Serving Bread

How do you define [tag]illegal immigration[/tag]? What do you imagine when you hear the term “illegals”? You probably are picturing someone crossing the border in the Arizona desert, trying to evade authorities in white vans.

But according to the Pew Hispanic Center, as much as 45% of the people who are in the United States illegally got here legally, and they just overstayed their visas. It has been estimated that there are nearly [tag]12 million[/tag] illegal immigrants in the US. And nearly 6 million of them got here legally.

When many commentators and politicians speak of curbing illegal immigration, they speak of tightening our borders and building silly, expensive and random walls in the desert. Yet, half the “problem” can be curbed by simply tightening our visa system. The debate itself is revealing our racialized system and [tag]racist[/tag] prejudices.