Empathy for Undocumented Migrants: A Personal Perspective

I don’t know why, but as of late I have been emotional and not just because of my natural depression that is with me all the time, or my financial struggles but the state of country.  As the husband of a legal U.S. Citizen born and raised in El Salvador. Before meeting my wife, I really had no real interactions with the Hispanic community in the sense, but grew up in South Los Angeles, surrounded my mostly Latinos. My eyes really opened after meeting my wife and seeing the struggles that many migrants face especially those who are undocumented.

Remembering my wife would speak about most women she knew who undocumented living in fear were. Now mind you DJT wasn’t even a thought in 2008 when I met my future wife.  California has always been a hub for migrants and Latino community to come to especially been so close to the order, but we are also a state of diversity from many of all walks of life, backgrounds, ethnicities and races come here.  As the Gestapo pick men and women off the street to meet their quota, its painful to hear and see the stories of honest hard-working people pick off, taken away in white vans never to be heard from again.

I ask how would you feel like you were walking down the street and someone just picked you, or your children and disappeared without a trace. Not only to add, but many of these migrants are also vulnerable and susceptible to abuse. Many would say well La Migra is just doing their job on behalf of the American People to rid the country of Vermin, pests on our society, cancers. Yes people who speak about humans as garbage on account that they are undocumented which is NOT a crime, it’s a civil matter.

Now I understand there are criminals, migrants who are here who do real harm, but most of them are not rapists and killers, they are the people who mow your lawns, clean your toilets and are just trying to make it and survive. The question and argument is well they just need to do that in their own country, where they belong and I say to that who gave you the right to dictate how people live, do you pay their wages, their rent, the means to survive, NO.

Unfortunately, our country has been known to be hostile towards migrants going back decades, the migrants coming here is nothing new as we are country BUILT on migration, especially the Chinese, Mexicans built America, Railroads by the Chinese and Mexican American Laborers. In addition the enactment of Operation Wetback was an immigration law enforcement initiative created by Joseph Swing, a retired United States Army lieutenant general and head of the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS).

The program was implemented in June 1954 by U.S. Attorney General Herbert Brownell.^[1] The short-lived operation used military-style tactics to remove Mexican immigrants—some of them American citizens—from the United States. Though millions of Mexicans had legally entered the country through joint immigration programs in the first half of the 20th century, with some being naturalized citizens and some once native, Operation Wetback was designed to send them to Mexico.

We as a country depend on migrants and have depended on undocumented migrants for cheap labor, labor that American born will not do.  I doubt Americans would sweat in a field somewhere for 12-hour days for peanuts basically, yet now we must rid our country of his human beings who bother no one, but put food on our damn table each day.  

Due to our current political climate, immigrants are at risk for hate, which again is nothing new, but it will get worse leading me to fear for my wife against attacks from some Som of a Bitch who things they have a right to tell my wife to go back to her country or worse.  I’d like to think the migrant community is being projected but they are not, they are vulnerable, a risk for the worst human behavior and no one is doing a damn thing, that is the country we are living in now. All of this has been promoted by the President of The United States, Congress and state and local governments that immigrants are a plague on our society, they are NOT.

Let’s always remember the picture of the people who were here before us, Native Americans and the settlers who came to kill, rape and murder of the Native Americans for their land. I would love to think we have people have evolved to respect, but NO, we have only gotten more Savage.

Next time you’re walking down the street and assume they are not legal, remember you are not GOD, you have no say over who gets to live in this country, you have no say into how people care for their family and do whatever It takes to survive.   You are not better than that person despite being born here, we are all human, we all bleed red and many of the migrants here today breed red, white and blue out of appreciation for being in a country that is relatively safe from violence, war, crime, something we don’t have to live through.  Be kind to one another, have love in your heart for humans of all races, colors and creed, but yourself in their shoes for once.  This is what filled my heart today!

Lastly I encourage you watch one of my favorite films, Pretty, Dirty Things (2002) British social thriller film directed by Stephen Frears and written by Steven Knight.^[6][7] Following the lives of two immigrants in London, it was filmed in a documentary style and was produced by BBC Films and Celador Films, and distributed by Buena Vista International through Miramax Films.

Where is the Love, so prevalent today!