Have you ever viewed a documentary that won’t leave your mind even as you attempt to focus on other things? This happened to me after I watched a CNN special report on the trials of a group of migrants making their way through one of the most dangerous treks in the world seeking new lives for themselves and their families. The journey from South America into Central America and then to points north, often involves a torturous journey through the Darien Gap, an untamed jungle that separates Colombia from the settled areas of Panama. 

Individuals and families pay cartels to guide them through a route filled with countless dangers. The trip is advertised as a two day affair, but it often extends into four or five days of walking through a hell scape that too often leads to injuries or even death. Desperate people from around the world pay guides to show them the route that passes through areas so muddy that some people lose their shoes in the muck and must continue walking in their bare feet. The dangers are a hundredfold as they try to dodge poisonous snakes, heat stroke, hunge, thieves and exhaustion. Surviving often requires making multiple payments of money, labor or food. Old and very young alike risk everything rather than turn back to untenable lives in countries like Haiti, Venezuela or even China. 

Watching the struggles of the people willing to endure a kind of living hell made me realize how horrific their former lives must have been. Nobody would be willing to endure the hardships of the journey on a whim. If there were even a shred of hope back home they would surely return. It is impossible to imagine how horrific their lives had been or to understand their willingness to literally deadly hardships for the slim chance of making it to a better place. The elderly folk and the families with children were especially poignant in their determination to make it a new future that they believe will surely make their struggles worthwhile.

The CNN documentary featured a grey haired teacher from Venezuela hoping to make it to Houston to be with relatives. She used a cane to keep herself upright and often struggled to climb the slippery mountains of mud or to stay upright while walking on jagged rocks in the water. At times she appeared to be ready to collapse, but something pushed her forward, helped her to ignore her pain. Often strangers on the trek with her stopped to help her move just a few feet more in her quest. 

A mother carried her disabled daughter on her back. A father held his feverish son close to his chest. People created a stretcher for a stranger who had injured his leg and was no longer able to walk. A little boy spoke of moving to Miami and going to school so that he and his sister might become educated and grow up to have jobs that afforded them a home with a swimming pool. The humanity of the caravan evoked images of Moses traveling to the promised land or Ulysses struggling to find his way back home. 

I thought of my own grandparents who left kith and kin behind in 1912, hoping to find freedoms that had been denied them in the land that would one day evolve into present day Slovakia. They paid for passage on a steamship that took them to Galveston, Texas from whence they made their way to Houston where work was plentiful and their future seemed instantly brighter. While they were not always welcomed because of their language and customs, they mostly encountered little resistance. There were no walls or camps or hoops through which they had to jump. They just came along with hundreds of thousands of others from Eastern Europe, Italy, Ireland, Germany and the United Kingdom. 

Humankind has traveled from one place to another for centuries. The story of civilization is a fluid tale of hunting and gathering that forced people to follow the creatures of the earth in migrations that ultimately led to settlements. Tracing the journeys of people is both fascinating and daunting. How do we decide how it was okay for one group to push aside another in their quest of a new home, but not right for others to do the same thing? Were the earliest settlers of the New World any different from those who now move from one part of that area to another? We celebrate the history of the intrepid folks who sailed across the sea to uncertain adventures, but claim that borders must no longer be open for anyone hoping to be modern day adventurers. Do we really own the right to decide who gets to live among us when our own ancestors were able to come here with little or no resistance?

I don’t know the answers to my questions. I do understand how complex immigration has become. I agree that making the whole world open to any and everyone is mostly impossible, but surely the mere luck of being born in a place of freedom and opportunity should not be the only way of changing the direction of our lives. Instead of arguing over keeping people out, why can’t we speak of new more humane ways to welcome refugees who want to improve their lives? How can we watch other people risking everything to be with us and then treat them with disdain?

I challenge everyone to watch the CNN documentary about the journey through the Darien Gap without feeling compassion for those seeking asylum in our country. Perhaps if we were to walk in their shoes vicariously we might be more inclined to consider humane ways to help them. We might better realize how the luck of being born to the right parents has provided us with a great gift that we may want to be more willing to share. Certainly fighting amongst ourselves and building walls has not worked. It’s time to think outside of the box we have created.