Comment on "U.S. Presidential Election System"

I will be commenting on "U.S. Presidential Election System" by Marjan Chizari

     I completely agree with Marjan! There are many issues with the way the U.S. votes for president and the electoral college, voter registration card, and the day we vote are a huge part of the problem. The electoral college is such an outdated system and we recently were reminded that it is a system we should just leave in the past and never use it again. A Huffington post called "Why We Should Abolish the Electoral College" it said, "In 48 states, a presidential candidate can win 50.01% of the popular vote in a state, yet receive 100% of the electoral votes from that state." Hearing this is really upsetting and a real eye opener to me and I am not the only one. I never knew this was the way our government worked and no one in my family knew this either. That means that 49% of votes from people who took the time to actually go vote, get thrown in the trash. We need to just do what other countries do - use direct popular vote.
    Many people who wanted to vote this election this year couldn't do to the fact they had to work. This is why I agree with Marjan when she said we should move it to the weekend or better yet make it a holiday. Either way, presidential elections are only once every four years! That holiday would most likely (hopefully) increase the voter turn out. Our government is nowhere near perfect but hopefully, we will survive these next four years with a guy who is racist, sexist and has no real political background.

Illegal Immigrants Becoming Citizens

     Illegal immigrants should be able to become US citizens if they have a clean record. Currently, in the US there are about 11 million people (it is impossible to know the exact number) who are here illegally, and the vast majority have no criminal background. People come to the US for a better lifestyle, or to escape from the violence or conflicts, to get out of poverty, to seek medical help, to find better opportunities for themselves or for their children. The US is known for the freedoms we have here; speech, religion, press, and petition. Many countries do not have the same open mind as, not all, some people do here, like same-sex marriage.

http://immigration.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=000845#countries

     Over half of the illegal immigrants are from Central America or South America; some crossed the border illegally and others stayed with a visa and just never went back. Some come here by themselves and have no family here. They make enough of a sacrifice leaving their home country, risking their lives to get to the US, they have to find a way to get a job sometimes not knowing English. A professor at UCLA, Raul Hinojosa, said in an interview "…undocumented population typically gets about 20% less in wage than if they were legalized." this means that companies make more money. In 2010 thirteen billion dollars went to social security and 10.6 billion dollars went to state and local taxes just from illegal immigrants according to an article on The Week posted on September 26,2016.

     People every single year are deported to their home country separating them from their life they created here, their family and their home. Just last year according to the ICE website there was 235,413 deportations 96,045 of them were non-criminal immigration violators. The US government spends a huge amount of money every year sending people back to their home country and keeping some in prison, when if they only deported criminals their spending would most likely go down and we could use the money on more important issues. If they are helping our economy there is no reason they should be forced to leave, our economy would be in even more trouble if there were no illegal immigrants here. It is obviously impossible to deport all immigrants as Trump wished, but it is still a scary thing to think about especially for children and teens that need their parents now more than ever. For people that come here on their own to be able to support their families in their home country should be able to see them as they wish. Families should not be separated just because the parents wanted to offer their children a better life than theirs.