Immigration song pt. 1

Living in Pennsylvania you might think I don't have any reason to rant about illegal immigration(and that is what it is, not undocumented workers). However I'm right smack dab in the middle of apple country. Migrant workers have been a part of this part of the country for eons. My father remembers picking peaches with Mexicans, Dominicans, Guatemalans and even Haitians as a teenager. They came to this country, like my ancestors, looking for a better life. They found a hard life ahead of them with 12+ hours of grueling, back breaking and tedious work. They did it because it was still better than having their children living in squalor "back home". They knew that their children would be able to go to school, go on to college and be able to sit at a desk instead of climbing a tree. My roommate in college was a son of a migrant worker. He never learned Spanish because as his parents said "English is the language of this country. If you want to be successful you need to speak English" Of course he felt the real reason was so his mom and dad could talk about him and his siblings without them knowing what they were saying. He was proud of his Mexican heritage, but always considered him an American. He would get angry when people would ask "what he is" and would always answer "I'm American what are you?" When ever I think about the illegal immigration issue I always think back to his parents Mr. and Mrs. Garcia. They worked hard to become citizens and were proud of the fact they did it right. They would grumble about the people that lived in their neighborhood that were illegals. They rightly felt that it paints all Latinos as illegals. They felt they were leeches that figured out a way to play the system. They saw the neighborhood change from a middle class "little Mexico" to a poor neighborhood filled with crime. Instead of worrying about what grades their kids got, they now had to worry about whether they would join gangs and start doing drugs. They lost their oldest son to drugs because it was easier for him to try to "fit in" than to study and graduate school. His parents both worked(his father 2 jobs) just to make ends meet, and were upset that they didn't have enough to move out of the neighborhood. They were very strict with their other kids to make sure they didn't fall into the same trap. When they showed up to graduation they were so proud of the first Garcia to graduate college, even his father cried tears of joy(something Adam said he never saw before). This is why I will never oppose legal immigration.