Immigration: Undocumented Immigrants

In the United States having fake or papers that are no longer valid is just as good as having no papers at all. Without the proper documentation, you do not have access to things such as obtaining driver licenses, access to public health systems, proper housing, education, banks, and employment. There are some immigrants who forge identity documentation to obtain access to most of these basic benefits. Unfortunately, this is extremely risky and many do not take this chance in fear of being deported or being sent to immigration detention centers, where there you are stripped of your human rights and treated inhumanely. Life as an undocumented immigrant is very hard. They cannot legally work in the US, therefore not being able to provide for
themselves or their family. When applying for a job many employers require proper documentation, this is a simple way to single out who is documented and who isn’t. This leads to many undocumented immigrants to forge documents and lie about their identity, or work for someone who does not obey proper employment requirements and may take advantage of them by paying excessively low salaries or forcing them to work in hazardous and unsanitary conditions.
They cannot complain about this to law enforcement, or about anything at all due to fear of being deported. Jose Antonio Vargas, a 35-year-old Filipino who came to the US with his grandparents when he was twelve, learned he was undocumented when trying to acquire a driver's license with identity documents that were given by his family that he then saw were fraudulent. He later used his Filipino passport and false documents that included a green card to help him bypass deportation. These are other examples that greatly impact the rights of undocumented immigrants in the US because they are unable to care for themselves and their families. If they cannot work and cannot send their children to school, and even if they are able to enroll their children in education, a time is bound to come when employers and colleges ask for some form of identification. One being a Social Security number. There was a young girl who remained as anonymous that was brought to the US in July of 2000 with only a small bag that carried a change of clothes and a bottle of
water. She described crossing over the border to their final destination which was Arizona, as she was nine at the time. Bother her and her family then traveled by car to Chicago to meet their stepfather who came to the US a year before on a three-month work visa but overstayed after it expired. She grew up with many opportunities only partly accessible to her and was successful to have gone to Walter Payton College Prep school, and got into many top colleges. But without a social security number, she was incompetent for things such as financial aid and was unable to go many of the schools she was accepted to.
She ended up going to the Universtiy of Illinois where she continues to study sociology. In the near future without a social security number or any sort of identification, she will face unemployment because she cannot be legally hired. This is a young woman with high potential and determination, and will likely endure difficulty as she grows older and end up somewhere along the lines as she said in this article It is flabbergasting to see that something like not having the proper papers can put a barrier between yourself and impact your future. There was another undocumented immigrant named Antonio Herrera who was detained in 2012 for working with false papers. His girlfriend, Kathleen Velazquez reveals that those charges were eventually dismissed, but he was placed in immigration detention and missed the birth of his son According to Kathleen, Anton was the principal provider for her and their children, his sister, mother, and impaired elderly brother. It seems that papers are all that matter in life and they are the main determined of someone's future. Unfortunately, in the world we live in today those papers change the game
completely. Every human being on this planet is entitled to live without fear, to speak his or her mind and not suffer harsh punishment and to be treated equally. Papers or no papers, we are all the same people just with different stories to tell.