El Paso is closer to Los Angeles than Houston, closer to three other state capitals than its own, 12 hours from Brownsville, Texas. It is part New Mexico, part Tejano, part Mexico, part Wild West, all frontera. With a population of 700,000 and separated from a 1.5 million city by a tiny rivulet called the Rio Grande, El Paso melds with Juarez in culture, language, music, food, and la gente.
Our first day in El Paso, we attended immigration court and saw the inside of a client interview room. The immigration court was informal, the judge joking aboutBurn after Reading and giving informal history lessons about Ellis Island. The hardest cases were the pro-se ones, where we had to watch a 19-year-old boy with oversized clothes sit silently in front of the judge as he was told he had to wait for the LA judge to reopen his case. Beside him, a Korean man was whispering prayer upon prayer, eyes closed. Inside the interview room, the circle chairs and the square table were stainless steel. A woman from El Salvador had been transported from San Francisco to Los Angeles to Arizona to Houston to El Paso. Her son was watching her younger children and attending Stanford, and this meeting was to gather some last-minute details so that she could apply for a change of venue. The steel room was empty and echoed, her small voice enunciated each word of Spanish thoughtfully and deliberately.
That same day, we were told by numerous attorneys and well-meaning citizens not to venture across the bridge to Juarez. Granted there were more than 1,600 murders in Juarez in 2008 and a group of hueros would generally attract a lot of attention; however, it is that same sort of terror that has depressed the economy on both sides of the river and has lent credence to the drug dealers and thugs like the Zetas. It is that same fear that led Congress to pass the Secure Fence Act of 2006, the same fear that drives Bill O’Reilly’s ratings, the same fear that enables shows like ABC’s “Homeland Security USA” to exist. As we crossed the El Paso del Norte Bridge and were greeted by the smell of tacos al pastor and the sight of cheap meds and fast surgeries, none of us felt threatened. Even as we walked by the federales with their automatic rifles and teenage faces, it was impossible to see much of a difference between one side of the river and the other. We watched Texas beat Ohio State for the Fiesta Bowl as we sat in the Yankees bar, across the centro from the Kentucky Bar where Marilyn Monroe bought drinks for everyone the day she divorced Arthur Miller. Both sides of this river are hopelessly interconnected.
We are staying in the Gardner Hotel/El Paso International Hostel, a hotel from the 1920s that has hosted John Dillinger and Cormac McCarthy. An old PacBell phone booth stands sentry at the doorway, and an old-time telephone switchboard stands next to the check-in booth. With its high ceilings and transoms, old charm and new faces daily, many languages and few rules, this hostel is as good a metaphor for El Paso and Juarez as one can imagine.
Tonight we visited Casa Anunciacion, an immigrant safe house. Dreamed up by 5 Christian men more than 30 years ago, this organization operates in the historically most impoverished portion of El Paso. It serves as a home for immigrants, whether for one night or for 8 months. Families, abused women, single teens, mothers and babies, fathers – the house is full to the brim with immigrants seeking shelter and a change. This particular night Juan Carlos cooked dinner for all 55 tenants and all 11 of us. We sat next to immigrants from Guatemala and Sinaloa, El Salvador and Lebanon, Juarez, and Honduras. After dinner, I washed dishes alongside Federico as everyone worked together to clean the facilities. Although the house was raided by ICE several years ago, it still continues to offer hope to many seeking a better job and life.
The border towns of El Paso and Juarez serve as a microcosm of worldwide immigration patterns. When goods are freely transportable in a globalizing world, it only stands to reason that people will desire to move freely legally or not. Border lines are human conventions, and as one looks at the picnic cloth of stars between the Sierra Madre and Rocky Mountains that is El Paso/Juarez at night, it is impossible to see where one ends and the other begins. Perhaps that would just be a perfunctory exercise anyway.
