ddmcclure85: July 2014

The topic of immigration always makes me call to mind a story of real people in a Real immigration story.

It makes me ponder the current attitude of immigration laws and more importantly the attitudes of people on either side.

My father was a Mexican national who came to America when he was four years old with his Father and mother Isaac and Florentina Sanchez. His father (my grandfather) was a sharecropper who started his own retail business in the small community of Fentress, Texas. He worked hard all his life and lived his dream which happened to be on the spot of Earth that we currently call America, a place on earth that was at one time also called Mexico.

My father Delfino Sanchez served in two wars ( WW II,Korean) before he became an official citizen of the United States of America in 1968. He never accepted government aid except for the benefit of a lower mortgage rate for veterans who wanted to become homeowners. He paid his mortgage completely before he died. He was born in Matehuala, Mexico in the State of San Luis Potosi in 1917 and lived most of his life in Luling, Texas where he died when he was 78 years old. He was an immigrant, an American, and his life evokes the attitude in me to live as a Citizen of the World.

I had the privilege this weekend of spending some time on a 10,000 acre Ranch on the border of Laredo and Mexico. I have been there once before but this trip made a particular impression on my heart and mind as we gathered in the kitchen and listened to background noise of reports on the buses of immigrants in California being greeted with the rants of angry Americans protesting their entrance.

We were engaged in activities like cooking, planning meals,retelling stories and preparing our young boys to play baseball on the Fourth of July in Laredo, America. Us, a group of people born in America with our Irish,Scotch, German, Spanish and Mexican heritage all melted together.

The stories of the Ranch Managers who have practiced what I call “True Hospitality” and “True Religion” told of how they periodically feed and clothe the lost immigrants who they encounter on the Ranch that they oversee.

They tell stories of how they have doctored them back to health, their ripped feet, parched lips and given them food to eat and clothes to keep them warm and then expecting nothing in return have sent them on or called the appropriate authorities.

They told stories of how these sojourners, trying to find work in order to feed their families back home, endure the most harsh circumstances and injustices from both sides of the border and both sides of the law.

The Ranch Managers understand that according to American law, they are not allowed to hire them to work, but the immigrants tell stories of how they are trying to make it to the big cities of America where they can work for the rich as hired undocumented help.

They make comparisons of the quality work that the sojourning immigrants of Honduras, Mexico and Guatemala desire to pay them back with, and how the American workers in the area will not accept the jobs they view as beneath them.

These are real perspectives of Real people and their heart responses on both sides are legitmate.

The following was written 9 yrs. ago by the Bishop of Laredo James Tamayo, Statement at the Justice for Immigrants Launching Press Conference, May 10, 2005.

“We can no longer accept a situation in which some public officials and members of our communities scapegoat immigrants at the same time our nation benefits from their labor. We can no longer accept a status quo in which migrants are compelled to risk their lives in order to support their families. We can no longer accept a reality in which migrants fill jobs critical to Americans and U.S. employers without receiving appropriate wages and benefits. We can no longer tolerate the death of human beings in the desert.” -Most Reverend James Tamayo, Bishop of Laredo

“While many may condemn the presence of the undocumented in our land, we willingly accept their hard labor,..... While we accept these contributions, we do so at the expense of the human beings who come here not to harm us but to help us. They are often ridiculed, exploited, and abused. “ Nicholas DiMarzio, Bishop of Brookly, Statement at the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride, Oct. 2003

I will always try to keep my response in accord with the words of the Peacemakers.

I am an American, a daughter of an immigrant and a citizen of the world; a universal society.

I am most proud to be a citizen of the world.