Family of immigrants

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

These are the words that Emma Lazarus placed on the lips of the Statue of Liberty in her poem “The New Colossus.” These are the words that I, the son of an immigrant family, held high in downtown Dallas on Sunday, April 9th, to voice the cry for fair and balanced immigration reform, reform that takes into account the needed security of this country, and which doesn’t forget the vital contributions of the Mexican worker and the fact that these are families and lives we are dealing with.

To put it bluntly: I wouldn’t be here if not for illegal immigration. My grandfather Jesus left his wife and kids to cross over illegally. He worked hard for what would be considered so little pay, routing most of his paycheck back home to my grandmother. Later his employer arranged papers for him and his family, my mom included, to legally enter the United States. My father Gabriel, on the other hand, illegally crossed three times; he kept getting caught and sent back. It was on his fourth attempt that he had obtained the necessary papers to be considered legal. He met my mother not long after that.

Most may say that I am biased when I share my views on immigration reform because of race and family history, but bias has nothing to do with it. Instead, unlike most Americans, I am in the peculiar position of being able to see and understand both sides of the argument, much like a referee judging between what both teams consider to be a foul play.

I can’t give you every reason why the half million people in Dallas that Sunday were there. It was probable that some were influenced by their parents to participate; and possibly others were persuaded by the fervor of their children to be part of a cause. But as for the rest of us, we were marching for America and what America stands for: equality, justice and freedom. We were together, in one collective voice, urging our lawmakers to draft an immigration reform not on the short-sighted and closed-minded view of defense, but by looking to lands beyond our borders and understanding the causes of illegal immigration. Understanding that at our country’s doorstep are people who work 12-hour days, seven days a week, and still can’t afford the necessary expense of adequate food; people oppressed from the very government system under which they reside; generations continually caught in the downward spiral of poverty, sickness and fear.

To them America is a light, a beacon of hope. America is not a promise of wealth, health and fame, those are things as of yet undreamed of by the immigrant mind; instead, to them America means one word: opportunity.

Here, on this side of the border, it is easy for a person to take a defensive view, to become possessive about one’s country and declare “that is not our problem!” But we forget that harm to them is harm to ourselves. The Mexican worker is not some far-off refugee in a Third World country; we’ve both seen her and know her. She’s cooked your food and cleaned your home. He’s built your roadways and reaped your crops. They’ve asked for nothing more than the respect and freedom due every human life.