Despite legislation like the 2006 Secure Fence Act, the Rio Grande Valley might now have a voice in Washington. Dr. Juliet Garcia, the first Latino president of a four-year university, was just tapped as one of the key members in Obama’s Presidential transition team. (http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/news/garcia_91496___article.html/obama_president.html)
Prior to November 5, University of Texas at Brownsville (UTB) President Garcia had been in the headlines for resisting the federal government. For months, Juliet Garcia had refused to compromise with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), who wanted to survey and conduct pre-construction practices for a border wall on UTB property. Reports from the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) stated that the wall could be 18-feet high and consist of two thick concrete barriers. Unlike public institutions like Hidalgo County, which compromised with a levee-wall arrangement with DHS this past spring, (http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/news/border_85925___article.html/fence_security.html) Garcia refused even to allow government agents entrance to the university property. By July 31, 2008, Garcia and DHS agreed to a compromise, wherein UTB would repair a chain-link fence on its property while DHS would bypass UTB property along the Rio Grande. Garcia envisioned the fence with, “bougainvillea and vine growing all over it” (http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/news/utb_88804___article.html/fence_tsc.html). Either way, it was a partial victory for the entire border region in that at least one party successfully resisted the U.S. government’s efforts to forcefully acquire land and construct a border wall along the Rio Grande.
Obama’s choice of Garcia could suggest a host of possible reasonings. It could have been his successful visit to Brownsville February 29, when he participated in the annual Sombrero Fest during the international twin-sister celebration of Charro Days. (http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/articles/obama_84848___article.html/president_festival.html) Perhaps he got a good taste of the Rio Grande Valley, of this borderland he and McCain and Clinton all voted to build a wall through in 2006. Perhaps he saw the community, the people, the Tejano music, rancheros, corridos, tamales, elotes, the friendly smiles across the transnational bridges, the grapefruit hanging heavy in the orchards, the happiness and the peaceful coexistence of two countries in a place traditionally framed as a point of friction but in reality is a land of cohesion. Perhaps he plans to cease the Secure Fence Act of 2006 when he takes office in January, in exchange for true immigration reform which can yield lasting results. The Valley, the US, and the entire world watching the construction of a border wall between two countries at peace can celebrate Garcia’s appointment to Obama’s transistion team.
For some, supporting the construction of a 700-mile border wall on our nation’s southern border is simply a solid political move to show that one is “hard on immigration issues;” Obama, McCain, & Clinton all supported the Secure Fence Act of 2006 because it represented comprehensive immigration reform to the publich. Sadly, true comprehensive immigration reform such as Obama’s Dream Act or McCain’s S. 2611 bill named “Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006” were ignored at the time and have been all but forgotten in the Presidential debate of late.
For others the wall means a radical change in life. For some, it means their ancestral homes will be lost. For others, it means their downtown will be gutted by an unsightly, environmentally destructive barrier. For others, it means that some of our nation’s most endangered and rare species will no longer have a home. Others will lose access to the few wildlife refuges and parkland that they currently have along the Rio Grande corridor. Still others look at an 18-foot high barrier lacking sufficient environmental impact studies and see a natural disaster waiting to happen.
As Hurricane Ike takes aim at the Rio Grande Valley, my prayers are with the good people of South Texas. I pray that the hurricane will spare the lives and livelihoods of my good friends in Brownsville and Donna, Mission and Pharr, McAllen and Rio Grande City, Harlingen and Port Isabel, Weslaco and Alamo. I also pray that our entire nation would look at this area long enough to see the people on both sides of the river who will live in fear every year they lack levees but get walls.
