and even could be our friends or relatives. The United States is believed to be a safe place to live in, so the immigrants should not have to live in fear. Besides, many years ago, if people from other countries came to settle in America even with Native Americans already living there, why should we (Americans) have a problem with immigrants coming to our country? In this article, I realized that in the U.S. there are many undocumented immigrants and that they constantly live in fear of getting deported. This is yet another step to make America a better place for everyone, regardless of race, color or country of origin, to live in peace.
