It was a striking scene: aging vehicles, barely roadworthy
and loaded to the point where the axles sagged and with every rotation seemed
ready and willing to snap, lined up as far as the eye could see, filled with
people and all off their possessions. It was a scene described ably by both
John Steinbeck and Woody Guthrie, both heroes of mine, who wanted to expose the
inhumanity and injustice that seemed to have become the birthright of so many
of America’s poor and hungry.
The immigrants were told to go home, were ushered into camps where they eked out an existence, were denied education and basic services, even as their very presence was caused by their attempt to escape the poverty back home, where the land had become unworkable, and the air had become unbreathable.
It was the Dust Bowl, and Americans were turning away their own, with no thought of the plight of these people. To be sure, there were people of compassion, and those people admirably swam against the tide of public opinion as they were called communists, and worse. In less than two decades’ time, the actions of many of these would bring them under the scrutiny of McCarthy, and they would lose jobs, and even liberty because they had dared speak out against injustice. And this is in America, the “land of the free”.
I am a cultural descendant of these Okies. While my family moved to Oklahoma in 1972 and did not know the Dust Bowl Days, I have lived most of my life within its sphere of influence. Old timers would tell stories of the Depression and the Dust Bowl, and of family that had moved on for a better life. Even in my generation, the constant exodus of those seeking a better life elsewhere was common, and, like many of my peers, I drove, road, and hitchhiked my way as far west as the road would take me virtually as soon as the law deemed me to be adult enough to do so with impunity.
In my current city of Clayton, New Mexico, recovering from the throes of a recent extended drought, the words “Dust Bowl” are ever on the lips of those who remember, and a certain somber feeling seems to permeate the air every dry year when the wind turns the air into a violent mix of wind, dirt, and tumbleweeds, and with every breath we inhale the powdery evidence of drought. I walk daily over sidewalks stamped with the letters “WPA”; letters that hearken back to a time when many Americans simply would not have survived had the government not have intervened. They would have simply been swept away with the dust that sweeps these hard plains.
Even as I appreciate my own heritage of people who struggled to survive in a land that did everything to evict them, I think back to the struggles of other immigrants. To the families whose final, lingering hope lay at the other side of the crowded gates at Ellis Island, to the families who sold everything, including their own liberty, to purchase a berth on a rickety boat crossing a vast ocean to a destination spoken of in hushed, almost reverent terms: America.
These people ARE America, they built America, and the stories they tell became the very fabric of our culture. They drove spike after spike into the timber crossties of the railroads until these iron horses crossed the land from sea to sea, and they dug holes into the hot, unforgiving earth, losing many of their brothers and sisters along the way, to mine the metals that built the communities we walk among and too often take for granted. They came here speaking halting English, and, over time, their language changed, as did their bodies from the toll of struggling in the heat of the blistering summer and the cold of the Midwestern winter.
As the need for workers to build the infrastructure has dwindled and as the population of our cities has increased, though, many Americans have given into the notion that the opportunity that our parents and grandparents sought, the opportunity that endowed us with rights, with dignity, and with things that many nations take for granted, should be denied others, with the exception of the fortunate few with the financial means to buy a place in line.
The others, the ones not so fortunate to be bankrolled, but with the same desire for opportunity, are subject to a darker fate. They have become victims of the modern day slave trade, and they meet dark men with dark hearts in the middle of the night who promise them passage to that place still spoken of in reverent terms, if they will work for the greedy industries who refuse to pay a wage adequate for survival. Their reality becomes one of indentured servitude where they work 80 hours a week at less than minimum wage, never fearing to speak against these injustices because the people who run these industries can, with a simple phone call, have them deported to their impoverished communities of origin.
And this is why I speak. As a Christian, not only can I not turn my back on these people, these people are the very people that I and fellow believers are called to serve. Verse after verse speaks of the sojourner, and Jesus speaks of compassion for the poor; who, then, do we think He has called us to serve if not these. In perhaps one of the most poignant, misunderstood passages of the Bible, he is asked which is the greatest commandment. He cites two: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. When asked “who is my neighbor”, He tells the story of a man regarded as filthy and wicked by the Jewish people, who meets another’s need when the very people charged with doing so (a Priest and a Levite) have passed him by.
The immigrants were told to go home, were ushered into camps where they eked out an existence, were denied education and basic services, even as their very presence was caused by their attempt to escape the poverty back home, where the land had become unworkable, and the air had become unbreathable.
It was the Dust Bowl, and Americans were turning away their own, with no thought of the plight of these people. To be sure, there were people of compassion, and those people admirably swam against the tide of public opinion as they were called communists, and worse. In less than two decades’ time, the actions of many of these would bring them under the scrutiny of McCarthy, and they would lose jobs, and even liberty because they had dared speak out against injustice. And this is in America, the “land of the free”.
I am a cultural descendant of these Okies. While my family moved to Oklahoma in 1972 and did not know the Dust Bowl Days, I have lived most of my life within its sphere of influence. Old timers would tell stories of the Depression and the Dust Bowl, and of family that had moved on for a better life. Even in my generation, the constant exodus of those seeking a better life elsewhere was common, and, like many of my peers, I drove, road, and hitchhiked my way as far west as the road would take me virtually as soon as the law deemed me to be adult enough to do so with impunity.
