This election’s GOP candidates are as ignorant as ever about immigration and no one serves as a greater example than Donald Trump.

He clearly laid out his platform in his June 16 campaign launch speech while talking about Mexican immigrants.

“They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us,” he said. “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”

The fact that Trump even had the nerve to say that revs my engine. As someone whose family has a strong Mexican heritage, it’s offensive and hurtful. I’m proud of where I come from, and the fact that Trump is so dismissive with these generalizations is disgusting.

It’s hard to understand why we’re even giving Trump the time of day, as well. He’s only entertainment for the public and gives the media something to pay attention to. Trump takes the attention away from important topics and presidential candidates who actually have potential (like Bernie Sanders).

Trump’s rhetoric isn’t highlighting the important parts of the discussion, only polluting it with racist assumptions and ridiculous solutions.

Because of this, it has been overlooked that ever since Mexican immigration began to boom in the 1950s, that Americans have been negative toward that population of people with claims of Mexicans “stealing our jobs” and “being a bunch of gangsters.” We’re only seen as dirty, lowlifes who probably live in Texas.

Or that this intolerance led many, including my great-grandmother, to force their children to speak English and act as “normal” as possible.

It also leaves them left wondering what their heritage truly is — and not just sombreros as Halloween costumes.

Not many people even know that the word “greaser” — used to describe 50s boys in leather jackets and slicked hair — was originally used in the late 19th century as a derogatory term to describe Mexicans after the Greaser Act in California.

Thanks to Trump, it only gets worse.

At September’s GOP debate he added that immigration laws will be strictly enforced and that “any immigration plan must improve wages, jobs and security for all Americans.”

But wasn’t America founded on immigration? Didn’t we come from Europe and steal land from Native Americans? Didn’t we persecute the people who had been living here before us, just because they were different from us? We stole everything they’d ever known and radically changed it to fit our “perfect” ideals.

While our ancestors came here for exploration, Latinos have immigrated here because Mexico just isn’t safe. In the past year there have been several riots and protests, including the 43 missing students and the escape of a drug cartel leader. Speaking of cartels and gangs, more than 100,000 people have been killed because of gang-related violence just during this year.

Mexico isn’t a stable place to live and in order to be safe, people are coming up to America. Yet we’re kicking them out because they’re coming here illegally since our citizenship policies are overly-picky and take years to get processed.

But no one understands that because we’re wrapped up in this idea that America is perfect and deserves all the attention. American news has disregarded the rest of the world and leaves everyone in a Western-centric mindset.

In Donald Trump’s eyes, the perfect solution to illegal immigration is to build a wall between Mexico and the U.S. This plan has been in development for a while, but Trump is the first one to seriously consider it. In a part of his 1,900 word policy paper, he explained that Mexico would be the one to pay for it, which is completely ridiculous and makes me wonder if Trump thinks what he’s saying is correct.

He probably does because he hasn’t really backed down from his opinions. (I don’t want to even call them opinions because they’re just wrong.) Honestly, his ideas are so obscene that they can’t even be legitimate thoughts.

Trump doesn’t acknowledge the fact that we’re hardly treating Mexicans as people, just a problem that needs to be solved. It’s as if we’re an infestation.

He’s only running for president because he wants attention and to make the media go berserk; he’s just a party trick who credits himself as being the catalyst for the national discussion about immigration.

Trump is an embarrassment to everyone and continues to show that politics is just a media circus. It’s not about caring for a nation, it’s about if you get attention. That’s not what politics or government were meant to be about. Yet we’ve ended up here.

I don’t know what would have caused that, but one thing is for sure: Donald Trump is using the media to express his racist and stereotypical assumptions rather than to bring any change to the United States.