Let me admit before I go any further that I am not in the
middle of the road on the question of how we ought to treat Mexicans
illegally crossing the U.S. border. Here's why: My experiences with
folks from Mexico have been almost universally agreeable. To wit:
•When I was in grade school, my father hired a Mexican
immigrant to trim up the few trees we had in our Kansas back yard. I
watched him do it. And whenever a limb would fall to the ground, Mr.
Ortega would say "Adios." I'd never heard anyone say "Adios" to a
falling tree limb, and it seemed to me a wonderfully kind thing to say.
•Later, when I was in high school, Mr. Ortego's son, Willie,
was a year ahead of me. We were in a school where it was nearly
mandatory that every male go out for the football team. I was not a very
good defensive end, but Willie was, and he went out of his way to say
nice things about my efforts—and to treat me as an equal.
•Four years later, in 1954, a friend of mine and I went into a
cafe in Clayton, New Mexico, on our way home from the horse races in
Raton, New Mexico. We'd been betting the ponies for three days, and on
the last day we didn't cash a single ticket. We were flat broke,
hungry, and nearly out of gas. The saint disguised as a waitress in the
Clayton cafe, Dolores Sanchez, listened to our tragicomic story and then
lent us $5—in those days enough money to pay for our hamburgers and
malts and for sufficient gasoline to get home on.
•And in 1982, our daughter, Amy, was a member of a Spanish
class that was flying down to Mexico City for a first-hand look at the
culture. But en route, her appendix burst and she ended up in a Mexico
City hospital. The hospital specialist in such matters—I think his
name was Dr. Ruiz—performed the necessary surgery to take care of the
burst appendix. By the time I got to Mexico City four days later, Dr.
Ruiz had flown off to Paris to deliver a paper on peritonitis. The
hospital graciously allowed me to sleep rent-free on a couch in Amy's
room while we waited for her to heal enough that we could fly back to
Lincoln. Dr. Ruiz' wife and daughter drove us around to see the sights
in Mexico City on several of those days, then drove us to the airport
when it came time to leave.
So I'll say it again: The people from Mexico that I've been
around have almost always been nice folks.
And that leads me—in an indignant tone of voice—to some
questions:
Why do we treat Mexican citizens as heinous criminals if they
try to cross the border into the U.S. without the proper papers? Do we
treat them the same way we treat Canadians who cross the border
illegally? Do we treat them the same way Mexico treats U.S. citizens
who cross into Mexico without authorization?
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The Truth, Mainly
And why is the U.S. House of Representatives even considering
a bill that would make it a felony to help Mexicans trying to cross the
border?
What that means, according to a story by Michael Riley in the
Jan. 2 Denver Post, is that it would be a crime for U.S. church groups,
among others, to continue leaving bottles of drinking water along the
Mexico-Arizona border in an effort to avoid a repetition of the deaths
last year of "at least 279 people" who died from the heat and lack of
water while they were trying to enter the U.S.
It also means that it would be a crime for an Arizona
organization called "No More Deaths" to transport border-crossers to a
hospital or a church for medical treatment.
And it means that even if I had the chance, Mr. Ortega,
Willie, Dolores, Dr. and Mrs. Ruiz, I'd never be able to look you in the
eye again.
And that loud splashing noise we just heard? I'm guessing
it's the Statue of Liberty collapsing into New York Harbor.
You know, the statue that's been there since 1886, standing on
a pedestal on which is engraved Emma Lazarus' famous poem that ends with
the words we all learned in junior high school:
"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!"
Well, it's pretty to think so.
Retired English Professor Leon Satterfield writes to salvage clarity
from his confusion. His column appears on alternate Mondays. His e-mail
address is:
leonsatterfield@earthlink.net.
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