Instructions Part 1- Progress: Describe your progress for the past couple of weeks (since the last time we blogged). What have you finished? What have you started? What category of book are you currently reading, and why did you pick it? What obstacles/challenges are you confronting? What goals do you have going forward?
Example Part 1 - Like many of you, I blaze through fiction, especially high interest thrillers, fantasy, and realistic books. In the first few weeks of the semester, I read The Impossible Knife of Memory (heartbreaking realistic fiction about PTSD), and Every Exquisite Thing (humorous, though dark, realistic fiction about a teen who just can't conform to everyone's expectations - must get this one since I borrowed it - so good), and Between Shades of Gray (WWII historical fiction about the relocation of Lithuanians seen as threats to Stalin, many of whom fell victim to brutal work camps). But since I ask all of you to read some nonfiction, I always mix some in, and that slows my progress a bit. It took me just over two weeks to read Enrique's Journey by Sonia Nazario. Mrs. Cummings brought me this book last year with a strong recommendation, but it sat on my shelf until our recent election, when immigration became a key focus of our new president's policies, an issue that affects some of my friends and students directly. Two of my friends came from Mexico as children to work in fields as undocumented workers. Doing so was not their choice; it was a decision their mother made to save them from starvation. They are both legal citizens now, contributing to society and raising amazing children. Another pair of friends came from Pakistan and are also legal citizens, but their parents have work visas, and when their parents' health began to fail and they were unable to work, they faced deportation - deportation to a country that would not be able to help them with their health problems. Again, these are people have worked and contributed to our society for years. In my career, I've undoubtedly taught some undocumented students, and I know here at Hebron I've taught several kids who have gone through the naturalization process. The United States has long been considered a haven of shelter and refuge, a land of opportunity where people can start a new life, and a melting pot of acceptance. Many of us know the famous words on the Statue of Liberty, "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore." But in the modern world, where many feel that immigrants take jobs, burden our social welfare system, and even threaten citizens, that open attitude has shifted.
Example Part 2 - Enrique's story begins when his mother leaves Honduras; she is determined to make it to the U.S. so that she can make money to send back to her children. Deserted by her husband, unable to find work, she fears her children have no future unless she seeks a better life, and though she would like to eventually become a legal citizen, with no money and no connections, her only option is to illegally sneak into the U.S. After hiring a smuggler to take her across Mexico, Enrique's mother Lourdes enters the U.S. "at night through a rat-infested Tijuana sewage tunnel and makes her way to Los Angeles" (8). While we debate the practicality of building a wall, immigrants are coming into the country via train, bus, and even sewage tunnel, desperate to escape a bleak future. Lourdes's actions are in violation of our laws, but to do nothing would be in violation of her responsibility as a parent. She could see no other option. In Honduras, family members will care for her children as long as she sends them money, but had she stayed, she and her children faced the hopeless prospect of scrounging in trash for food and selling plantains or tortillas door to door. Though I can see the problem with unrestrained immigration, the level of poverty in Central America will continue to push people north, and our efforts will slow the tide, but as long as people are willing to go through sewers to make it to the shelter of America, there is no simple solution.
Once Enrique's mother leaves, he passes from family member to family member, including a grandmother who cannot handle him once he becomes a teenager, an uncle who gets shot by a gang in Honduras, and a father whose new wife has no interest in helping her husband's estranged son. Feeling abandoned, Enrique sees gang life or leaving as his only two options, and he joins the thousands of children who ride the top of trains through Central America and Mexico to make it to America, the "promised land." This journey is far more treacherous than his mother's nighttime trip through the sewer. He confronts gang members with machetes, police officers who will shoot rather than capture, and train mishaps that have mutilated unfortunate migrants who take one wrong step. Enrique is repeatedly beaten and/or captured and sent on a bus back to Honduras, but nothing breaks his determination to make it to his mother. In small towns throughout the state of Veracruz in Mexico, for example, an area in which people often live on "less than $2 a day...residents understand that poor people leave their country out of a deep necessity" and many of them "[hand] out food and clothing" or small bits of their own food to the migrants as they pass through on the train (105-106). Their actions are small, but they are moments that may not only offer the migrants the food they need to live, but also the reminder that they too are human and not forgotten or cast out. In one town, an entire church community built a shelter for migrants to rest and clean up on their journey; one priest even "quietly donated the entire amount [of his retirement savings] to buy the land to build the migrant shelter" (114). The generosity of these people may exacerbate the problem, may keep the stream of migrants progressing through Mexico, but driven by human compassion, they see no option but to help. They quote Jesus and his message of helping the "least among us" as their primary motivator.
Instructions Part 3 - Make a connection to an outside source based on a core idea in the book that caught your interest. Make sure you link the connection, discuss details from the source, and cite it along with the book.
We still call ourselves a "Christian" nation despite the separation between religion and government required by our Constitution. In theory, we embrace some notion of a "Christian" mindset, which to me is meant to mirror the mindset of the poor communities in Mexico who give what little they have to help migrants. Admittedly, I know that allowing an endless swell of immigration places strains on our resources, including our education system, but to build a wall and block the problems in Central America from our sight is not a a compassionate solution. As this article demonstrates, when we deport young men back to places like Honduras, they are often gunned down within days of returning. Can we content ourselves knowing that we send people back to treacherous, often deadly, circumstances? The article goes on to suggest that denying asylum to those who face grave peril is "in violation of international law" (Brodzinsky) Note also that these crackdowns on immigration occurred during the previous administration, a time when supposedly immigration was allowed to go unchecked. (Check the facts: the Obama administration deported more illegal immigrants than any previous administration, but of course Democrats wouldn't trumpet that for fear of losing a powerful Latino voting block, but I digress.)
While current rhetoric implies that the flow of immigrants has been constant, the article goes on to report what many sources have: the number of unaccompanied minors (and immigrants in general) crossing our southern border illegally has dropped sharply. So is there indeed a need for a wall? Or for a refugee ban, for that matter? These are questions that perhaps a little old school teacher should leave to the big guys in Washington, but remember, they work for us, and I DO have the right and the responsibility to ask questions about the decisions our country makes, especially if I fear that those decisions may be more designed to stoke fear than to offer security. We have the ability to vet people and to shelter them from dire threats. If we wish to maintain our "Christian" spirit, we can find a way to protect our security while also preserving our compassion.
Brodzinsky, Sobilla and Ed Pilkington. "U.S. government deporting Central American
immigrants to their deaths." The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/
us-news/2015/oct/12/obama-immigration-deportations-central-america. Accessed
8 February 2017.
Nazario, Sonia. Enrique's Journey. Random House, 2007.
"The Rolling Stones Gimme Shelter Live Pop Go the Sixties 1969." YouTube, uploaded by
rinirioz, 16 Oct. 2010. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBva-z1AsGk
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