2nd blog Salim Adjouadi

 

Blog Post #2 (1000 words)

Salim Adjouadi

SPC 2608

November 15, 2022

In this blog post, I present a reflection of my own thoughts and about the new things I learned of what happens to immigrant families who cross the border into the United States, and about gun laws around the world.

Group 2: Families at the Border

Gabriela Vera expressed so well the many different reasons why immigrants leave their home countries. Of course, we all know about the level of poverty they endure at home, and the economic opportunity they see in America, but it is interesting to learn that some are also fleeing armed conflicts, lack of access to healthcare and education, gender equity, religious freedom, and political corruption leaving no opportunities for jobs for them to make a decent living in their own homeland. Gabriela gives the reasons of freedom of speech, access to a quality education and healthcare, opportunities for jobs as to why immigrants decide to come to the USA.

Albert Yves Rousseau showed what immigrants must do to enter the U.S. He tells us that immigrants must find a sponsor or file an immigration petition for a visa. But if they do not get the visa after a long wait, some decide to enter the US illegally. I like how Albert Yves played an interesting video showing the number of immigrants to the US is getting bigger each year, and the most tragic part is what unaccompanied children go through during the long and treacherous journey to cross the border.  Some traveling for two months to get to the US. Some mothers with young children can barely walk because of hunger, thirst, and exhaustion, it is so heartbreaking

Laura Marques explained to us what can happen to some families when they cross the border. Despite the dangerous and traumatic journey, once they are in the US, they are still treated badly or looked upon in a bad way. She showed a shocking video where migrants will run all types of risks. including the risk for drowning when crossing the Rio Grande River, and others will never be found because they died in the desert due to heat and lack of water or drowned at night while crossing the river. This shows how desperate they are to take such long and dangerous journey to come across the border and make it to the US.

Nairy Gonzalez In Neary’s presentation, I was really saddened to learn that more than 2,300 children in one year were separated from their parents, who were held separately for prosecution. The saddest part are the developmental effects these children endure being separated from their parents and later placed in foster homes or with relatives, and not seeing their parents again. For others, it took months to get reunited with their parents. Nairy then showed a touching video of American children reading what these children wrote to express their sad experiences. Yet, the video ends with political leaders during the Trump administration telling the viewers that these kids are treated well, and if they think they are not they should not be expecting anything better than what they got, as if they deserved what they got and they should not be here in the US anyway.

Melanie Perez provided a better outlook for family reunification under the Biden administration with the creation of a Family Reunification Task Force on February 2021, chaired by Alejandro Mayorkas, the current US Secretary of Homeland Security. I was overjoyed to hear about this initiative for helping these poor unaccompanied children. However, I was astonished to find out that there were 127,433 unaccompanied children from just February to October of 2021. Through this task force, children have a better chance for resettlement, medical screening and assistance and placement with relatives and foster care as they try to find the parents of these poor children.

Group 3: Gun Laws Around the World

Samantha Hinojal made an excellent presentation that begin with the second amendment of the constitution on the right to bear arms. This is interesting since the issue of the right to bear arms is preceded with the idea of well-regulated Militia that will provide the security of a free State. I truly enjoyed the history of gun control and was surprised to learn it was first in 1934 that a federal gun control law was already created that placed restrictions on high-risk weapons like machine guns. Yet, to this day legislators still struggle to pass any meaningful gun control laws. Samantha tells us also that the US has the highest gun-related homicides in the world, higher rates of mass shooting and higher rates of gun ownership. It was recomforting to know that in states like California, Hawaii, and others that with strict gun laws, there are less firearm mortality rates.

Yadira Somoza: Yadira did a fabulous job on the presentation about Gun Laws in Japan, and she gives an excellent comparison for the year 2018, where Japan had more than 125 million people and yet they have only 9 gun deaths that year compared to 39,740 in the US for that same year. She mentioned that only the Police and Armed forces can carry guns. And for anyone that owns a firearm license, they need to have a training course, have a mental health examination, and the owner needs to register with the police. The police checks on the firearm every year and the owner goes through a mental health examination every 3 years. She presented an interesting figure showing the G7 nations and the estimated number of citizens that have firearms. The US is of course No. 1 with 120 firearms per 100 people as compared for example to the United Kingdom with only 4.9 firearms and Japan with 0.3 firearms per 100 people.

Sara Valladares: Sara gives us very good information about the history of Canada gun laws. She informs us that Canada had always strict gun laws with mandated licensing and registration. More importantly, a wide range of weapons were prohibited in 1977 and many semi-automatic and large magazine machine guns were also prohibited in 1991.  It was interesting to learn that a law was passed to prohibit firearms for anyone involved in domestic violence, criminal acts and gun smuggling and trafficking.

Vladislava Nekrasov:  Vladislava focused on gun laws in Switzerland. She tells in a very detailed way the reasons why Switzerland has low rates of firearm incidents. These include law-abiding citizens, high level of education, strict gun laws and background check. Because of these facts, even though many people have arms, mass shooting has not occurred for the past 20 years. Again, like in Japan, the Swiss go through training, and have strict gun laws. She gives excellent information like 2 million people own a gun legally, and as it is tradition in Switzerland, keeping civilians armed kept the country safe during WWII.

Rosmeris Cartaya:  I enjoyed Rosmeris presentation which provided both a history of France gun laws but also the statistics of gun violence. It was interesting to find out that France did not have a federal gun control law until 1998.  It was truly surprising to learn that historically, the right to bear arm was limited to nobility. Today in France, there is no right to bear arm for the French. To own a gun, you need a hunting license as many French enjoy hunting.  The license needs to be repeatedly renewed and requires a psychological evaluation. France like the United Kingdom has very low gun homicide rates.