Maryanne.
Maryanne came to see me because her son, her beloved son, worked at a local restaurant and was being harassed by a co-worker. He was being called names, threatened, defamed. When Maryanne was much younger, she was married in Mexico. She got pregnant. Her husband left her. She could not provide for herself. She tried staying with family, but they could not feed themselves, let alone her and a new baby boy. So, not long after her son was born, she came to the U.S. No papers, an experience she describes to me and it scares me to know that any human went through something like that and reminds me that only a desperate person trying to save her child's life would endure what I can only call torture.
When she arrived in the U.S., though, she had no problem finding work. And her son? A-student all through school. But they are both undocumented, illegal. Now her son is out of high school, wanting to go to college. But he is "an illegal." Known now by this alone. He cannot adjust his status, he cannot, under current law, make things right. Those he works with have figured this out somehow and a woman, the harasser, believes he should not be allowed to work and threatens to turn him over to the government. She threatens to report him so he will be deported. She sends defamatory notes to people he knows, to people in the community. She calls him "an illegal." That has become his name. And the mother, broken, ashamed, embarrassed, sorrow-filled, sits before me and asks what her son can do. He has been in and out of the hospital with bleeding ulcers, digestive track problems, anxiety attacks, all resulting from the way he came to the U.S. as a baby.
His mother appears to hate herself. It is her fault. She brought him here. She is why he is "an illegal." She is like stone. She has accepted that this is her punishment for a decision she made in desperation as a young, abandoned mother. At the end of our time together, she tells me, off-handedly, that she has an inoperable brain tumor. I wonder if she will ever forgive herself.
The fallout.
via justhangingontograce.blogspot.com
The story above is written by Kellye Fabian who is a lawyer in Chicago area. She recounts several recent stories of the underground suffering of undocumented workers.
At Christmas, I am reminded that soon after Jesus' birth, he and his parents became undocumented immigrants. They were refugees seeking safe ground in Egypt from the persecution of Herod. I have not reflected much on their experience. Little is written about it. I wonder today what the political climate of Egypt was at the time? How was this vulnerable family treated when they crossed the border?
If Mary, Joseph and Jesus were crossing different borders today, would I receive them?
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