A letter to immigrants past and present

“I am searching for words that do not betray me.”

There was a time when television was enjoyable.  Now announcer words infuriate me; as such I watch it less because I told myself I would never be that one member of the family who was always yelling at the people inside the show. Yet even as screen sits silent, the words still echo inside eardrums:

“They are taking our jobs….”

My father was born in 1936 in Wyoming to my grandparents after they crossed. He had asthma, so he had difficulty filling the 30-pound sack wrapped around his waist with potatoes that brought in nickels for the family. In the evenings, he would pass the time with his siblings chasing the trucks that sprayed DDT on the fields. He was five. Pesticides are a known cause of cancer and birth defects. Fifty-five years forward, two of my grandfather’s daughters would die from cancer. I am grateful my father is still living.

“But they are criminals…..”

The other morning my phone rang earlier than normal. It was a colleague who taught at a Middle School in Watts. His voice strained, he said simply: one of my students need’s help; immigration raided her home last night and took away her mother for not having papers. She is left alone and does not know where to go or where they took her mom. Can you offer any help?

An eleven-year-old little girl with caramel colored skin and eyes almond shaped now faces life inside a foster system because under the cover of shadows, men with badges stole her mother. I often wish that theft of one’s childhood were a crime.

“Remember this is OUR country”

There are days where my skin pretends to be of another nationality, but my tongue betrays me. English is the only language it speaks. However my soul is tri-lingual, dancing across dialects: local, global and spiritual.  It sings hymns that remind me borders are imaginary lines reinforced with real weaponry; my heart carves poems that challenge an economy of fear that entire banking systems are built upon.

In arguments, I am able to offer an array of data that counters every common misconception of immigrants in the public realm. Remind individuals that an undocumented immigrant pays a higher percentage of their taxes than the average citizen, is less likely to commit a crime, or use illegal substances than the average citizen. FBI research shows that the highest amount of drug abuse happens in affluent communities and so forth.

Yet this is not the dialogue I want to build upon. One that reduces immigration to numbers and statistics, economics and self-interest, rather than the sweat, flesh, blood, and tears that comprise the lives of those who live a human reality complicated by immigration policies, whether they are documented or not.  I was raised to speak with people, not about them - and reminded to do otherwise is rude.

The phrase “this is ours” implies  a separate class of people who must be told “this is not yours.” If “ours” is a collective ownership of a land and an idea that is limited in access, I ask those who use such phrases how they obtained ownership of said idea or land: was it purchased, inherited, passed on? When did Earth sign your deed of purchase? I know my family’s experience, have ancestors who played drums that  echoed across deserts before America was even imagined, when India was a dream in an explorer’s hat. Look closely at your deed of ownership,  chances are it was signed with our blood. I will write love poems that transcends legal limitations, I will decolonize my imagination and language, speak new words that do not betray me. I will remind myself, I am human, and recite it like mantra.

Life. Love. Language. Land
These are all the things ever stolen from us. They are everything we will reclaim.