Bridging Borders: Reagan’s Vision for Immigration Reform and Its Forgotten Consensus
By Anwen Hao
On a Republican debate stage in 1980, a member from the audience asked: “Do you think the children of illegal aliens should be allowed to attend Texas public schools free, or do you think that their parents should pay for their education?”
In a response that is practically inconceivable in today’s political rhetoric, Ronald Reagan answered: “Rather than making them, or talking about putting up a fence, why don’t we work out some recognition of our mutual problems, make it possible for them to come here legally with a work permit, and while they’re working and earning here, they pay taxes here…?”
Reagan’s proposal for reconciliation with illegal immigrants across the Southern border would take the form of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. While this bill enacted several new stringent restrictions on employing illegal immigrants, it also offered a path toward lawful permanent residence. It was this law that enabled the immigrant M. S. to immigrate to the United States.
M. S. immigrated to the United States with his father when he was 16. His father had been a seasonal worker who traveled into the United States to work in farms, and then returned back to Mexico when labor was no longer needed. Having already been in the United States prior to 1982, S.’s father was qualified to be offered lawful permanent residence.
The lesson of M. S.’s story is that there was once a time when there was reasonable consensus among political parties regarding the issue of immigration. The sentiments Reagan expressed on that debate stage is unheard of in the Republican platform today.
An Immigrant’s Story from Mexico
By Zachary Pan
Buildings towered over the city. People crowded the bustling streets, rushing in and out of their cars. As he stood outside the San Jose airport, H.G. watched, enthralled with America’s construction, ready for a life much different from Mexico.
Before immigrating from Mexico to the United States, H.G. worked in the Tecnológico de Monterrey campus in Guadalajara. At this time, his ex-wife’s family owned a house in Barra de Navidad and upon his visit, he fell in love with this small charming town by the ocean. With dreams of opening a bar, he sold his house in Guadalajara to buy a small house in Barra de Navidad.
It soon became a diverse community of cultures. People from all over the world visited his bar. For seven years, he continued to develop his menu, eventually increasing his business to a second location. To raise more money in running the bar, he did consultation jobs, driving people to immigration offices, medical specialists and airports. Despite being busy, he loved spending time with his son and watching him grow.
But, drug dealers soon invaded his business and blackmailed H.G. They knew where his son went to school, where his wife shopped, and where he lived, so he was forced to comply with their demands for money. As the situation escalated, he took his son and wife out of Barra de Navidad to hide in Guadalajara. He left his business by immigrating to the United States and was forced to hide there.
It seemed like the end. He could not pay his debts to the banks and broke his back doing construction. Unfortunately, he was not capable of getting access to medical care. Even though he earned a degree in sociology, he couldn’t work in any other field without proof of the papers. So he endured two years in an endless cycle of injury and labor.
Finally, he received good medical treatment. Living in a tiny home, he started his rehabilitation process for a year and a half. He continued to work hard to support his family back in Mexico. Even though he and his wife divorced, he still communicated with his ex-wife for his son’s well-being.
He came to the U.S. on a 10-year tourist visa, flying on Alaska Airlines from Guadalajara to the United States. “Terrible burritos,” H.G. said. However, he was not prepared for the completely different culture in the US. In Mexico, everyone knew each other. In the United States, life moved faster with people focusing on themselves. It demanded hard work and resilience.
Learning English was a challenge, but with the help of his friend at his bar and the Beatles, he practiced talking. With each unknown word in the song or conversation, he would look it up in the dictionary. But as much as he adapted, H.G. didn’t embrace the idea of the American Dream. To him, it was a promise of success that overlooked the development of your ethics and character as a person.
“Money isn’t what makes you happy,” H.G. said.”Going back to Mexico and seeing my kid grow — that’s happiness to me.”
H.G. remained connected to his heritage in Mexico. Even though he never went to many Mexican celebrations, he found comfort in authentic Mexican food.
Seven years of pain, learning and humility have passed since H.G. arrived in the U.S. He became skilled in painting, fencing and other construction jobs. Yet, he longed to return to Mexico, to rebuild his life there and be with his family. He hoped to raise enough money to send painter’s tools back home, a small step toward reactivating his old business.
His advice to other immigrants is to focus on your family and job. “Avoid drugs and alcohol because people, who have the money, will try to entice you to do bad things for it,” said H.G. “It destroys the family connection and the dealers will try to trap you to participate in their business.”
H.G. believes that the US should allow immigrants to work legally and give them more work opportunities. Many immigrants have the knowledge and are willing to help the community, but sometimes they are not allowed to do so.
“When you come to the United States, you must have the mentality to work,” H.G. said.
The immigrant story of Yingzheng Lin
By Jiahua Tang
Yingzheng Lin, a computer science major in San Francisco State University, arrived in the United States in 8th grade. His first impression of the U.S. included feelings of freedom, a relaxed lifestyle and friendliness. In U.S. high schools, students can select their courses based on their interests, such as art and programming classes. However, in China, students are required to study general education subjects, like biology and physics. Additionally, in the U.S., students leave school in the afternoon at around 3 pm, allowing them to attend after-school programs or participate in school clubs to pursue their interests. Students in China follow a study plan from 7 am to 9:30 pm in China, leaving little room to explore personal interests.
The most significant cultural difference he has noticed is that people don’t judge others based on appearance. In China, people often socialize with skinny girls or boys who dress like Korean stars. However, in the U.S., girls don’t have to be slim, and boys don’t have to resemble stars; they can simply be themselves and wear whatever they like.
After arriving here, he built a social network by doing volunteer work. A few clubs in Yingzheng’s high school needed volunteers to teach elders how to use smartphones. These clubs are usually spread across many high schools, allowing students from different schools to team up and work together.
