“Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” This is a wonderful quotation by Martin Luther King Jr. that was aimed towards the civil rights movements that took place in the United States in the mid-20th century. When I read this quotation today, I think of all the ignorance that fills the minds of United States citizens in the present.
A few weeks ago, my religion professor asked two undocumented immigrants to visit our lecture hour and talk to us about their situations. When they were in our classroom, they shared with us their stories of coming to the United States at a very young age, growing up as faithful Americans, but never getting the chance to gain citizenship.
I, being very ignorant about immigration myself, thought that undocumented immigrants had the opportunity to become a citizen by standing in some imaginary line that I had made up in my head. Some of my peers thought the same thing, but in reality, this is not at all true. Once an undocumented citizen comes to the United States, they have absolutely no way of gaining citizenship. The only possible way a person in another country can gain citizenship is by going through a ridiculously drawn out process, while they are stuck in their horrible living situation that they are trying to get out of.
Learning this bit of information, I began to realize that I literally know nothing about our immigration policy here in the United States. This leads to a great question, which is, why do students not learn more about immigration policies in the modern public school system? Obviously it is important subject that effects all of our lives in one way or another. So why in my high school debate class did we have debates over abortion, gun control, legalizing marijuana, and even the conspiracies of JFK’s assassination, but not over immigration?
Of course there could be many different answers to this question, but now that I’m learning more about the situations that some of these innocent people are in, I believe that people don’t want to believe that the country that we love and adore could have it’s own internal issues. And, of course, there are plenty of differing opinions on the issue of immigration. However, I think we can all agree that immigration is an issue and that it desperately needs to be talked about.
It is in the same category as the Black Lives Matter movement, people act like it isn’t happening because they don’t understand and can’t relate to those who are pushing the movement. This train of action is absolutely absurd to me. Why would you not want to try to understand other’s situations? Immigration issues aren’t taught to us because people want to ignore it, but it needs to stop being ignored because it is important.
So, it is time to take a stand against the ignorance that fills the minds of many United States citizens when it comes to not just immigration, but many other domestic issues the United States is facing. As Martin Luther King Jr. said, sincere ignorance can be extremely dangerous, and I think we can agree that the “Land of the Free” isn’t in the best of hands at the moment.