It would one day stretch 436 miles, and is over halfway completed already.Supporters of this eight-meter-high barrier state that this is the only way to protect civilians from terroism, that it is a matter of national security and homeland security.Opponents, however, argue that the wall is really a ploy to annex Palestinian lands in the name of the “war on terror,” that it violates international law, preempts status negotiations, and severely limits the lives of those Palestinians living on the border of the barrier. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_West_Bank_wall#cite_note-humanitarianinfo_Rprt05-37)
While The Jerusalem Post recently stated that the wall might not be finished until 2010, seven years behind schedule, thousands of Jordanians and Israelis are currently living behind the West Bank Barrier.This wall has already gathered many names around its base, names which are all true and signify its different meanings on both sides.Israelis alternatively refer to the wall as the “separation wall,” “security fence,” or “anti-terror fence,” intimating their trust and hope that the wall will provide all three of these ends.Palestinians living just on the other side of this sixty-meter-wide seclusion area have dubbed the barrier the “racial segregation wall” or the “Apartheid Wall.”A good friend of mine told me stories of those living on both sides of the wall and the daily hardships they faced trying to get to the other side for bread, milk, cheese, education.
The Israeli government has stated that, “An absolute halt in terrorist activities has been noticed in the West Bank areas where the fence has been constructed,” though many experts claim that the increased number of Israeli intelligence operations against terrorist groups has actually precipitated the decrease in attacks.The U.N.’s 2005 report states,
… it is difficult to overstate the humanitarian impact of the Barrier. The route inside the West Bank severs communities, people’s access to services, livelihoods and religious and cultural amenities. In addition, plans for the Barrier’s exact route and crossing points through it are often not fully revealed until days before construction commences. This has led to considerable anxiety amongst Palestinians about how their future lives will be impacted…The land between the Barrier and the Green Line constitutes some of the most fertile in the West Bank. It is currently the home for 49,400 West Bank Palestinians living in 38 villages and towns. (http://www.humanitarianinfo.org/opt/docs/UN/OCHA/OCHABarRprt05_Full.pdf, emphasis added)
Palestinians who have lived on this land for generations now must re-register if they are to remain in their homes and continue with life as they know it.By May 2004, the fence construction had already destroyed over 100,000 Palestinian olive and citrus trees, 75 acres of greenhouses and more than 20 miles of irrigation. Many physicians and human rights groups such as Médecins du Monde, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, have all highlighted that the wall makes healthcare much harder for individuals living on the wrong side.Upwards of 130,000 Palestinian children will be prevented from receiving immunizations, and more than 100,000 high-risk pregnancies will be re-routed away from nearby medical facilities in Israel.Groups such as the Red Cross decry the wall as in violation of the Geneva Conventions, and groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch take offense at the way the land was obtained and the routing of the wall through important population centers.
In 2004, the World Council of Churches released a statement calling for Israel to halt and reverse construction of the wall and to begin to right their numerable human rights violations against Palestinians.President Bush in 2003 said, ““I think the wall is a problem…It is very difficult to develop confidence between the Palestinians and Israel with a wall snaking through the West Bank.”Bush reiterated this in 2005, months before the Secure Fence Act of 2006 was passed in his own country.
Residents on the North and South Banks of the Rio Grande are thinking the same thing on this July 21, 2008.As the wall approaches its supposed ground-breaking this week, the men and women on both sides of the border tremble at its assured repercussions.They must be looking at their patch of the river with renewed love for its water, its mesquite tree banks, its children diving from the mud-caked walls on either side, its fish, its serenity.Residents on the North Bank are being offered paltry cheques form the federal government in the realm of $10-20,000, and although this may be the face value of these homes in some of the poorest parts of our nation, none of these people will be able to replace their home and their lives with a check the size of a used F-150.Mexicans must be looking north where the wall is intended and then looking out to sea, where a hurricane is developing right now in the Gulf of Mexico; they must surely be wondering what a wall and levee in violation of international accords will do to their flood-level during the upcoming hurricane seasons.The thousands of winter Texans, eco-tourists, struggling grapefruit farmers, AMFEL mechanics, maquilladora factory workers, migrant laborers, Border Patrol agents, coyotes, Americalmosts, English-as-a-Second-Language students, first-generation immigrants, multi-generational land grand families – all of them must be wondering now, as we all should, whether so-called preventitive measures in the name of national security can ever be justified in the light of so many certain drawbacks.Should the wall go up in Hidalgo County this week, and should it spread its concrete tendrils up and down the Rio Grande, our entire nation will mourn the loss of land, Nature, livelihood and life that this 700-mile border wall already has come to represent in California and Arizona.May the people of the West Bank pray five times a day for the Mexican-Americans on the North Bank, and may we Americans also work towards a wall without walls in Palestine and Israel as well as in our own land.