His family played a really supportive role in the adaptation process by listening to his concerns and complaints about life. For example, during the initial adaptation period, he struggled to understand what the teachers were saying and often fell behind on homework, leading to stress. Although the family couldn’t offer much direct help, they provided comfort and spoke to the school to see if any assistance could be provided.
His advice for someone considering immigration is to research the culture and life in the new country and talk to people already living there to get a general impression. This can make adapting to the new environment easier.
Yingzheng’s plan is to obtain a master’s degree and engage in social work to help new immigrants have a smooth and positive transition. The focus is on providing support and resources to ease their adaptation process.
Maria’s Story
By Carrie Song
Maria, a woman in her late twenties, is a native of Mexico. She lived and studied there until getting a call from Dreamer from Border, giving her a chance to receive the high school education in the United States. Despite the language barrier, she worked hard to keep up with her classes and study the English language harder.
After graduating high school, she decided to find a job in a big technology company. She was offered a job working in Google’s kitchen as a cook. Striving to serve her community of highly intelligent computer engineers, she worked hard to cook nutritious meals for Google’s employees. She worked many years in Google’s kitchen, where she ran on a daily schedule: waking up at a set time, mixing particular ingredients, washing and boiling vegetables, watching employees dump food onto their trays, wiping the kitchen counters before going home for the day, preparing to go to bed to await for the next day to do the same tasks again.
Maria wanted a job that was less labor and time intensive. Therefore, after giving her decision careful thought, she decided to quit her job in Google and changed to owning and running a local fruit selling stand instead.
In early March 2024, she returned to America from Mexico ready to sell fresh fruits for her local community. It was at her brief stay in Mexico, where she convinced two of her close Mexican friends to come to America to work with her. Each morning, she woke up early to drive to various farms two or more hours away from her local community to buy cheap, ripe, but tasty fruits. Her two friends do the same. They meet up together again at Rainbow Park at noon to sell fruits. The three of them displayed their fruits on the plastic table that they brought with them, and waited under the sunlight for customers. Maria sells fruits from noon to ten o’clock. She enjoys what she does now. She gets to sell fruits according to the her schedule she prefers: sometimes staying in local parks until midnight or shorter, sometimes going to different communities to sell her fresh fruits, varying her locations within a community, or selling her fruits only several times a week instead of daily.
Maria is an admirable individual. She keeps her head up and learns to combat her obstacles along the way. The hardships that she endures like the language barrier when coming into a different country or finding a location to sell her fruits in peace only makes her stronger. She solves problems brought before her efficiently, while persistently staying optimistic and hopeful that her career could go smoothly. If there’s anything she doesn’t regret from leaving the Google kitchen, it’s selling fruits to her own schedule because this is what she enjoys the most.
Giving Wings to Dream
By Billy Lu
Shanghai, May 2023. The atmosphere in the classroom was filled with tension.I sat in a classroom with 40 other students, studying for the high school entrance examination happening in a month or so.
Even with piles of homework, I didn’t want to move a single stroke. The noise of the black pens rubbing against the white paper in the classroom tugged at my heartstrings, I couldn’t concentrate.
Looking around, the neatly arranged desks and chairs were occupied by one student after another, and they were all staring at the dense questions on the books as if trying to see the answers through the margins in the words. Suddenly, my distracted movements were noticed by the teacher supervising me from the podium. “There are only 49 days to go before the high school entrance examination, and you can’t even concentrate, are you just going to fail the exam?”
I couldn’t refute what she said…
In China, which high school you attend is determined solely by the high school entrance examination scores. Getting into a high-ranking high school is in turn directly tied to your college entrance examination scores and college. This means that the high school entrance examination is the first delineation of our children’s lives by the big hand of society. Even though we are all suffocated by this big hand, all we can do is to work hard on the questions, listen to lectures, and do everything we can to improve our high school entrance examination scores, even if it’s just by fractions.
A cool breeze slipped in through the window, which was only open a crack, and I greedily breathed in a wisp of fresh air, and then looked toward the sky. Outside the window, the moon was clear and bright, as if beckoning to me, I reached out to grab it, but suddenly the square classroom turned into a cage and trapped me in it, unable to move. In a trance, I saw myself a few years later: still sitting in the cage, with my hands and feet trapped in chains, all I could do was take a black pen and continue to complete the questions one after another.
I was determined to change. I shouldn’t be trapped in this cage for the rest of my life.
I should get out of the cage and get into a free world with free air where I can think freely.
From then on, I was determined to study at an international high school in Shanghai, so I seized all my spare time to learn English.
By chance, I heard from an old classmate who moved to the US a year ago and he was studying in the U.S. I contacted him. After I listened to his description of his happy and fulfilling life in the U.S., I couldn’t help having an even grander idea: it would be better to go to the U.S. directly than to study at an international high school in Shanghai than to go to the U.S. directly!
I explained my idea to my parents, and although they felt it was a bit sudden at first, they agreed that since that was my ideal life, I should strive for it.
Surprisingly my parents already have green cards, and they had been wondering whether to give them up. I contacted my old classmate’s host family, and they said there was an extra available room in the house and they were willing to take me in. Soon later I set out on the road to study in the United States.
A few months later I boarded a plane to the US and started my new life. I enjoyed listening to my classmates discuss various topics. Despite my limitations in vocabulary, I was eager to express my own ideas and perspectives and practice critical thinking skills at Lynbrook High School in California.
Looking back, my life changed dramatically only because of an idea I had a few months ago. I learned a lot from this whole experience: as long as I have a dream and go for it, I can reach the other side of the shore by giving wings to my dream.