As the child of Colombian immigrants, I am what Donald Trump refers to as an anchor baby.

My parents were citizens of a country ruined by drug wars, violence, and poverty. My siblings were born into it. Their childhoods were as normal as can be, but my parents wanted more for them, and so they moved to the United States. My dad was already a citizen, due to spending a few years in Michigan, as well as Hawaii, for my grandpa’s job. However, my mother had to fight to become a resident.

You can’t do anything if you’re not a resident in the United States. At one point, my mother was alone with two children in a country where she didn’t speak the language. There were bumps along the way, with needing to make appointment after appointment and trip after trip. My childhood was filled with watching her worry about whether she would get her visa approved to go visit her sister after 15 years or not. It was filled with night after night of studying for tests that she had to pass in order to become a citizen. Finally, after a 20-year fight, my mom gave up her Colombian passport for an American one. She was no longer a Colombian; she left her home country long ago and did not have the heart to go back until this summer. Even now, as a citizen, she still faces racism and the stereotypes that come with being an immigrant.

Donald Trump wants the borders to America to be closed to people of all denominations. He claims to love Mexicans and to respect them, while at the same time making comments about how they are all rapist drug dealers. If our borders were closed, my family would still be in South America. I probably wouldn’t even be here. By closing borders and making the immigration process ten times more difficult, Donald Trump is closing doors to millions of people that have so much to offer this country. As the daughter of two successful, hard working people who moved to this country to give my siblings and I a better life, I do not believe that closing the borders to the country is the answer to the U.S.’s problems. Trump generalizes the immigrant population and refuses give those who became citizens legally, like my parents did, a chance.