This is a repost from last year on our curtisandceli blog. In honor of my father’s death on this day eight years ago, I am re-posting it.

I wish I could tell you whether I’m for or against illegal immigration. I believe many people come here illegally because they feel they have few options for a better life. Contrary to what most people believe, coming here legally, especially for Mexicans, is next to impossible. I have been here since I was four years old–even married an American citizen–and it was still difficult, time-consuming (31 years, although I became a legal resident with a “green card” at 18 years old) and expensive for me. However, I do understand the need to be vigilant (NOT vigilante) about who crosses the border into this country I, because there are good and bad people in every nation.

Guess you could say I will be forever “on the fence”.

I do know this:  We can’t ever forget where we came from.

My fair skin belies my heritage to most.  But I’m a quiet person, and unless you ask me, I don’t divulge that I am Mexican-born right away, because I’m not sure how you’ll react. Truthfully, I can learn a lot about people’s viewpoints in my camouflaged state, but perhaps that’s deceitful on my part.

And I have been sitting quietly as a futile fleshly war against unseen powers rages in every form of social media.  We like to attribute the cause of this war to lacking or heavy-handing government, but there are other forces going on here, fellow citizens of earth:   powers of darkness.  Because we can’t always see our enemy, words have become the new weapon, razor-blades that slice the human from humane into the bane. Can we really replace justice and truth with mean memes and half-truths? For heaven’s sake, let’s practice for heaven now and seek truth above all else.

“The truth will set you free.” John 8: 32

I was born in Mexico.  There it is.  I came here as an ‘illegal alien’ (what in the world, not just the USA, does that really mean, anyway? Why weren’t the first immigrants called aliens?).  There was nothing I could have done as a four-year old child to stop my father from bringing me, my sister and pregnant mother here. It was a fight-or-flight situation: my father felt responsible for the death of his first-born son, who died of pneumonia, a disease few healthy babies succumb to in El Otro Lado (The Other Side, a romanticized metaphor we Mexicans use to describe the United States). As a young boy, the eldest in a large family, he sat helplessly listening to the agonizing cries of two of his siblings as they slowly died of diseases people didn’t die of in the U.S.  He mourned with my mother as she lost an unborn child when she fell carrying buckets of water from the river to our two-room home.  Having been to The Other Side as a migrant worker, he vowed that no one else he loved would perish for lack of resources. When I was born, croupy and asthmatic, I imagine he must have feared another death.  So he eventually risked his life, and ours, and swam across the river hoping for a new life—a murky baptism of sorts. Haven’t many men of other nations done the same? I’m not sure if I would have the courage to come here illegally now, having more knowledge about how people would feel about my presence.  I guess I would have let me die.  Which is the greater sin?

And while I’m at it…

Dad worked back-breaking days as a farmhand in southeast Colorado for a low wage. (For the record, no one else of any race or ethnicity was clamoring to do his job, much less for that pay.) I don’t want to create a picture-perfect image of Dad, or any immigrant, for he was a man of the dirt, like many white or Mexican men in this area who struggle and work in the dirt for everything they have, and whose struggles often create calluses on hands and hearts. He always said, “You can tell the measure of a man by his hands.”  Perhaps he was right, but God also examines the heart (1 Sam. 16:7)

Our lives were never easy, having graduated from dirt poor in Mexico to extremely low-income in the States. Yet, contrary to popular opinion, we never lived on public assistance, though we certainly could have used the help. We never received ‘free’ health care, paying every bill with great sacrifice. We never accrued so much debt that we had to file bankruptcy.  We simply worked hard, despite our ‘status’.  We contributed to the economy and paid taxes on goods and services. We would have paid income taxes from the beginning had we not been labeled undocumented. The irony:  when we were finally legal and able to pay income taxes, we received money in tax returns! Dad laughed and shook his head for days. One of Dad’s most fervent wishes was fulfilled just last year when Mom paid off their modest home.

Eventually, with Reagan’s Amnesty plan, or Immigration Control and Reform Act of 1986, we ALL became voting, income-tax paying, card-carrying citizens.  If it weren’t for that legislation, two of my three siblings and I would still be ‘aliens’ in our own country, even though living in the U.S. was all we could remember. We were American before we had the proper documents. My siblings and I all graduated high school, went to college and now pay taxes– with few or no tax returns, I might add. Though I’ve been a legal permanent resident now for most of my life, I finally became a citizen when I was 35, the one and only promise my father has ever asked me to fulfill before he died of cancer nine days later.

My father’s dream for us was a better life, and he sacrificed himself, his identity and his nationalism for us, because love provides and love does. Sound familiar?

I’ll bet my green-card there are more ‘illegals’ like us than murderers and moochers. I’m not saying there aren’t people who work the system; that happens with every creed and color, unfortunately. I’m not saying there should be no law to deter evil from entering this nation, but I suspect it’s been born and living within the borders all along. I think the Mexican border and current interior violence has just been easier to focus on because it appears more alien, and therefore an easier target than whatever is already happening inside the United States.  As a parent, I’ve been guilty of pointing a finger rather than dealing with my own child’s wayward tendencies.

I don’t have any answers outside of prayer. Also, I certainly understand about fear, but truth has dispelled my fear on many occasions.  In a nutshell, that’s what I’m hoping for: Truth to prevail over fear.

I say all this just to let you know my story, not to judge or condemn any particular group.  We have a tendency to categorize what we don’t understand into terms, like ‘illegal alien’.  (Oh, I categorize too: Sinners, hicks, political extremists.  And I am just as wrong.)Terms like those are spoken spitefully, like junior-high cliques that help us determine where we fit in.  There are the jocks, and the opposite would be the nerds, I guess. But what is the opposite of an alien? A terrestrial?

What if we are all illegal aliens? As citizens of the world, terrestrials, we are all just sojourners.  Our residencies are all just temporary. None of us really belong here.  In fact, Christ says if we love the world more than we love him and his kingdom, His love is not in us (1 John 2:15). We aren’t even born children of God, but adopted (naturalized, if you will) sons and daughters. (Eph. 1:5, 2 Cor. 6:18) Is there no more room or are there no more resources in the place being prepared for us (John 4:2)? Let us examine our hearts, learn truth and exhibit love, because His promises of a new life are for all of us.

One other thing…

“I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.” Matthew 25:37

As a temporary terrestrial and a citizen of God’s kingdom, if you were to come to my door for food, shelter or gas money, I am not supposed to turn you way, even if you look like an alien, a stranger, or an enemy—even if you are carrying a concealed weapon!   I would want to lock my door and tell you to leave, because of my fear…but my Teacher would nudge me to provide for your needs.  

He may be the One knocking. — Araceli Garcia Turner