By Justin Jurek, Sports Reporter.
Delta College was host to the event “Building Walls or Doors” which was a debate held to discuss how to handle immigration in the United States. The debate took place Nov. 3 in the Lecture Theater. The members of the panel were Tamrya Murray founder of MICE (Michiganders for Immigration Control and Enforcement); Colleen Wilson-Rood, instructor of sociology at Delta; Ali Kahil, Delta College student; and Victoria Arteaga, JD, International Affairs. Barb Handley-Miller, professor of communications, moderated the debate
“This kind of constructive dialog on political issues is a rarity,” says Lisa Lawrason, coordinator and associate professor of political science. “Very rarely do you have more than one prospective sitting down and engaging together in the same place, talking about an issue.”
The first topic to discuss was current immigration trends.
“We can allow immigration, but maybe a reduction to the numbers,” says Murray, “By the year 2100, white people will be outnumbered by 33.3 percent, we will be the minority.”
Kahil also touched on the trends saying it is now “much more diversified.” Another point he made was that “Over half of the illegal immigrants are allowed to come to the US, they just overstay their visas.”
The next topic was the advantages of immigration.
“One of the things we used to hear is the saying of ‘the undocumented workers are the backbone of social security systems because they pay into these systems’ and if you’re not documented, or not a US citizen, you do not get any of those benefits,” says Arteaga.
Wilson-Rood gave some more positives to immigration. “It’s important to look at immigration as a benefit in terms of our economy and diversity or multiculturalism and also upholding traditions of being an immigrant country.”
There was one thing that all four panel members agreed on: there is no issue with legal immigrants. The biggest argument against illegal immigration, according to Murray, was that they are taking jobs and breaking the law by being here illegally. However, the argument from the other side was that people don’t realize how hard it is to get citizenship – that’s why they get visas.
After the debate Kaitlyn Bagley, a Delta student, had a difficult time. “It was really hard to get an opinion based off of the debate because each side was so extremely for it or extremely against it so it was difficult to come to a clear consensus seeing as I was just here to learn about it.
