Green Card and Immigration Essay Example

In the United States, on average, in 2021, it takes about 2 to 3 years to get a green card. Afterwards, you must wait 3-5 years in order to get citizenship, and then finally, after waiting years to actually get to be a citizen of the USA, it takes about another 14 months in order to acquire citizenship in the USA. This is one of the many problems with immigration in the USA, and right now the Biden-Harris administration has said that they have four goals to address problems in immigration. These four goals are to put in place orderly processes and protocols at the border, remove barriers to unifying children with parents and sponsors, expand lawful pathways for protection of immigrants and opportunities for citizenship, and to address the root causes of migration. The most important focus among the 4 immigration goals presented by the actions the Biden administration has said they will do to help immigrants is to expand protections and make citizenship more accessible in America by reducing suppressive laws on immigration, and making it easier for immigrants to obtain access to the USA. In my speech, I’ll first address the problem at hand and explain it, identify why this is important and the causes of why citizenship and protections are hard to get, and finally how to solve this problem. One of the problems and the reason why this goal is the most important is that in America, getting a green card, citizenship, and a visa is exceptionally hard. Getting a green card, depending on the person’s case, usually takes at least 10 months, and can take up to 38 months to actually get the green card and come to the US. In some particular cases, it can take 7 or more years.[1] Citation The problem is, a lot of people don’t have that time. As seen in history, war, famine, gangs, drugs, political problems, and many other problems can hit a country at an unexpected time (e.g., Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, Vietnam, El Salvador, and many other places.) Simply put, immigrants who want to come to the US don’t have 10-38 months. This causes people to illegally immigrate, and if someone were to apply and try to come legally, there’s a high probability they’ll die due to war, gangs, famine, or other disasters in their country while waiting, or not have the opportunity to come to the USA. Along with this, after getting your green card, and waiting 3-5 years to become naturalized, it takes on average another 14.5 months to process, and the entire process of acquiring citizenship afterwards usually takes around 18.5-24 months.[2] Citation If an immigrant wants to bring the rest of their family, they’d have to wait up to 7 years to bring the rest of them. Along with this, many protections for immigrants and refugees have discontinued or just aren’t there. There are many causes to these problems. Throughout American history, immigration laws have been controversial, rampant, and have affected many lives. One such case was the Temporary Protective Service law put into action by George W. Bush in 1990. The law stated that people whose countries have been severely impacted by war, conflict, disaster or other extraordinary conditions may stay in the U.S. It was continued by every president until Donald Trump, who discontinued it, and tried to deport 240,000 people. The deportation was blocked by courts, but the law was still discontinued. This meant that people who were in danger in other countries are now unable to come to the USA, reducing immigrant and refugee protections. Another such case was the Migrant Protection Policy, enacted by Donald Trump, stating that immigrants who arrive at the US/Mexico border seeking asylum must wait in Mexico to await their trial. This was appealed then reinstated in 2021 by the states of Texas and Missouri. The reason this law is a problem is because it forces the people who have just ran away from the country from where there was harm, and puts them back into that harm. This is another cause of this problem, and quite a big one for it puts immigrants directly back into the harm they were trying to avoid. Not to mention the fact that citizenship and green cards have such a fluctuating application and acceptance time that immigrants can’t be sure if they’ll be able to come to the USA in times of danger in their country in a timely manner, and when they’ll be able to. This shows that the goal we should focus on is to get better protections for immigrants and to make citizenship more accessible for them. This goal is the one I think would be the best to focus on due to the fact that people need to come to the USA due to problems in their countries. Once people can easily get into the USA, we can focus on other problems with less worry on how people will get to the USA and if they’ll be protected here. In conclusion, we should expand protections and make citizenship more accessible in America by reducing suppressive laws on immigration, and making it easier for immigrants to obtain access to the USA. Immigration has always been hard for people trying to come into the USA, by making this easier, immigrants will be able to be safer, come into the USA more easily.