Humanities 12
Model Senate:
Senate Floor Speech
Although the main goal of section 2 is a good idea, this bill is seriously flawed and will only cause more problems for the naturalization process and our country.
Starting with Section 1, calling for an increase in measures to prevent immigrants from crossing the border illegally, is way too extreme. The preamble does not provide any statistics other than the large number of illegals in the U.S and lacks reason or logic on how it impacts our nation, negatively or positively. In fact, I believe the information it does give only shows how much our economy depends on immigrants. Recognizing border patrol as military personnel to use 2% of military funding, which comes out to be over 24 billion, is a ridiculous amount of money to spend when we haven’t fully addressed the real problem of reforming the naturalization process. Also, adding 7,000 personnel to border patrol and increasing the areas monitored by 300 miles is not even close to being a realistic goal in the short year and a half time span this bill allows.
On to Section 2, making immigrating to the U.S legally easier than immigrating to the U.S illegally is a good idea that offers some reason to increase border patrol, but the way this bill intends to achieve that goal is totally unreasonable. Sub-Section A, is a start in the right direction but is lacking in many areas, how temporary is their citizenship/work visas? What rights and protection would these provide? How can you verify that undocumented immigrants have been in the U.S for over 5 years? Sub-Section B also doesn’t contribute to the goal of this section at all. Allowing immigrants to come to the U.S under a work visa as long as they attend a U.S university offers a very limited path to citizenship that is only possible for the privileged that have no reason to cross our border illegally. Immigrants are coming to the U.S illegally because they can make more money working less desirable jobs here than in their own country, so how can we expect them to afford attending a U.S university? Section 2 is completely conflicting with itself because it starts to offer a path to citizenship for immigrants who come here illegally, without providing an easier option to come here legally. And Section 3 is just straight up discriminatory.
This bill is a huge step in the wrong direction to tackle immigration reform and I strongly urge you to kill it.
Starting with Section 1, calling for an increase in measures to prevent immigrants from crossing the border illegally, is way too extreme. The preamble does not provide any statistics other than the large number of illegals in the U.S and lacks reason or logic on how it impacts our nation, negatively or positively. In fact, I believe the information it does give only shows how much our economy depends on immigrants. Recognizing border patrol as military personnel to use 2% of military funding, which comes out to be over 24 billion, is a ridiculous amount of money to spend when we haven’t fully addressed the real problem of reforming the naturalization process. Also, adding 7,000 personnel to border patrol and increasing the areas monitored by 300 miles is not even close to being a realistic goal in the short year and a half time span this bill allows.
On to Section 2, making immigrating to the U.S legally easier than immigrating to the U.S illegally is a good idea that offers some reason to increase border patrol, but the way this bill intends to achieve that goal is totally unreasonable. Sub-Section A, is a start in the right direction but is lacking in many areas, how temporary is their citizenship/work visas? What rights and protection would these provide? How can you verify that undocumented immigrants have been in the U.S for over 5 years? Sub-Section B also doesn’t contribute to the goal of this section at all. Allowing immigrants to come to the U.S under a work visa as long as they attend a U.S university offers a very limited path to citizenship that is only possible for the privileged that have no reason to cross our border illegally. Immigrants are coming to the U.S illegally because they can make more money working less desirable jobs here than in their own country, so how can we expect them to afford attending a U.S university? Section 2 is completely conflicting with itself because it starts to offer a path to citizenship for immigrants who come here illegally, without providing an easier option to come here legally. And Section 3 is just straight up discriminatory.
This bill is a huge step in the wrong direction to tackle immigration reform and I strongly urge you to kill it.
Proposed Climate Change Bill:
First Amendment Video Project
For this project we had to get in groups and make a video about the first amendment. There were really no guidelines or restrictions for the video so we had to create an original idea. We decided to go a for an old cheesy educational documentary theme with our video and went over what is protected under the first amendment.
4th Amendment Project:
In this project the objectives for us were to identify situations in which police can legally arrest/detain you, explain the legal difference between reasonable suspicion and probable cause, know what to do during an encounter with the police, now the freedoms and restrictions on police search and seizure, and understand that these protections come directly from the 4th Amendment to the US Constitution. Then we had to present what we know to the class in a way that is fitting.
For this project, my group and I decided to make a video showing what you can legally do in an unfortunate encounter with aggressive or corrupt cops. After watching police brutality videos on youtube, which are very popular and common, we wanted to know what you can do in those situations. We ad-libbed a realistic imitation and made sure we followed the law and stayed within our rights during the video. After the video is over we display the laws about self defense to police brutality but also state that nobody should try to do what we demonstrated in the video for multiple reasons.
If I could explore one aspect of this project further, it would have something to do with how are the laws relating to police searches, seizes, and brutality actually enforced. What we showed in the video, although we stayed within our rights, might not hold up in court and we would probably get in huge trouble, according to other similar cases. I would want to know why and how the system is flawed, and also how it could realistically be improved, but I understand that is a very big and deep area that would be very hard to find answers or any kind of solution for these problems that could be put into action.
For this project, my group and I decided to make a video showing what you can legally do in an unfortunate encounter with aggressive or corrupt cops. After watching police brutality videos on youtube, which are very popular and common, we wanted to know what you can do in those situations. We ad-libbed a realistic imitation and made sure we followed the law and stayed within our rights during the video. After the video is over we display the laws about self defense to police brutality but also state that nobody should try to do what we demonstrated in the video for multiple reasons.
If I could explore one aspect of this project further, it would have something to do with how are the laws relating to police searches, seizes, and brutality actually enforced. What we showed in the video, although we stayed within our rights, might not hold up in court and we would probably get in huge trouble, according to other similar cases. I would want to know why and how the system is flawed, and also how it could realistically be improved, but I understand that is a very big and deep area that would be very hard to find answers or any kind of solution for these problems that could be put into action.