Hidalgo County has seen contractors already readying the earth-moving equipment needed to construct their portion of a the border wall as early as July 21. While officials have dodged specifics and Hidalgo County officials emphasize the fact that this cement structure is actually just an addition to strengthen the levees in need of serious repair, local residents are chilled to see the giant bulldozers, pipes, and CATs which are planned to tear up their backyards in the coming days of summer. (Leatherman, Jackie)
This past week also saw the controversial news of court interpreter Dr. Camayd-Freixas penning an essay about what he witnessed during the court proceedings following the recent Agriprocessors raid in Postville, Iowa, on May 12, 2008. This ICE raid, the largest in its history, involved over 900 agents and put nearly 400 extralegal workers on trial for their work in the largest kosher meat-packing plant in the nation. While Agriprocessors was merely fined and sternly reprimanded, the lives of these Guatemalan immigrants and the town which had become their home have been gutted by the legal proceedings that imprisoned more than 260 of them for 5 months. Detained for weeks in a converted cattle-ground holding house called the National Cattle Congress, paraded into court in handcuffs, shackles, and chains, these immigrants with Mayan last names listened tearfully to the Spanish interpretation of what had already been decided in the court well in advance of the raid. Rather than simply deporting these workers who were lured here under false promises of well-paid work and future citizenship, these hard-working immigrants now must sit in county jails with charges of aggravated identity theft and Social Security fraud as their families scramble to make ends meet without these principal breadwinners. (“The Shame of Postville, Iowa”)
Postville, IA, once a town of 2,273, has lost more than 1/3 of its community in the month since the terrifying raid. ICE timed the raid before the end of the school year, when some migrant workers would have returned to their homes, and as a result the end of the school year saw Latino students legal and extralegal terrified to go to school. 3 of 15 high-school students showed up for school the week after the raid, while 120 out of 260 students in the elementary and middle school were missing. The schools’ principal actually rode around town on a school bus, coaxing and cajoling these students to come to school, assuring them that ICE cannot raid a public school because of Peter Schey’s landmark case in the 1980s; 50 of them would not be convinced. American children were having nightmares that their parents would be similarly deported or jailed. (Camayd-Freixas)
Dr. Camayd-Freixas broke ranks with the “unbiased” legal interpreters by publishing his reflections and observations of this humanitarian disaster. He was moved to write as he saw immigrants begging in their native language to be deported quickly. He was moved as he listened to the weeping of fathers who had walked a month and ten days before finally crossing the Rio Grande. He was moved to hear of families who had journeyed here only to work for a year or two in hopes of saving enough money to survive in Latin America, a desire that could have been legitimized if only temporary work permits were legislated instead of Secure Fence Acts. These men and women waived their 5th amendment rights to trial by jury in hopes of a “fast-tracked” deportation five months later, despite the fact that they had used false papers not for unlawful activity or felonious actions but rather for seeking a living wage. (Camayd-Freixas) In this New Era of ICE operations, a new government agency which grew 10% last year and is readying itself for many more of these raids in the name of the War on Terror, every small town must cringe in fear whether it has extralegals living within its borders or not; terror terrifies indiscriminately.
