I think that a lot of illegal immigrants are just doing what they can to try to survive. This is the United States and some of them may be running from their country because of issues other than their economic and financial status and I think that that’s a really important thing to remember. I just feel like everyone has this image in their head that all illegal immigrants, because they don’t have papers, that that automatically makes them bad people. Which is not even the case, in fact, some of the nicest and most genuine and caring people that I know of are illegal immigrants. People just don’t give them credit and I think that if everyone has such a problem with the idea of immigrants coming into this country illegally, if you can’t beat the issue then just legalize them. They’ll bring more money into this country if that was to happen anyway.
I think the one thing that people seem to forget is that every single one of us in this country, black, white, Hispanic, asian, what have you, we were all immigrants at some point in time and I can promise you that one of our family members were also illegal at one point or another. Also I think that people also don’t think about the fact that these illegal immigrants came here in search for a better life. They see all this stuff about how “these immigrants are doing this and that and taking their jobs and not paying taxes” but they don’t realize that if they WERE given the chance to actually just become legalized that they’re willing to do the same things that were all doing.
My opinion on illegal immigrants did not really change even after Sam’s lecture. Growing up in a very mixed neighborhood where almost every single country and culture were represented as well as moving from place to place every few years due to my Mom’s work I was always exposed to everything and anything, including illegal immigrants. In fact, even now, I still know people who are illegally living in this country, some are even close friends, and I have absolutely no problem with it. It’s kind of interesting though because for the amount of illegal individuals that I know of, I still live in a county right outside of Washington D.C. that has one of the strictest laws regarding illegal immigrants.
But now that I’m having trouble finding a job, I finally reached out and told him I needed him to make it happen for me. After thinking about it, I realized that it’s okay to ask for help sometimes, and that if I didn’t ask for his help, someone else would anyway, so why not take advantage, right? …Things change… I guess?
I wanted to go to law school in my own terms, because I wanted to and because I can do it by myself. Not because someone was able to make a call and get me accepted. I just felt like if I let that happen, at the end of it all, I would have that hanging over my head, that “the only reason why you’re here is because someone helped you out, not because you were as smart as everyone else sitting around you.” I feel like I would feel even more insecure against the nerds that were able to get 170s on their lsats. In the end, I told him that I couldn’t take his offer and that I am just going to stick to my previous plan of working for a year and re-studying for my lsats. He thought I was nuts. But I just couldn’t do it.
When I told my old boss, who’s now my mentor, of what had happened or what my plans were, the response I got was very encouraging but was also very discouraging at the same time. He told me that I was too obsessed with being perfect and that life isn’t perfect and that there has to come a time when I have to stop trying to make my life so perfect all the god damn time. He told me to give him the list of schools that I wanted to apply to and to send in all the necessary paperwork, lsat scores, applications, letter of recommendations, etc. to every single one of them and to let him worry about the rest. I politely joked around and responded with, “oh? And what are you going to do? Call someone and tell them to accept me? You really think you got it like that???” he looked at me blankly and said, “quite frankly, yes.” He then continued on to tell me about the people he was able to get accepted into all these great schools with a simple phone call. Knowing him and his connections, deep down, I definitely didn’t doubt him but I questioned whether his offer was the right thing to do.
It’s funny that you brought this question up because I was definitely just put in this position a few weeks ago. I had an internship with a Congressman just last year and my old boss being in politics obviously had a lot of connections, and still does, as far as networking goes. My life plan was always to go to a decent University, graduate with honors and then move on to Law School. While I was able to accomplish the first two, Law School seemed to have taken a toll in my list of things to achieve. Not because I don’t want to go anymore, but because I took my LSATS---and while I got a little over an above average score, I feel that it still isn’t good enough to get me into the school that I want to go to. Needless to say, I decided to take a year off and postpone my dreams of going into the ivy league and better prepare for my LSATS in an attempt to get at least five more points than my original score.
I looked around the room and saw some people sleeping during this lecture. I guess some people just really don’t care, but everyone clapping their hands at the end of Sam’s lecture, gave me hope. This whole entire semester not once have we had the whole class clapping their hands at the end of ANY lecture. I guess it just showed me that people do care. That people do still hope and that people do still look for the good in the world.
Seeing the videos clearly opened my eyes to a new idea and a new perspective. Seeing American soldiers destroy a car because a few Iraquis wanted to steal wood in order to build a house or provide heat, or what have you brought tears to my eyes. Seeing innocent civilians treated with such malice and such ignorance brought feelings of disgust. But even more than all of that, realizing how ignorant I have been in my opinions about what is going on in that part of the world and why Muslim extremists are doing the things that they do brought an even bigger feeling of shame.
It’s always been a given to me that all this war going on in the middle east is totally and completely about oil, if not, it had something to do with oil. Either way, there was a connection between oil and war, but I never saw any of these wars as a type of religious war. I never opened my eyes to the possibility that muslims can have an opinion of us Americans as trying to convert the rest of the world into Christianity. I guess deep down, as much as I don’t want to admit it, a part of me also had discriminating questions of why people in the middle east can never have any sort of peace and why extremists were always so angry at the world, not at Americans, but the WORLD.
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Brainchild