What Does Everyday We Get More Illegal Mean

Udeep Hebbar Mr. Overland Period 1 ELA 4/11/2024.

Jaun Felipe Herrera’s poem, “Everyday We Get More Illegal”, has highlighted the struggles and perseverance of immigrants and helped show the suffering of undocumented individuals. Herrera delves into the struggles faced by undocumented immigrants with harsh realism and raw emotions. He shows the resilience of foreigners and their determination to make a life in the U.S. through his word choice and the use of symbolism. Herrera’s poem has garnered various awards due to its overall theme of resilience, struggle, and injustice faced by immigrants which include: The Focal Award, the Pen West Poetry Award, the poem was named the best poem of the year by the Library Journal, and was the poem was

Herrera uses objects or animal related topics, like the course of nature, in order to sometimes symbolize conflict during the first lines of the poem. Herrera's statement, “without birds eating it, the sparrows fighting, our desert” represents how the “birds” which likely symbolize humans are competing over resources or opportunities. The usage of the statement “our desert” could mean that Herrera is saying that areas with immigrants are barren or poverty-stricken regions. Herrera in the beginning lines uses a peach tree, “Yet the peach tree still rises & falls with fruit & without.”(Herrera, lines 1-3). This likely symbolizes growth or resilience as peach trees are associated with fertility or beauty. In the context of immigration, the inclusion of the statement “rises & falls with fruit & without” could mean that immigrants sometimes still are hurt or could be benefited regardless of whether they receive any reward due to their immigration. On top of Herrera’s mastery of the use of symbolism, he employs figurative language in his poem, “Laws pass laws with scientific walls.”(Herrera, line 9). The statement personifies the word–law– but also is trying to say that numerous laws are being passed and are backed by false science in order to support the laws enactment. Jaun Felipe Herrera’s amazing use of symbolism and figurative language helps convey the struggles of immigration and the issues in the government that prevent the success of immigration into the