As a border wall is being prepared for the Texas-Mexico border and as future ICE raids are being formulated based on the “success” of the Postville sting, the Beijing Olympics are about to begin. The United States will boast its largest number of immigrant athletes since these statistics were kept. These 33 immigrants will represent the United States and surely bring pride to red-blooded Americans as they stand on podiums to hear their new national anthem. We can all be proud of the four Chinese-Americans representing us in table-tennis, or the Polish-American kayaker, or the Russian-American gymnast Nastia Liukin, or the New Zealand immigrant triathlete. All of us will hold our breath in August as we watch the men’s 1500-meter squad of immigrants; Kenyan-American Bernard Lagat will run alongside the Sudanese “lost boy” Lopez Lomong and Mexican laborer’s son Leo Manzano who only recently got his citizenship in 2004. We can all be proud of these new Americans, but we must also take a hard look at our nation’s policies which simultaneously champion a few token immigrants while terrorizing others and making the immigration process both dehumanizing and virtually impossible for so many (Wilson, Duff and Andrew Lehren) As I watch the Summer Olympics, it will be tough for me to think of China’s human rights violations which have caused protests throughout much of the free world; I will be too busy crying as I watch American immigrants bask in their one day of glory, saving up these precious memories for four more years and for all the immigrants who will never receive acclaim and recognition for the work they do to make our country what it is.
When we speak of homeland security, it is vital we define our terms.“Homeland security” must not mean defending the buildings and properties of the United States, or else the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) would be busy repairing bridges, condemning buildings, and fireproofing houses.It is impossible for “homeland security” to mean protecting the American people, because what we mean by the “American people” will have grown and changed by the time you finish reading this article.“Homeland security” cannot even mean preserving our nation’s heritage and culture, or else its name would be homeland taxidermy instead.
No, “homeland security” rightly understood must mean the protection of our nation’s laws.If society is a social contract, then people come to the United States and remain in the U.S. because they agree to live by the law in a land where others do the same, thus gaining civil rights while submitting to the authority elected to enforce those laws.Defined as such, the biggest threat to homeland security today could very well be the Department of Homeland Security.
Since the 1990s, and more aggressively since 2006, DHS has been militarizing the border.Having lived in the border town of Brownsville, Texas, I can personally attest to the effects this militarization has had on local residents from California and Arizona to Texas.I have had a gun pulled on me by a Border Patrol agent as I ran on a dirt trail along the border, not unlike so many cross-country trails here in the Land of 10,000 Lakes.Countless friends of mine have faced aggravation and humiliation as they crossed the secure border checkpoint more than 30 miles north of the Rio Grande.Third and fourth-generation Americans have been followed and questioned by police in every one of these border towns, simply because of the color of their skin or their fluency in Spanish.
With the Secure Fence Act of 2006, the law which mandates nearly 700 miles of border wall for our nation’s southern border, these dehumanizing factors were magnified in border communities.The Department of Homeland Security has used the REAL-ID Act to waive 11 laws in Arizona and more than 30 environmental and local laws in the Rio Grande Valley in order to expedite the construction of an eighteen-foot wall between the U.S. and Latin America.With the REAL ID Act, DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff, an unelected official, has been granted the unconditional power to waive any and all laws “necessary to ensure expeditious construction of the barriers and roads under this section;” in effect, this gives Chertoff the power to undo countless laws voted on by elected officials in our nation’s Legislative Branch, thereby undermining the very “homeland security” it purports to protect, not to mention our system of checks and balances.
Despite the dour state of affairs in our nation’s handling of the border region and immigration, we have all seen real homeland security take place in our communities.Leaders like Father Paul Oderkirk in towns like Pottsville, Iowa, have offered support and banded together with immigrants after the terror of an ICE raid on their Agriprocessors Inc. kosher slaughterhouse in May.Organizations like the Sierra Club, Defenders of Wildlife, the University of Texas at Brownsville, and the Texas Border Coalition of mayors have all sought to defend homeland security by opposing the Secure Fence Act which divides rather than cooperates with our neighbors and the REAL ID Act which negates our nation’s checks and balances.We have seen homeland security in the integration of our community sports teams, English-as-a-Second-Language classes, hospitals, and churches.Every time a recent immigrant is welcomed, each instant someone takes the time to help another get involved, there is homeland security.Please show your solidarity by supporting immigrant resource centers like Rochester’s Catholic Charities Refugee Resettlement and the Advocates for Human Rights, as well as writing your encouragement to beleaguered Americans on our southern border.Additionally, a letter to our senators Norm Coleman and Amy Klobuchar could go a long way to encouraging real “homeland security” instead of distracting and costly excuses for real immigration reform.
