A Migration Story that Made Me Think

Life in Oaxaca: A First-Hand Story that Impacted my Feelings on U.S. Immigration

My wife and two young daughters and I are living in an indigenous village in Oaxaca during my sabbatical leave from the University of San Francisco.  Every day is a new experience of one kind or another, but a few days ago I had a conversation that brought home the reality of how our inability to effectively deal with U.S. immigration issues deeply impacts the lives of normal people.

During an afternoon when my wife was teaching at the local mission school, I walked with my 5-year-old daughter Kayla to a little park on the other side of the central square. As I was watching her try to navigate the monkey bars, a young guy in his mid-30s approached me and asked if I spoke English.  He introduced himself as Emilio.  He was Mexican, but his English was perfect.  We made light conversation for a few minutes, watching my daughter compete with another little boy for a whirl down the slide. Then he began to tell me his story.

He told how he was brought by his parents to the U.S. when he was a child, crossing through a gap in the fence along the Texas border. He had no choice in the matter.  At six, he was not weighing the pros and cons of wage differentials with migration costs, and the probabilities of border apprehension.  He would go wherever his parents told him to go, especially if it was with them.  His father and mother worked at odd jobs in Houston, and Emilio was thrown into the local public schools, in the first grade, not knowing a lick of English.  But he learned, and after a few years he was fluent in English and had more or less caught up with his peers.

He liked being in the United States, even liked Houston.  He finished high school, did some college, and began to work selling used cars for a relative.  But somehow, though his youth, his family never established legal documentation for Emilio, although during this time many in his family did become US citizens, including his mother and father.  In the meantime, he married an American woman of Colombian descent, and saved to purchase a couple of used car dealerships from one of his relatives.   He and his wife had two children, about the age of our own, and a few years ago they moved to the suburbs where there were better schools for their kids.

Emilio and his wife went to a party last July, at which he drank two beers with some friends.  On the way home the Houston police pulled him over for driving 10 MPH over the highway speed limit, and found him with a blood alcohol content of 0.10 or 0.02 over the Texas legal limit of 0.08.  Without citizenship, Emilio was placed indefinitely into a 20 x 40 foot holding cell with a dozen other illegal immigrants, where he was held for 30 days before he could see a judge.  He said this time in the holding cell nearly drove him crazy.  Finally, at the hearing the judge told him he could return to the immigrant holding facility until a court date that would be scheduled.  This would be 6 to 8 months from that time, or he could return to Mexico until his immigration case would be considered–in 2 to 3 years.

As we were watching the kids laugh and play in the park, Emilio told me (in his flawless English) how much he missed his kids.  He missed his wife.  His car dealerships in the U.S. were being run by relatives.  But he explained to me how unbearable the holding facility was, many men crammed into a tiny space, where one needed to use the toilet in the open.  He said he wouldn’t have lasted six months.  He even admitted frankly, that his Spanish wasn’t even that good any more.  It was so wonderful, he confessed, to find someone in the village who spoke English.    He said we might see each other again because he spends his days running laps around the soccer field next to the park and doing chin-ups on the play equipment.  He works in odd jobs around the village, a married 37-year-old with children in the States, living with his aunt in Oaxaca.

As I walked home with my daughter, I couldn’t help think about how the dysfunctionality and gridlock in our federal government impacts ordinary people (like Emilio).  How many people like this must suffer needlessly because our politicians prioritize political gamesmanship over solving important problems, like our broken immigration system.  Indeed in this political issue, there are reasonable elements in the thinking of both Democrats and Republicans.  We have to create a secure border, so that U.S. immigration becomes fair, orderly, and within the legal process (Republicans).  But we also need to find humane solutions (Democrats) for the cases of those who came into this country illegally through no choice of their own, perhaps as kids like Emilio, or those fleeing violence.  But the two sides fail to acknowledge the (at least partial) validity of each other’s perception of the problem.  Can’t a reasonable compromise be found that improves upon the status quo?  In a recent CT column, I also argue that one of the best ways for U.S. churches to become involved is through partnerships with local churches in Mexico and Central America, to help empower them to create positive change in their communities, change that allows peaceful prosperity to steadily take root in these villages.   Let’s urge the President and Congress to get past their petty squabbles and political posturing and–for the sake of the Emilios out there, and their kids–work together to find reasonable solutions on immigration.

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