IN THE MIX:Looks like immigrants are people

I love to see people stand up for themselves and band together for a common cause. I dread all the discussions sure to come during and after such events.

Discussions about illegal immigration are so often impossible to conclude. People come from too many points of reference to have a rational discussion. Even when rational people are talking and referring to legitimate research, they can’t seem to agree on the basics.

There’s just enough data to tell people like me that illegal immigration is not destroying the country and just enough data to tell people on the opposite end of the argument that illegal immigrants are pretty much the cause of all our financial and social woes. Too often we can only see what we’ve been taught and what we want to see.

The argument sometimes goes too far and someone says people shouldn’t be allowed to speak Spanish in this country. My favorite tool in discussions about illegal immigration is when people accuse others who “look like” illegal immigrants driving expensive cars to drop their kids off at school to enjoy a free breakfast.

First of all, who knows which kid is paying and which isn’t, and more important, what does an illegal immigrant look like?

I know what they look like — they look like my grandpa. Like most of us Latinos born in America, he had the same face as an illegal immigrant. It is my grandpa I think of when I watch the crowds marching in support of immigrant rights. I see my grandpa, and I remember how his big sisters, still in Mexico, talked about people being rounded up in the streets of Santa Ana in the 1930s with a few bags of belongings and hopefully their children in tow. They would be placed in the back of a truck and dropped off over the border.

I remember the story that my great grandpa and grandma didn’t want the government to choose for them what they could take or where they would be relocated to. They left before the authorities had the chance. They rounded up the kids and left the home they bought in Santa Ana. They also left the tortilla shop and tamale shop Great Grandpa owned in Santa Ana.

The Lopez family took a journey to Suchil, Mexico, that ended with my pre-teen great uncle asking, “We drove a month for this?”

My grandpa came back as an adult. He was born in America and decided he could have a better life north of the border. He became a Marine, a photographer, and the father who would admonish my father when he complained about going to school.

“Grab a shovel,” he’d say. “You can practice to be a ditch-digger. That’s all you’ll be if you don’t go to school.”

My grandpa looked like an illegal immigrant. Some of you may look at the recent marches and see a group of people who you don’t understand, and who, even worse, may represent great change in your community. But many of us see our parents, cousins, children and ourselves when we were children.

It’s easier to throw around unsubstantiated costs of supporting illegal immigrants than to see the issue for what it is. For me, the argument boils down to a discussion about people. That’s right, at the end of all the numbers, there are people.

I’m pretty sure that the Golden Rule and the concept of loving one another aren’t nullified if someone has stepped across some man-made line in the sand.

The argument will continue as long as there are people in the world who need someone else to complain about, to blame for their problems — and to fear.

Poverty, crime, fear and corruption are all things our society has to focus on. Of course, illegal immigrants get caught up in all those elements, but they didn’t cause them. An intelligent response to these problems, along with a reasonable solution to immigration issues, can help make our country a better place for everyone to live and we can be satisfied that morally acceptable means are being used.