It is 2033.By this time, more than $49 billion will have been invested to build, maintain, and repair 700 miles of border wall through California, Arizona, and Texas.Animals like the jaguarundi, the Sonoran pronghorn, and ocelots have disappeared form the American side of the border.The last remaining stands of virgin flora have become extinct due to the border wall itself and the changes it brought to the ecosystem. Sabal Palms Audobon Sanctuary, like the small community of La Lomita and Granjeno, is an abandoned ghost town, a relic of a time when Mexicans and Americans could both enjoy the benefits of the life-giving Rio Grande as it made its 1885-mile journey to the Gulf of Mexico.
Illegal immigration is still a problem, because the push and pull factors of immigration were not addressed through legislative reform.An eighteen-foot wall did nothing to alleviate the more than seven-to-one pay differential between Americans and their neighbors to the South. With the increased militarization of the border and the addition of 700 miles of barriers, the flow of migration has only been redirected to more dangerous routes and means, killing more and more Americalmosts and freezing hundreds of thousands of extralegal residents here who are too afraid to cross back into Mexico.In 2007, the year before the Texas wall was built, more than 500 people lost their lives attempting to cross through the treacherous desert while more and more immigrants risked their lives and their fortunes in highly-dangerous crossings conducted by a highly-paid coyote.As Princeton Professor Douglas Massey pointed out, “The ultimate effect of the border fence policy is to increase the size [of the undocumented population] and to make it more permanent.” (TNR)
It is 2033, and my teenage children are asking why I ever let my government do something so illogical and shameful.Clearly, in retrospect, our wall seems as pointless as the Russian’s or the Chinese.My children and their friends will go to California with hammers in their hands to chisel out a piece of infamous history when the walls we built at the turn of the century finally fall.
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Thank God it is not 2033 yet.While the time is getting near and the pressure is being ratcheted up by the Department of Homeland Security, time still remains for our nation’s people and lawmakers to do right.People like Professor Eloisa Tamez, a UTB Professor, Lipan Apache Tribe member, and border landowner have not given up the fight in El Calaboz.Documentarians like Nat Stone have not ceased filming and recording the people and places which would be irreversibly marred by an eighteen-foot wall.National figures such as Jay Johnson-Castro have not stopped marching against the injustice of the Secure Fence Act of 2006, and environmental activists such as Scott Nichols haven’t stopped speaking out against the totalitarian power endowed to DHS by the Real ID Act.Grassroots organizers like Elizabeth Garcia, Ryan and Yahaira Tauber, John Moore, Crystal Canales, Mike and Cindy Johnson, Joe Krause, as well as groups such as CASA, LUPE, No Texas Border Wall and Border Ambassadors have not surrendered because they know that “the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”
The resistance continues; our spirit is not broken.May it continue in love and not stoop to the hate and violence that would will a wall between neighbors and families. Our resistance must remain positive; if our publicity is not respectful and focused and nonviolent, then the focus will be on our negativity and our methods rather than on the injustice of a border wall through people’s homes and lives. If we do not stay united and show DHS, our city leadership, and the entire nation that we are unified against a border wall, then we appear to be simply some people squabbling and fighting petty battles in a place far away. However, if we can stay together and remain positive now, at the breaking point, when the pressure is fiercest and the odds seem overwhelming, if we can stay true to the Truth and resist in love, then we can still rally the nation behind our just cause.
