It's hard not to see amnesty as a betrayal of legal immigrants

At the end of this long journey, as a proud U.S. citizen and voter, how can I look the other way when others cross the border illegally and expect to stay in this great county? I have compassion for every man, woman or child fleeing persecution or poverty or simply seeking a better life. But I also have two questions: Why are they better than all the people from my country who slept in their cars outside the American Embassy that night 25 years ago? Why are they better than all the people in other countries who want to live here?

As a Democrat, I am glad that Republicans are against blanket amnesty for illegal immigrants because I am too. You see, I value immigration from Mexico and Guatemala and every part of South America. I simply don’t value it more than immigration from all the other countries, including my native Nigeria. What a lot of well-intentioned people fail to see is that for legal immigrants, supporting amnesty would be almost an act of betrayal. It would be us disrespecting every other potential immigrant from our home country that wasn’t lucky enough to make it to America.

I appreciate exactly how fortunate I am to have become an American. I would love to have as many people as possible from all over the world make it here as well. I’m not a racist or a bigot. I’m just an American who wants immigration to begin in the proper place—at an embassy.