As the news out of Washington becomes more disturbing, my own resolve to find ways to do good and define my beliefs is only increasing. I am not despairing or pessimistic, I am grateful for the chance to figure out who I am and what I believe and to work for my own morality in ways that are positive, and, I believe, compassionate.
Last week, a friend scolded me for my own sense of hope and optimism, so many people, she said, are frightened and endangered. She thought I should be grim and hopeless all the time.
I told her I can’t absorb all the pain and suffering in the world, it would destroy me and my ability to work, take photos, do any good at all.
I do what I can, when I can. I think that is the faith that guides me.
In recent months, I have gotten to know an undocumented immigrant who has been in the United States for more than a decade. Every week, she goes to a Western Union machine and sends almost all of her salary – all in cash, she is an agricultural worker – back to Mexico to her family.
When she came her, crossing the border was simple, and agricultural workers were very welcome. No one has pursued her or persecuted her, not when Republicans were President, not when Democrats were President.
She came there because local farmers desperately need her labor. I know several farmers who know her, they are staunch Republicans and conservatives. They want very much to help her in any way they can. They first told me about her and introduced her to me.
She is the one who gets up at 4 a.m. to wash eggs and clean roosts and feed animals, she shovels manure, works in a local dairy, cleans houses, cashes in plastic bottles and metal cans. She rarely has a day off, and when she does, she looks for more work that young Americans don’t want to do, and won’t even apply for. She works in freezing cold in sweatpants and a sweatshirt, in brutal heat doing hard manual labor.
If she is sick, she cannot go a doctor unless she can pay in cash.
She has never broken the law, does not drink. She is terrified, she avoids food shopping at Wal-Mart because she has heard immigration agents sit outside in the parking lot and wait for “illegals.”
She would like to get a work visa, be a citizen, pay taxes. She is supporting almost a dozen members of her family in Mexico, she lives in one room in an old trailer, and is now terrified to drive her car on any well-traveled road.
She told me she is living like the Jews in Poland lived when the Nazi’s came, her daughter sent her a book from Mexico about how to survive when you are being hunted. She says it is a best seller there, many people are sending it North to a country they have always known as free and compassionate.
And she is talking like the hunted – she considers everything she does, everywhere she goes, every time she shops.
This woman is lovely, generous. She has a wonderful sense of humor, and will help anyone in need.
She has sacrificed everything to help her family. Mexicans, she keeps telling me, are good people. She does not understand why they are being hunted down like criminals and sent away to a country in great distress and turmoil.
She asked me why I wanted to help her and I told her it was because I love America, and am proud to be an American. That means helping her in any way I can. I know, as she knows, that she is doing work no American here wants to do, or has done for years. Just ask any farmer.
I know also, as she knows, that there is no work for her to do in Mexico, and this selfless person, who has given up every comfort and convenience there is to help her family, desperately needs to stay here for her own sake and for the sake of others. She talks in graphic detail about what would happen to her life in Mexico.
I have found an immigration lawyer who will see her.
In a week, Maria and I are taking her to see this lawyer to see if there is any way for her to get a work visa and live here in safety. I do not know if this is possible, the lawyer says he will be honest with us about it. If there is any light for her at the end of this tunnel, we will stay with her until she finds it. I will write about it, taking great care to disguise her identity. She is not seeking to break the law, she is seeking to honor it.
I am the descendant of immigrants, I doubt I would be alive if not for America, and it’s open heart for the weary and dispossessed. If we destroy that, we kill the heart of America. I am happy to help this woman if I can.
And I understand limits.
In recent weeks, especially through my work at the Mansion, I am working to define boundaries. I intend to live my life fully and meaningfully, I will not take in all of the suffering and injustice in the world. I will not take over the problems of others, or try to alter the reality of human life.
Nor will I argue with people whose hearts have turned to stone.
I will not surrender my life to politics and argument, or to the anger and cruelty of other people.
And I am not asking for help or donations from anyone. I think this one is different. There are millions of people just like her, they are all over America. Sharing this story might help some others. We’ll see how it goes.
People are not rescue dogs, they must ultimately face their own lives and solve their own problems. There are real limits to what we can do and when we can do it. In the final analysis, people must save themselves. My task during this time it is to do what I can, when I can. And to move on when I can’t.
