On the Universal Immigrant

“A young man adamant in his commitment, who walks the road of possibility to the end without self-pity or demand for sympathy, fulfilling the destiny he has chosen—even sacrificing affection and fellowship when the others are unready to follow him—into a New Fellowship.” Dag Hamarskjold, Markings.
22 Oct. 2009.
On Immigrants.
The most beautiful people on the island, in my opinion, are the Haitians. They are dark, tall, and full of inner sunshine. They are familiar, yet not touchy, reserved, yet open. They work hard at the jobs they can find—carpentry, gardening, hauling, night-guarding. They speak Spanish with care, soft-spoken, heavy on the “S”, mouth moving wide as in French, vowels round and comfortable as in Creole. I love them, for we are both strangers in this country, and seem to understand one another.

I tend to gravitate towards the immigrant, most likely because I am one. I feel their pain of displacement; I see their patterns of chasing after far-flung, and often unreached, dreams. They come to a place looking to something great and exciting, and instead face harsh realities: they leave their studies and families and landscapes and rootedness for marginal jobs, small, dank apartments, language barriers, societal rejection and anomie. Working themselves into a grind, they become old by drinking beer to forget the pain of a dream abandoned by forgetfulness.

However, in contrast to my personal immigration process, the reality of the third-world is harsh and unforgiving. There are so many versions of the same tragic story—for leaving one’s roots for a non-identity is never heroic, but deeply wounding—Francisco X wanted to be a doctor, a lawyer, a politician, a businessman; BE someone with a name, a life. Francisco X wanted to save a life, get a neighborhood out of poverty, build a school, make a happy family. And yet, in the face of economic or familial pressure, the Franciscos of the world uproot themselves in a mind-blowing process of painful goodbyes and false hopes of returning, and they immigrate.

Upon entry, the Franciscos find themselves lost, misunderstood, discriminated and red-lined. They move into marginal, unpaved barrios at long distances from their jobs as empleados and nannies and nadies (nobodies) and they work at night. During the day they may catch some four hours of sleep before working their next under-paid job, so they naturally forget the dreams from exhaustion. Their lives become an impenetrable structure of could-have-beens and “what-ifs” and it is the prospect of Saturday night’s beer, not changing the world, that keeps them smiling.

Oh, that we would reach them before it is too late, and the dreams have shriveled. This is my job, my rally-cry...May the Immigrant be the Missionary the Lord needs to establish the Kingdom in every barrio, every sector of every city in Latin America, the Caribe, and the World...