If you didn’t read Charles Bow den’s piece in Sunday’s Perspective section, I suggest you do. Bowden, an author and journalist, is as fearless as they come and a beautiful writer to boot. He’s long focused on the U.S.-Mexico border. He writes of unacknowledged connections, the war on drugs, the North American Free Trade Agreement, illegal immigration. Agree or not, his words require you to pay closer attention.
I plucked these from his essay: “Few discussions about the border come from facts. Most discussions of the border come from fears. We seem to prefer slogans and fantasies: free trade, ‘just say no,’ gigantic walls. . . . But here is the bottom line: The world is rushing in, and we can hardly alter that fact if we continue to believe fantasies. Open borders: a fantasy. The War on Drugs: a fantasy. Walling out migrants: a fantasy. Being protected by a police state: a fantasy.”
I read this just before checking out the latest immigration-reform rally. Fitting, I thought. No other subject I write about is more dominated by illusions — or delusions.
“Deport them all,” a caller says in response to last week’s column about the Yuma girls visiting the Capitol for Latina Advocacy Day. Now, there’s a persistent fantasy, though it should be noted deportations since President Barack Obama took office are up 50 percent, say none-too-happy immigrant-rights groups.
Last week, I heard an Arizona state legislator — a man whose son, a sheriff’s deputy, was shot and wounded a few years ago by an illegal immigrant — declare that anyone who marched in the immigration-reform rallies was “as treasonous as anybody I know.”
The nuns certainly looked traitorous. I counted at least five of them, waving their banners at Confluence Park on Sunday. Downright brazen.
Truth is, I may have succumbed entirely to sarcasm or weariness were it not for this: Every week, I receive an e-mail or a call. A sob story, you who have never had to take these phone calls might sneer. Yes, they are sad. I do not mean only the personal circumstances but the way in which so much human capital is going untapped. Within this community now exist multiple borders, isolating families, weakening us all.
Here’s an e-mail from March 16. From a teacher: A kid, 14, shows up in a Colorado town. I can’t tell you where because these are the times in which we live. He traveled alone from Guatemala to join his older brothers and was caught by the Mexican border patrol twice and jailed. But he made it, and the older brother agreed to let him attend school only if he never got in trouble and worked weekends.
“Now it’s four years later, and this kid is graduating from high school,” the teacher writes. “He worked his tail off and never got in trouble. He worked sometimes six or seven days a week. He has the undying support and love of every high school teacher.”
This year, this young man qualified for the state wrestling tournament. “Picture this, Tina. A Mayan boy born in a shack with a dirt floor, wrestling in the Pepsi Center.”
No, this is no place for sarcasm. I write this knowing I preach to the choir on one side and am damned by the congregation on the other, but it’s the middle to whom I speak. To you who have complicated feelings about immigration reform. Who understand that having millions in our midst who cannot fully contribute to our society is untenable but who worry about job competition or border security. Those who don’t want to reward an illegal act but neither seek to deny the benefit of years of consecutive good behavior. It is your discernment that is required.
This has never been an easy issue. It may be harder than ever now. Our economy still limps. Unemployment remains high. The health care battle was brutal and polarizing. Immigration reform will be no less so. But if Congress dodges again, the crisis only deepens.
People don’t come legally, because they can’t. People don’t leave, because there’s nothing to go back to.
Cross the border illegally, and you can’t marry, work or enlist your way into easy citizenship.
The fantasy is pretending the only problem with our immigration laws is that they go unenforced or that we can make our climate so hostile to illegal immigrants that they will go home. Hmm. Denver? Ciudad Juárez? Denver? Ciudad Juárez?
Among the hundreds who attended Sunday’s rally was a young man I met five years ago, when he was in high school. He’s here illegally, has been here since he was 1. He was alongside the nuns, the various church groups, the union workers, the immigrant-rights activists. Alongside the Denver Public Schools teacher whose husband’s deportation hearing is today.
“All we have is organizing,” the young man tells me. “That’s it. We can’t give up on it.” So, no, he tells me, he has not lost hope. He has found courage.
Tina Griego writes Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Reach her at 303-954-2699 or tgriego@denverpost.com.
