Should I Stay or Should I Go?

Today I learned about immigration. Not like how it exists and how its a problem for the United States and blah blah blah but how its practically a death sentence that an incomprehensible amount of people opt for because it is better than what they have. The migration perspective of Latinos leaving their home countries and going to the US is something I have never been exposed to. But the fact that I did not know about the other side does not surprise me, coming from a country  who literally has a wall up between itself and another. Throughout my Latin American studies during my University career I have learned how much I should have known and never did about our neighbors to the south. If the US is such a global power, why haven´t I ever learned about the numerous economic, political or social influences we have had in Latin America over the years? So far my conclusion is that the reason is: much of what we have touched has turned sour and corrupt. Shall we say, we are the complete opposite of the Green Thumb of Latin America. But I meant to talk about immigration.

I am sad to say that a lot of the facts about immigration I had not ever really known and now that I do I´m not entirely sure what to do about it. That people would leave their families, their culture, lifestyles, beliefs, comforts, homes, for the prospect of maybe one day becoming a hot dog vendor on a street corner in NY overwhelms me. For what purpose? And why on Earth must it be so difficult for people who are in search of a better life? Wasn´t the United States founded upon immigration? The idea was, so I´ve been told, that America was a land in which you could go and prosper, leave all your worries behind and live the dream! Where did that ideal go? There is a reason people flee to the United States, whether it is to escape something so personal as domestic violence or even something as enormous as a military coup, and people should be given the opportunity to do so. If we don´t want to sell hot dogs on the corner and someone else does, even if it means leaving everything they know and love behind, can´t we have a little compassion and let them?

Or at least somebody tell me the real reason we make it so difficult for people to do what we all did long ago and immigrate into this great country, because I´m having trouble believing the ignorance that I have heard.