It is my prayer that we may remain strong as we hold on to the Truth in love , the satyagraha that changed India for the better, the holding on to Truth that awakened our nation from the sad malady of segregation and closemindedness in the King era. We are still able to prevent our nation from doing something it will regret for the rest of its history, if we can only cling stay united in the faith that our cause is right, the hope that our fellow Americans are moral beings, and the love that separates us all more than our conflicts can divide us.
In Irun, the small town on the Spanish border with Spain, there has long been a border culture. During their revolutions and civil wars, residents of both countries traversed the imaginary line separating these two lands. A complex culture of smuggling developed, as in most border towns. People, goods, drugs- the rules of supply and demand are never bound by borders, however much governments might like to believe. While in Irun, I was told a story of a man who crossed and recrossed the border every day on his bicycle. The border patrol agents checked and rechecked this man, suspecting that he was transporting some contraband. Never once in the twenty years did they realize he was riding to France on an old bike and returning with a brand new model.
These sort of trickster stories, and the border culture they exhibit, have been made irrelevant by the erasure of borders in the European Union. America’s border with Mexico, though, must be creating hundreds of thousands of tricksters with the increasing militarization of la frontera and the constantly impending border wall now scheduled in Hidalgo County for July.
Driving out of the Rio Grande Valley on either 77 or 83, the only two evacuation routes, one encounters a military checkpoint complete with automatic weapons, drug-sniffing dogs, patrol cars, and heaps of bureaucracy. As I wait in line, my car packed to the hilt with all my earthly possessions, I contemplate that this is one of the many signs that the Rio Grande Valley is considered outside the mainlaind United States. Brownsville, the poorest city in the United States, is left below this second border in a no-man’s land, left to fend for itself. In fact, the talk of the town last week was that the United States Border Patrol was going to be checking the residency status of individuals during hurricane evacuations (Brownsville Herald) . That its citizenry must be questioned and searched before entering the rest of the continental U.S. is a stunning assumption of criminality. When it is my turn with the Border Patrol agents, I am waved along because of my white skin and American accent.
Tacitus once wrote in his Annals, “Once we suffered from our vices; today we suffer from our laws.” Indeed, unjust laws create criminals out of upstanding individuals, and in no area of legislation is this more true than immigration. Extralegal immigrants, many of whom came to the United States legally, are punished by our current law primarily for doing precisely the actions for which we praise our citizenry. The motivation of the majority of immigrants is religious freedom, economic opportunity, family safety, education, freedom of speech, liberty – how can an antiquated quota system cause some to be punished for acting on these principles and others to be praised?
As I drive north, farther and farther away from the Rio Grande Valley I’ve called home for the past two years, I pass the fertile hills of Kansas and the wide expanses of open grazing in Oklahoma and the lush fields of Iowa. I look at these natural wonders and think of how blessed I am to live in this land, and how attractive this must be to people receiving less than 8x the income we enjoy in our prosperous nation. I look at this massive farmland and know that extralegal immigrants know this land far better than I will ever understand; without them, many of these fields would lie fallow, so many of our meals would remain uncooked, so many houses would never be built, so many ideas never imparted, so many languages never added to the multiplicity of cultures here in the United States. Driving through the natural beauty along Highway 35, it is easy to see that natural law and constructed law clash when it comes to the issue of immigration in these United States. If we will only take a good look at our country and realize just how blessed we are, we would be more understanding of people desirous of migrating here. If we would only appreciate the perspectives and culture and language and talents that immigrants always bring, we would see extralegal and legal immigrants as the assets they are. If Spanish were not viewed as a language subservient to English, then perhaps we could learn from the Spanish immigration system as well as from Mexican and Latin-American immigrants themselves. As I leave the border region where the “rights” and “wrongs” of immigration laws are as muddy as the Rio Bravo and as I head north to study immigration law at the University of Minnesota this coming fall, I realize that I will never leave the border because the border is not a place on a map but a place in people’s hearts. In telling stories about the good people of la frontera and in studying the laws of immigration, I hope to turn the borders of American hearts into E.U. borders instead of the walled border in California and Arizona.
