One of the Little Free Libraries I frequent, as I walk around town, gifted me with the Pulitizer Prize-winning book, by Sonia Nazario, whose cover is pictured above. Here is a description of the book, as found on the back cover of the paperback edition that I can now claim as my own:
In this astonishing story, award-winning journalist Sonia Nazario recounts the unforgettable odyssey of a Honduran boy who braves unimaginable hardship and peril to find his mother in the United States. Eleven years after his mother is forced to leave her starving family to find work, Enrique travels through hostile worlds full of thugs, bandits, and corrupt cops, often clinging to the sides and tops of freight trains, and with little more in his pocket than a slip of paper bearing his mother's North Carolina telephone number.Based on the Los Angeles Times newspaper series that won two Pulitizer Prizes, one for feature writing and another for feature photography, Enrique's Journey puts a human face on the ongoing debate about immigration reform in the United States.
Speaking of the "human face," here is how ICE agents are now often appearing, as they go about enforcing our current president's demand that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents must round up and deport 3,000 immigrants every day:
If there are non-citizen criminals living in the United States, who entered the country illegally (and there are), it is hard to argue against the legitimacy of efforts to apprehend and then deport them. That said, law enforcement efforts need to be carried out in a way that is consistent with the constitutional and due process standards that apply to all law enforcement efforts undertaken in the United States. Law enforcement agents must - almost always - have a warrant, signed by a judge, before placing someone (even an immigrant) in custody. Such law enforcement agents must also identify themselves, and show their credentials upon demand. Masked and unnamed men, armed with guns, arresting people without a warrant, and shipping them overseas to a prison in El Salvador, are acting illegally.
The thought I had, though, when I started reading Enrique's story, was not, really, focused on his illegal entry into the United States, and about the legitimacy of efforts to apprehend him, and all those others who have come to the United States without the benefit of any official action by some governmental agency that could sanction their presence.
As I read about Enrique, my thoughts turned to Enrique's personal qualities.
Isn't it true that we, as American citizens, should want to attract people with the courage and initiative shown by Enrique? Wouldn't the immigration of people like Enrique be advantageous not only to them, individually, but to all of us who are already citizens? Don't we all benefit from the contributions of those unsanctioned immigrants who are making a new life here, and who are picking our food from the fields, helping to built our homes, laboring in our factories, mowing our lawns, and working in the restaurants in which we dine? This is to list only a few areas in which we know that so-called "illegal immigrants" are working.
Historically, a welcoming approach to immigrants has, of course, often been our official position. Welcoming immigrants has been one of the most important of our contributions to the world. The moving poem by Emma Lazarus, "The New Colossus," explains the meaning of the Statue of Liberty, which has long been seen as a symbol of welcome to immigrants.
Lazarus alludes, in the title of her poem, to the Colossus of Rhodes, a statue that celebrated the defeat of those attempting to invade the city. It celebrated the act of preventing new people from coming. Our statue, though, to the contrary, names a "New Colossus" that raises a welcoming torch:
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “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!”
My thought is that we need to organize, beginning right now, a political movement to enact an immigration law that seeks not to expel and repel those who come here, like Enrique, with hope, and talent, and determination, but that puts in place a law that will welcome them, with all their their talents, and abilities, and aspirations.
And we need to do that for the benefit of those of us who are here now. For "us," the already privileged.
We are, in fact, doing it all wrong, right now, to our immense detriment, and to our great shame!
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