Nature, space and human communities exist on a continuous plane — you can’t slice through it without significant collateral damage (“Desert, Divided,” HCN, 3/19/18). Unfortunately, a large number of Americans seem quite happy to accept those consequences (from a comfortable distance), believing that the result will be communities with fewer brown people or “foreigners.”
My ancestors were incredibly lucky when they emigrated to the United States. Essentially, all you had to do was arrive on Ellis Island and not be obviously suffering from some contagious disease. They did it “legally” because it was incredibly easy to do so. Today’s legal immigrants face an almost insurmountable uphill battle, and potentially decades of back-and-forth paper pushing. That is a luxury not everyone has. America benefits from immigration, and the Borderlands benefit from ease of travel. It’s a shame that reality has been lost in xenophobia.
Jessica Neuwerth
Rawlins, Wyoming
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Immigration: An uphill battle.
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