Some ground-level reflections on the immigration debate

by Larry DeWitt
May 17, 2006

This past weekend my wife and I committed a series of potential federal crimes. We have been doing this sort of thing for a long time now, and will be doing more of it in the future. It seemed innocent enough at the time. A young, clean-cut, hard-working couple in their early twenties–both of whom are living with their parents–want to get married in the Catholic Church, and my wife and I have been going through the marriage preparation training with them. This is standard pre-nuptial instruction: assessing their compatibility, clarifying their expectations, and helping them form a realistic understanding about what is involved in sustaining a healthy marriage. In fact, it is the sort of thing probably every young couple would benefit from. This particular charming young couple is smart, devoted to each other, thoughtful, religious, and they have realistic expectations about marriage. I am confident they will be fine. We could only wish that more marriages were off to such a healthy start. The problem is, these two young people are both illegal immigrants from El Salvador. And so if the House Republicans have their way, their presence here could become a felony crime, and our assistance to them could be a crime as well. Funny, it did not seem all that wrong at the time.

The next day, a tearful young woman in her early twenties, with a small baby in her arms, approached my wife after the Spanish-language mass at our parish. She has been living with her boyfriend for six years, and she just had a baby, and the boyfriend threw her out of the house that Sunday morning. She has no family here and no place to stay. My wife took her in hand and arranged to have her stay in a room in the Rectory until she could make more permanent arrangements. Another potential crime it seems, as the young woman is here illegally–even though her baby is an American citizen, having been born here five weeks before. Given all the fears and uncertainties in her circumstance, it was striking that the only question she asked was if the Immigration Service deports her, will she be allowed to take her baby with her. This act of Christian charity too could become an act of criminality.

Today at lunch at the neighborhood Pakistani restaurant both of the waitresses were from Honduras. As my luncheon companion chatted with them in Spanish, I was charmed by their friendliness, their wholesomeness, and their cheerful smiles. Their English is limited, but sufficient for their jobs, and when my friend engaged them in conversation in Spanish, they happily told us of their lives and their circumstances. One of the young women said she has a six-year old daughter, Ivana, back home in Honduras. She leads a very lonely life here, without any family, and cut-off from her daughter. She tries to call her daughter on the phone every day, to make sure the maternal cord is not broken. And she said every night she cries herself to sleep with longing to see her daughter again. A mother’s love is a powerful force. But here she is, a world away. We asked her if she was glad to be here. Her eyes widened and a broad smile spread across her friendly face. “Oh yes,” she said, “the work is very good here.” Here she can work and earn enough to both save some money and to send money home to support her family back in Honduras. She said she dreams of the day when her daughter is old enough to join her in the U.S.

We asked her if there were a guest worker program where she could work in the U.S. for a few months, then return home to Honduras, then come to work a few more months, if she would do something like that. “God would have answered my prayers,” was her reply.

I told her that my wife teaches free English classes to Spanish-speakers at the parish church, and give her the phone number to call. Oops, another crime. I can’t seem to stay out of trouble.

Then there is that English class itself. A few years ago my wife noticed that there were more and more Spanish-speaking people in the area. She decided to start teaching free English classes to anyone who wanted to learn. She has been doing this for five years now, and currently has two co-teachers volunteering their time and efforts. The students have been a mixed group–some here legally, some not. She does not ask. So some more crimes may be mixed in with the urge to be of service.

Then there is that Spanish mass at the church. Six or seven years ago, when Latinos began moving into our part of town in noticeable numbers, some of them started showing up for Sunday mass. The services were only in English, and it was clear that they could only get so much out of the service. The homily eluded them, as did the Bible readings, but the rituals were familiar and universal among Catholics the world over. And so they came, trying in whatever way they could to connect with the wellspring of their faith. Looking out over the sea of devoted faces, one might be able to see, if one could see as God can see, those who are legal immigrants and those who are de facto criminals. Or perhaps that is not how God sees them at all. Perhaps it is only their fellow-men who see them in these terms. To their credit, no one at the church asks to see anyone’s green-card before welcoming them into the house of the Lord. In the process, we may well have become a whole church full of criminals.

Working assiduously with parish and diocesan officials my wife finally got a Spanish-language mass for our parish. Now, three out of every four Sundays in the month one of the masses is conducted in Spanish, and on the fourth Sunday we have a bi-lingual mass. And now we are heavily involved in baptisms and weddings and the other rich ceremonies of religious life. My wife usually is the coordinator and the planner, and the person who counsels the parents or the newlyweds. Twice, we have even been asked to serve as godparents to beautiful little Mexican babies, whose brown eyes gleam with life, and who squeal with annoyance when they are dipped naked into the baptismal fount. More wicked crimes.

Two weekends ago my wife and I conspired in yet another–more secular–crime. We hired a crew of half a dozen incredibly hard working Latino laborers to rip up our old driveway and lay a brand new concrete driveway in its place. The work was astonishingly backbreaking, but they persevered until it was done. And it was done with a high degree of skill, and at a reasonable (but not an exploitative) price. They were grateful for the work, and we were grateful to have such trustworthy workers. We did not ask whether everyone on the crew was here legally. I suspect we committed more crimes that day as well.

It seems my days are filled with a series of inadvertent federal crimes. At least, they might become crimes under certain of the immigration reform proposals–if they are not crimes already. Because my wife is Mexican-American and fluently bilingual, she is heavily involved in various community activities involving the Latino community in our part of town. And so I am heavily involved as well, enough though my own Spanish-language skills are muy pobre. My wife is involved in all these activities because of her kindness of heart. She sees these activities as expressions of her Christian faith. My own heart is much less pure, and my piety much more uncertain. But even I am occasionally touched, and charmed, and impressed by the people I encounter in my life of petty crime.

Since we are now heavily involved in the Hispanic community in our parish, my wife and myself attend lots of community functions. We were at a birthday party awhile back, for a curly-haired two-year old boy named Irvin. Irvin's parents are illegals from Mexico. His father is a roofer, and his mother a stay-at-home mom. Pretty much everybody at the party was an illegal from Mexico, except for all the young, bright-eyed, smiling children, who, like Irvin, are citizens of the U.S. by birth. There are many such families here. I know some of them. As I watched these loving, happy families–the kids playfully slapping at the balloons hanging from the ceiling, and the youngest ones mischievously sticking their fingers in the cake frosting for a sneaky lick–it struck me that they could be seen as virtually ideal American families. They are hard-working–indeed, they have journeyed here through considerable hardship and not inconsiderable risk for that very purpose–and they are religious and very family-oriented. True, the parents speak very little English, but the little kids, bright as buttons, are growing up bilingual and will be full-fledged Americans in a few years, indistinguishable from millions of others.

One thing that strikes me about most of these illegal residents in my daily world is that they are almost ideal citizens. If it were not for that little scofflaw business about crossing from one side of a dry river bed to another without permission, most people would say they are just the kind of people we need more of in America. Certainly most social conservatives should say this, if they were being honest about it, and if they could see past the screens of race, language and immigration status.

Immigration reform is a complicated and difficult set of interlocking policy conundrums. I have no idea what the right combination of moves is on the Rubik’s cube to produce the perfect reform. I suspect there is no perfect reform. But one thing I know for certain: whatever we do, we should take care not to do intentional or inadvertent harm to those bright-eyed children; or those smiling waitresses; or to damage or break apart those healthy intact families; or to put the major burden of change on the backs of the smallest characters in this story. That is the only thing here that I am certain would be a real crime.