With the 2025 year starting, a new president isn’t the only thing being introduced to the country. Trump’s new immigration policies, which are being used to find alleged ‘illegal’ immigrants, have already been affecting many around America. Thousands of people are being taken from their homes and put onto planes to be deported to locations that are either their country of origin or a different country to temporarily hold them in. Appointments with U.S. Border Patrol agents through CBP One, an app once used to help people from foreign countries seek asylum via said appointments, are now being used to keep people out of the country as appointments are being cancelled without warning or notice. With so much happening in the world, it’s easy to get caught up in international news, forgetting how this affects others.
The Echo sent out a poll on Tuesday, March 18th to advisory classrooms with questions regarding the new immigration policies, and students spoke out with many stating how their friends could be affected and how these policies have made them scared, unsure, and angry about America and its future.
One of these students is Senior Lily Bo Golub, who mentioned how a part of her family may be soon affected by these new policies, like her mother’s late father. Golub said, “He was an immigrant from Mexico, we are not in touch with most of our family from Mexico but I know that that family exists…but I don’t know how that would impact them.”
Another student that wishes to remain anonymous said that, “One of my close friends’ family, they may be affected by this because of issues in the past about passport situations and green card[s]. They were immigrants and the process is hard itself. So I think that, you know, it’s hard, getting citizenship for this country.”
As said by that student, getting citizenship is not an easy task. One of the requirements to be a citizen is to have a Green Card for 3-5 years and you are not allowed to travel outside of the US. However, there are new policies about green cards being brought up and a new type of green card has been introduced. On February 25th, Trump introduced the ideas to reporters in the Oval office and then explained it more at a Cabinet meeting on February 26th. What Trump is proposing is to allow people to apply for citizenship, with the expectation that $5 million will be submitted to be a US citizen. This new card also would replace the EB-5 program, which allowed immigrants and their families to own a green card if they invested $1 million dollars into U.S business. However, the EB-5 program also came with other requirements, such as qualifying for a permanent job in the US. With this new card introduced, and even replacing other programs, it raises the question, what new immigration policies will be next?
As this question is so far left unanswered by students, some students were asked further how this made them feel. “I think that it is scary that we came to this country as settlers, like the people that run the country [now],” Golub said, “and the fact that, now, nobody can live here cause we ‘don’t want immigrants’. That idea is scary itself, because everything that America is supposed to stand for is dissolving before everyone’s eyes.”
An anonymous student mentioned how this situation has made them feel, mentioning that history seems to repeat itself once again. They said “I feel really frustrated that it kind of feels like America’s devolving from this, and something I learned in my history class is that there’s so many problems in the past that are reiterating back to today, and it’s really upsetting. It makes me mad that marginalized groups feel targeted for this reason, and personally I just think it’s unfair to those who have already gone through a lot and they have something else to worry about again.”
As Trump’s campaign starts to pick up speed, showing no signs of stopping, it’s important to ponder what will happen next in the world. However, it’s even more important to check in with others about big issues that may be affecting them or people they know, because nobody knows how a person truly feels until they’re asked.