In my current city of Clayton, New Mexico, recovering from the throes of a recent extended drought, the words “Dust Bowl” are ever on the lips of those who remember, and a certain somber feeling seems to permeate the air every dry year when the wind turns the air into a violent mix of wind, dirt, and tumbleweeds, and with every breath we inhale the powdery evidence of drought. I walk daily over sidewalks stamped with the letters “WPA”; letters that hearken back to a time when many Americans simply would not have survived had the government not have intervened. They would have simply been swept away with the dust that sweeps these hard plains.
Even as I appreciate my own heritage of people who struggled to survive in a land that did everything to evict them, I think back to the struggles of other immigrants. To the families whose final, lingering hope lay at the other side of the crowded gates at Ellis Island, to the families who sold everything, including their own liberty, to purchase a berth on a rickety boat crossing a vast ocean to a destination spoken of in hushed, almost reverent terms: America.
These people ARE America, they built America, and the stories they tell became the very fabric of our culture. They drove spike after spike into the timber crossties of the railroads until these iron horses crossed the land from sea to sea, and they dug holes into the hot, unforgiving earth, losing many of their brothers and sisters along the way, to mine the metals that built the communities we walk among and too often take for granted. They came here speaking halting English, and, over time, their language changed, as did their bodies from the toll of struggling in the heat of the blistering summer and the cold of the Midwestern winter.
As the need for workers to build the infrastructure has dwindled and as the population of our cities has increased, though, many Americans have given into the notion that the opportunity that our parents and grandparents sought, the opportunity that endowed us with rights, with dignity, and with things that many nations take for granted, should be denied others, with the exception of the fortunate few with the financial means to buy a place in line.
The others, the ones not so fortunate to be bankrolled, but with the same desire for opportunity, are subject to a darker fate. They have become victims of the modern day slave trade, and they meet dark men with dark hearts in the middle of the night who promise them passage to that place still spoken of in reverent terms, if they will work for the greedy industries who refuse to pay a wage adequate for survival. Their reality becomes one of indentured servitude where they work 80 hours a week at less than minimum wage, never fearing to speak against these injustices because the people who run these industries can, with a simple phone call, have them deported to their impoverished communities of origin.
And this is why I speak. As a Christian, not only can I not turn my back on these people, these people are the very people that I and fellow believers are called to serve. Verse after verse speaks of the sojourner, and Jesus speaks of compassion for the poor; who, then, do we think He has called us to serve if not these. In perhaps one of the most poignant, misunderstood passages of the Bible, he is asked which is the greatest commandment. He cites two: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. When asked “who is my neighbor”, He tells the story of a man regarded as filthy and wicked by the Jewish people, who meets another’s need when the very people charged with doing so (a Priest and a Levite) have passed him by.
I look with sadness on the Tea Partiers, the conservatives,
those who claim the moral high ground in politics, as they fight against the
refugee children in this country, and as they call immigrants criminals and
demand their deportation, and I realize with sadness that the ghost of Fred
Phelps has not gone away. For it is the inconvenient reality that the sin of
those who would denounce these immigrants is every bit as dark and deplorable
as those who hold up signs at funerals in protest. And while I desperately want
to believe that the actions are not
being driven by racism, it is a reality that is becoming harder to escape.
And yet, it is in many ways, my reality. I
understand the plight of the migrants more than most, for it is who I’ve
become. Over the last two months, my home is more frequently wherever I am
allowed to park my van for the night than it is my own home, and the luxury of
resting my head on my own pillow is one that I know only a few days out of every
month. I live in the modern day Hoovervilles, as I seek work wherever someone
is willing to pay my price. And although I am more fortunate than most in that
I have a home to return to, it is only because of my working as a migrant that
I am able to do so.It is an experience that has been both humbling and enlightening; that has helped me to grasp the reality that the plight of every working person is intertwined with mine, and that the injustices that affect one of us affect all of us. I have come to better understand the concept of privilege, and have an increasing desire for social justice. I am daily reminded that I am disposable, that future is only a hope, and security only an illusion. And in the middle of that it strikes me; if there were a border fence that I could hop to give me access to a life that offered more promise, your guns and your border fences would be ineffective barriers. And if my reality included drug cartels, human trafficking, and corrupt officials, it is no stretch to imagine being in a condition where the hot sting of a bullet and its immediate release from the pressures of this world would be preferable to the lengthy protracted suffering of staying where I was.
I am not speaking for any other person in the faith, nor can I. But even as many fellow Christians denounce me, I will state with firm conviction my belief that we need to open the borders to ALL who seek a better future for their family, and not make entry available only to those with financial means. There was a time when we welcomed those who sought a better future, and one of the most iconic landmarks in the USA celebrates that. As a nation, if we are going to choose to be isolated nationalists, we need to tear down the Statue of Liberty while the price of copper is still high and cash in. As Christians, we need to speak out for these, and any who suffer injustice, even at the risk of being ostracized by leaders of our own faith.
The issue of immigration is one that should be addressed with compassion, not condemnation. For in a sense, todos somos ilegales – we are ALL illegals.
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