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Undocumented Immigrant Rescues Boy in Desert
This goes in the file labeled "people behaving in the real world the way they do in my head". I am sorry that this is getting shopped around as an Incredible! Story! that shatters our stereotypes! though. I don't live in a border state, but I interact with a fair number of people without immigration documents, and I have a lot of experiences of being treated with immense kindness and compassion by people who've had a much rougher time of being in this country than I have. It's fairly disorienting to venture into mainstream news and see all these blurry images of Very Dangerous Brown People, and on the flipside, widespread acclamation when someone is Compassionate While Brown, because my experience of people who cross has been: people put their lives on the line to send their kids to school, or their wife to the hospital, or to help their parents keep the farm. People who make $5 an hour meet in exile to wire money home to give their town a sewer system. I have seen entire guestworker camps mobilize to get one undocumented teenager to the doctor.
On the other hand, crossing the border is horrible, and sometimes deadly, and it costs thousands of dollars, and on the other side are are angry Texans with guns. That is not a situation where it's easy to do the right thing. Jesus Manuel Cordova deserves full credit for doing the compassionate thing, not because he was a highly-dangerous Illegal Person, but because there were a bunch of guys with guns waiting to throw him in jail if he did it. As far as the internet can tell me, the man's in an ICE detention center right now. We'll see where it goes from here.
This goes in the file labeled "people behaving in the real world the way they do in my head". I am sorry that this is getting shopped around as an Incredible! Story! that shatters our stereotypes! though. I don't live in a border state, but I interact with a fair number of people without immigration documents, and I have a lot of experiences of being treated with immense kindness and compassion by people who've had a much rougher time of being in this country than I have. It's fairly disorienting to venture into mainstream news and see all these blurry images of Very Dangerous Brown People, and on the flipside, widespread acclamation when someone is Compassionate While Brown, because my experience of people who cross has been: people put their lives on the line to send their kids to school, or their wife to the hospital, or to help their parents keep the farm. People who make $5 an hour meet in exile to wire money home to give their town a sewer system. I have seen entire guestworker camps mobilize to get one undocumented teenager to the doctor.
On the other hand, crossing the border is horrible, and sometimes deadly, and it costs thousands of dollars, and on the other side are are angry Texans with guns. That is not a situation where it's easy to do the right thing. Jesus Manuel Cordova deserves full credit for doing the compassionate thing, not because he was a highly-dangerous Illegal Person, but because there were a bunch of guys with guns waiting to throw him in jail if he did it. As far as the internet can tell me, the man's in an ICE detention center right now. We'll see where it goes from here.
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Thank you for commenting. &hearts