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The first weekend after the terror of the #MississippiRaids and the #ElPasoTerroristAttack, I’m reminded of a lesson a client taught me once. /1
He got cited for driving without a license. Pretty simple misdemeanor offense that really shouldn’t require a lawyer to handle. Go to court. Pay a fine. Take a class. Case dismissed. But he was in the process of regularizing his immigration status, so it wasn’t that simple. /2
Because ICE Officers had begun appearing in Nashville’s courtrooms, many folks in his position who had to go to court came to believe their citation could carry the possibility of arrest and imprisonment by ice while they fought their case, and if they lost, family separation. /3
So he hired me to come to court with him, negotiate his citation with the judge, and be sure any ICE encounter followed the letter of the constitution and the INA, and to be present in case his family needed to bail him out. Even with his lawyer by his side, he was nervous. /4
Every step of the way — the entrance, the metal detector, the elevator, the fingerprinting area, the courtroom — produced visible anxiety and fear for him. I recognized it as the fear a parent has when he knows he’s told his kids he’d be back even though he’s not 100% sure. /5
The hearing was uneventful. We walked out of court and onto the elevator. He exhaled this huge, weighty, sigh of relief.
Then he looked up and around the elevator car and told me in broken English,
“You know, we built this building.”
I nodded and said in Spanish, “I know.” 6
Then he looked up and around the elevator car and told me in broken English,
“You know, we built this building.”
I nodded and said in Spanish, “I know.” 6
I didn’t know. He told me again,
“We built this building. Me and my guys. I remember putting in one of these elevator shafts. I think it was this one.”
He left his kids that morning and came to the courthouse he’d helped build knowing his life in the US could end there. /7
“We built this building. Me and my guys. I remember putting in one of these elevator shafts. I think it was this one.”
He left his kids that morning and came to the courthouse he’d helped build knowing his life in the US could end there. /7
I think about this man’s words, and the reality that formed them, as I look at folks pulling into chicken restaurants this weekend while they mock the children of the workers in Mississippi who put that chicken into their hands.
Immigrants build, feed, and care for America. /8
Immigrants build, feed, and care for America. /8
If you’ve got a problem with immigrants doing those jobs, your problem’s with the people who pay and profit from their labor, and the consumers who enjoy its fruits. Your problem’s with an economic system that privileges the free movement of good and capital over that of labor /9
Your problem’s not migrants and refugees. It’s with a global caste system that says your opportunity to live a safe, healthy, and happy life is, and should be, determined by something over which you have no control, i.e., where you happened to be born and to whom. /end
