No Sanctuary Here

SB4 was passed recently and what that means is that Texas can have no sanctuary places around the state, civil liberties can be given when there's a violation of this law, and sheriffs and other law enforcement can be given a misdemeanor for not cooperating with federal authorities or requests from immigration agents. But the main part of the bill allows the police officials to question someone's immigration status if they are stopped for reasonable suspicion.
This raises many concerns for immigrants all over Texas, more so than there already was. Before only immigration authorities had the permission to detain immigrants that were found, but now any sheriffs, constables, police chiefs, or local leaders have the ability to stop someone to question them. One of the concerns is, of course, racial profiling. Now this one is very real for me because I had a close family member get pulled over by an unmarked car asking if he was a citizen. We had no way to know if this person was an undercover cop or if it was just some random guy, but this really happened to him. It wasn't until that family member showed his photo ID that the man left him with a "okay you can go." Now just imagine that with more officials than just ICE agents. It makes sense to have that fear, you can read accounts of every day citizens taking it into their own hands to make sure that immigrants feel very uncomfortable, even when it turns out the people they're degrading sometimes end up being US citizens. As a society we're very quick to put people into groups and once they're there they won't let you out.
Now, I understand the root of these issues with immigrants coming into the United States. As a Hispanic, I get it. But I only get the want to detain the criminals because, immigrant or not, criminals are the ones who will threaten the safety of the public. But if we're just trying to keep those criminals out, what happens to the ones who are genuinely trying to have a better life than was offered them in their home country. There needs to be regulations, for sure, but the few shouldn't be punished for the ones that are dangerous. We have to show compassion to people who aren't from here. This is a country of immigrants yet there is still so much fear of them that it's creating issues like this where we just want to shame all of them. We have to be open to new things and celebrate the differences every culture brings. We can't keep giving up when people like Trump are elected and we can't keep giving up when the people we support keep losing elections of all sorts. We have to remain strong and be willing to fight. We have to channel our fear and sadness and anger into finding justice and fighting these bills. We have to make sure our representatives and the rest of the country don't forget that we are here and we aren't going anywhere. We can make the world right, it may take a while, but we can do it. Maybe I'm just too hopeful for my own good, but I believe things can change. We just have to keep fighting.

Free Education

A classmate of mine wrote about their belief to have a free college education in the United States. I definitely agree that college should be a free option, but in the argument it would've been nice to see some facts included with it. It is true that a free education system could lead to many positive things such as more people getting better jobs and more people be able to get an education in order to be able to be less ignorant about many things in the world. But maybe there could have been some speculation as to how we would go about fixing the "issue" of having to pay insane amounts of money in order to attend college. Maybe there could be some mention of how many people don't want to pay more taxes just so other people they don't know or care about can go to college for free and other aspects of the opposing party. The argument itself is a good one, a lot of people can agree that free education could lead to a much healthier life for everyone, but talking about the reasons why people are opposed to the idea would be nice as well.