When my grandfather was a teenager he was able to land a job in a general store. He was mostly on his own with only a distant uncle serving as the guardian of the small inheritance that he received when his grandmother died. She had raised him after his mother’s death during childbirth but when he was thirteen she was gone and so he found ways to support himself with little jobs here and there. The position in the store kept him fed in a time when a depression was decimating the country. This was not in the twentieth century but at the end of the nineteenth century during the so called Gilded Age. 

Grandpa often described the desperation of ordinary Americans who became so despairing that they joined protest groups or resorted to theft to keep their families from starving. He saw Coxey’s Army marching through his town on its way to Washington DC with a ragtag group citizens determined to get the notice of Congress and hopefully get some help. He also witnessed his neighbors stealing from the store where he worked and sometimes even looked away from their thefts when he saw the dire situations in which they lived.

Later, when my grandfather was the head of a family he would all too often find himself out of work during the Great Depression. He told me that people, including himself, would do whatever it took to stay alive. He described driving to South Texas to purchase cabbages from the farmers there and then selling them for a small profit that allowed him to purchase food for his family for one more week. He often commented that a truly good man would move heaven and earth to take care of his children and that might even include moving, lying and in the worst case scenarios stealing. 

I never got the idea that my grandfather ever had to become a thief but he certainly moved over and over again following the jobs and seeking the places where people were kind enough to work together and share whatever they had. He admired people who were brave enough to take risks in pursuit of survival and was never too proud to do the most menial of jobs or even to take charity if needed. 

I think of the wisdom of my grandfather quite often, especially in the present times when our nation is divided as to what to do about people who have immigrated to our country without going through the proper channels to get here. I wonder how many of those souls are just like my grandfather was when he literally took pride in keeping his family housed and fed no matter what it took to do so. He was a protector for all of his one hundred eight years and I think he would have seen the immigrants from a different point of view than just the kind of black and white indictments that deem them to be criminals for taking the risk of getting their families to a safe place. 

I worked with many children who were brought to our nation without proper papers. They were mostly from proud families like my own. Their parents worked long hours seven days a week to provide them with the opportunities that were unavailable in their home nations. They did the kind of jobs that most Americans do not want. They were not taking from anyone. They paid their bills and their taxes and taught their children to love this nation and to be grateful for their good fortune. Nonetheless they often conveyed their fears and hoped that one day their families would no longer feel unwelcome even as they worked so hard to prove themselves. 

I suppose that my grandfather showed me how to look at the situation of those who have immigrated to our nation illegally a bit differently from those who want them gone. While I am not so naive as to believe that none of them had bad intentions and indeed have engaged in criminal acts I know from experience that the vast majority of them only wanted better lives for their children. They knew that their existence would be difficult but it was a sacrifice that they made out of love. Indeed they were not so different from my own maternal grandparents who were lucky to be allowed to come to the United States without any restrictions or quotas in the early twentieth century. 

My heart breaks for the people who are being hunted by the present administration. The fears inside immigrant communities are wreaking havoc on people who have been serving us well with their skills and willingness to work long hours at jobs that few of us would ever wish to do. Not all of them are illegal but in the sweeping deportations that are happening across America even those who are here with permission are being uprooted and sent to uncertain futures. Children are being handcuffed as though they are criminals. The whole situation is absurd and should be frightening to all of us. 

I learned a long time ago as an educator that I had the power to rile up my students enough that they would lose their composure and strike out against me. I never used that power because baiting someone is vile and yet this is what our nation appears to be doing with both those who are being sent to detention centers and jail and those who are defending them. What is happening is very wrong and surely we all can see that. It is time to put a stop to the insanity and cruelty of it all. 

I don’t know where this will lead but the potential for the destruction of all of our freedoms is frightening. There is a vindictiveness overtaking our land that is unAmerican and those of us who love our nation know that we must voice our concerns while we still have the right to do so.