Juan: Undocumented But Not Un-American

The first thing I noticed about Juan when I met him is his presence. For a young man, just graduated from high school -- that period when most of us were shy and awkward at best --- Juan is confident and vocal, the kind of person with clear potential to be a leader in whatever field he might choose.

The second thing you notice about Juan is the sadness in his eyes. His country, the only home he has ever known, decided his potential is irrelevant -- that no amount of talent and passion and vision and drive could ever overcome the fact that he and his family once crossed our nation's arbitrary borders without permission. It's as though Juan the person doesn't exist without Juan the paperwork. In our country, he's treated as a number -- one to be reduced. Or feared.

Fear is one of the dominant motivating (and manipulating) forces in politics today. Some have tried to convince us that we should be afraid of immigrants, exploiting our fear about our jobs and our healthcare and the economy and pointing fingers at immigrants and saying they're the cause of our problems. Ironically these are problems that have existed for years, deep flaws in the distribution of wealth and opportunity in our society, and undocumented immigrants are just the latest scapegoats. Remember gay people? Welfare moms before that? Fear is used to distract us while the real problems only grow.

The other motivating force is usually pity. But that's not the answer either. Pity is equal parts compassion and isolation -- a sort-of thank goodness that's not me, there there, and be done with it removal. The word pity actually comes from the Latin piety, conveying a sense of literal or spiritual superiority over the poor, unfortunate, pitiful soul. To pity Juan would be to rob him of his dignity and power -- and absolve ourselves of responsibility.

What else, then? The most mutually respectful of emotions, where your fate is entwined with another's, where you could never be truly safe if they are in danger, truly free if they are imprisoned, truly happy if they are unhappy. We call it love. I don't just mean romantic love (although I suspect Juan is single...). I mean the moral, even spiritual love -- a deep feeling of connection to other human beings, that their struggles are our struggles, their pain our pain, and that no one person's happiness or security or hopes for the future can be rightly put above any one else's. Just as the interests of billionaires should not be put ahead of people who are starving or losing their homes, one person's claim on the American dream should not be put above anyone else's by simple virtue of the geography of birth.

At what point did we close the borders on the American dream? The ideal of America has never been perfect in practice -- our present is still stained by a past of Native American extermination, slavery and sexism. Yet we have always marched toward inclusion, sometimes slowly, sometimes begrudgingly, but always bending the arc of our nation toward justice, as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. observed. When did the arc start flattening out? Did we decide we've dished out just enough love and justice, thank you very much, or certainly there's not enough to go around? In a nation founded on the idea that freedom and equality and opportunity are renewable resources and the more the merrier, have we achieved "peak love" and tapped out?

The writer C.S. Lewis wrote, "We love to know that we are not alone." And we are not alone. And as a nation, we are blessed by the bounty of generation upon generation of immigrants who have come to our borders and our shores to make a better life for themselves and, in so doing, make a better country for us all. It is the nation that, despite its hiccups and growing pains on the path to justice, is one that we should be proud to love. And Juan, like millions waiting at the gates of the American dream, loves his country and asks for our love in return.

Sign the pledge to support fair and just immigration reform and build a better America for all of us at www.buildingamericatogether.org.

Sally Kohn is the Director of the Movement Vision Lab.

Follow Sally Kohn on Twitter: www.twitter.com/sallykohn

Comments

[1will]

Ah yes, another column confusing ILLEGAL ALIENS with immigrants.

[clr2]

His parents are to blame. They could have come here legally. We have MILLIONS of LEGAL immigrants. Why didn't they choose the right path? We can't take on all the world's problems. You can write all the sad stories you want but the truth is we cannot survive by taking in ILLEGAL and legal immigrants. We can't do both. ILLEGAL ALIENS are sucking our systems dry. For every Juan you hold up there are 2-3 "Peters" who are in jail or in gangs. Don't try to make it sound as if all ILLEGAL ALIENS are saints. We need to enforce our laws. All ILLEGAL ALIENS should be deported, those who hire ILLEGALS should be heavily fined, and we should return to the original intent of the 14th amendment and do away with anchor babies. Why don't you go to Juan's native country and help to make changes so that people like Juan can stay in their own countries and prosper? It is not our burden to bear.

[MARTYB]

Juan has a country, this is not it.

[TuffPosh]

If you accept the structure of the U.S. (Constitution, etc.) then we don't have "arbitrary borders". If you don't accept the structure of the U.S., let me suggest leaving.

And, since we admit 1 million legal residents per year, we haven't closed the borders. We just don't allow self-service immigration, and it's horrible public policy to allow that to occur.

And, since we live in a country with limited resources, any educational discount or slot given to Juan is one taken from a U.S. citizen. I suggest we put our own fellow citizens first. Juan is a citizen of another country, and let me suggest that you concentrate your efforts on getting him an education there.

When you actually sit down and *think* about it, doesn't that make much better sense? We won't deprive educations from our own citizens, we won't brain drain other countries, Juan will be able to help the country of which he's a citizen, and we'll discourage others from coming here illegally thinking they'll get a break. Let me suggest "liberals" concentrate on that instead of trying to take educations from U.S. citizens.

[Ricey]

Thankyou Ms. Kohn for your wonderful and thought provoking essay. You described, in rich detail, how fear, indifference, and scapegoating has made the undocumented ready targets for the pain and frustration many Americans face today. We should be pointing the finger at war mongering Washington and our corporate overlords and demanding change regarding our failing laissez fair Chinese/NAFTA free trade economy , rising class inequality at a time when corporate exec salaries are through the roof, the decade old insurance and pharma induced stalemate over healthcare reform, overflowing prisons raking in profits due to asinine law enforcement policies such as "the war on drugs". Instead, the smoke and mirrors have been set up so we target the voiceless underclass we have living under us with "its the illegals that are driving down wages and driving up costs in healthcare, education, and law enforcement" The more we sling mud at the undocumented, the more the real culprits of the mess get away with duping the American populace. I'm glad Ms. Kohn put Juan, a human face, on the forefront of the immigration debate because I feel many of us forget we're talking about human beings. And about what Thorn said about "legal immigration" - the restrictive and expensive labyrinth of legal immigration in place today would have prevented many of our immigrant ancestors from ever reaching Ellis Island. So please quit with the high and mighty attitude.

[Thorn]

Jesus. Save your saccharine prose and observe a little thing called "legal immigratio­n." It really does exist, Virginia.

[neoplasm]

Ironic that you would begin your cynical jab by invoking Jesus. I can just picture Jesus and his apostles detained at the border while you scold them for not "legally migrating.­"