The Gulf of Mexico is the only nesting ground for the Kemps-Ridley sea turtle. Padre Island, the longest barrier island in the world, is a favorite nesting ground of these magnificent sea creatures. Kemps-Ridley sea turtles, the smallest of the eight species of sea turtles, can weigh up to 100 pounds. They are endangered because of the over-harvesting in both the United States and Mexico, but animal rights activists and environmentalists have worked diligently to bring their numbers up substantially in the last years. (http://www.seaturtleinc.com/turtles/)
When I came down to Texas, I was interested in working with one of the most endangered populations in the United States – ESL students. Typically, for Hispanic students born outside of the United States, the dropout rate is 44%, and Latino students in general suffer a startling national drop-out rate of 28%. (http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2002/droppub_2001/)
At Rivera High School, I stepped foot into a Creative Writing class my first year of teaching. Little did I know that this creative writing was code for remedial writing – these were the students assigned to further English classes because of past failures on the all-important state test.
Last year, my results were not amazing. I learned far more than my students did. Their scores were average at best, and I felt a tinge of guilt with having learned the profession of teaching through this first-year “experimentation.”
However, with that first year behind me, I compiled what I had learned and sought the advice of others, determined not to fail my students again. The failure rate and dropout statistics for these students in this immigrant community compelled me to work harder and better.
From April to July, female Kemps-Ridley turtles migrate to the shores of South Padres Island and Rancho Nuevo. Unlike the other species of sea turtles, Kemps-Ridley sea turtles lay their eggs in groups and during the day. A 1947 film shows 40,000 Kemps-Ridleys nesting simultaneously, but now these “arribadas” are only in the hundreds. The sole protection for their pinball-sized eggs buried in the sand is their sheer number. (http://www.seaturtleinc.com/turtles/)
For freshman entering high school in the Rio Grande Valley, their main security is in their sheer numbers. From best estimates, only about 2/3 of them will graduate. From my own experience, though, nearly 2/3 of them will go back to Mexico, will seek employment without a GED, will opt for alternative certification, will become parents, will disappear. My job as a teacher often feels like Holden Caufield’s dream career of catching bodies coming through the rye, trying desperately to catch them before they run headlong over a cliff.
Green sea turtles nest every three or four years. South of the mouth of the Rio Grande, these green sea turtles nest from June to October. Though they migrate as much as 1400 miles, they return to their favorite beaches and continue nesting at the same site, barring any drastic changes. Those changes occurred in the early 20th century, with heavy canning taking place in Florida and here at Boca Chica Beach on the international border. These endangered turtles today are fighting to return to their numbers before the devastating 1900s. (http://www.seaturtleinc.com/turtles/)
I am leaving Brownsville today, after two years where this land, this language, and this way of life have taught me so much. My car is packed with the memories of my immigrant students, many of whom passed the state test for the first time, proving to themselves and the nation that immigrants are more than capable if given an opportunity. I am full of stories of these children and their parents, of the immigrant janitor who gave me my first taste of ceviche and fixes my old ’94 Spirit and of Tony who proudly hangs my photograph of the GW Bridge in his barber shop.
I am driving north today, perhaps not to return until after my graduation from law school in three years. I promised my freshman students that I would be there for their graduation, and I pray that I am able to greet them all not as students but as adults at the end of high school. I leave the Valley, with the border wall construction slated for July; I also leave this place knowing the grassroots resistance to the Secure Fence Act. It is my prayer that these brave men and women who have opposed this unjust legislation for two years will continue to do so, while I carry on the resistance from Minnesota.
Like a green sea turtle, I have no idea what I will find when I return. That is always the hope and the fear of leaving a place. My prayers are with this city, this Valley, and this frontera. You have taught me so much – it is now my turn to teach the nation.
Smart Borders 