Facilitating Learning/Debunking Myths on Immigration

So this week in class we talked about facilitating learning and what facilitation meant to us. I thought of facilitation as helping others to achieve learning in new or necessarily different environments. We also went over how each of us had different ways of learning and understanding different aspects of knowledge. My strong point was the visual/spatial method that included the ability to create mental pictures and comprehend different images. When considering this, I realized I had a very active imagination and I have been applying that to everyday situations. I like to visualize what I am really learning and paint a picture in my head to really get a handle on things. I am more of a hands on person so experiencing things first hand
is the most crucial way for me to learn an attain ideas.

For most of this blog I wanted to talk about the diversity even I attended on March 22 about debunking some of the myths about immigration. Before attending this event, I realized how very stereotypical I am about immigration believing the myths that are out there. One myth was based around how illegal immigrants really don't want to be citizens of this country and are just here for the jobs. In actuality they would love to become legal citizens of our country but the process that they must go through is an incredibly long, hard, and painstaking process. It is nearly impossible for them to become legal immigrants. Geof Fischer, who was leading this discussion gave an example of one man which took him nine years to finely legalize his papers along with thousands of dollars. Our culture is very opposed to immigration, people believe that immigrants take our jobs but in reality they are usually taking the jobs that pay very small amounts that no one else is willing to do. They are essentially stimulating the economy in some ways. Another myth that came about was that these immigrants bring more crime into our country. Once again in actuality, illegal immigrants have lower crime rates than that of native born citizens. The last thing illegal immigrants want around is police, they are more likely to stay in the shadows than gain attention toward themselves. You may watch on the news how near the border their are more decapitations and murder than ever but crime rates have actually dropped at the border. It's just the difference between more coverage now than their has been in the past.

Geof also gave us a number of students here in Iowa high schools that are illegal aliens. Could you guess that that number is somewhere between five thousand and eight thousand students attending school in the shadows. Some people see these children as assets for our country in the future. These children end up hitting a barrier once they grow up and are unable to expand their education beyond high school. Believe it or not their are some programs out their helping these students get into universities on visas to keep them in the country. These students can be an asset to the future of our country just as we are. These are just a few myths and facts about immigration today in our country. I could go on for a much longer time but it would never end.

To conclude my blog their are around twelve million illegal or undocumented immigrants living in this country to date. These people live in the shadows of our everyday lives trying to make a living for their family and themselves. It's interesting how one single document can define the life you live.