Guest columnist Cristobal Cavazos: Understanding the border crisis through the heart of Christmas
El Paso, Texas: Christmas images of migrant children and their parents huddled together, historic arctic freeze, the certainty of uncertainty and that sick feeling that you get in your stomach when everything around you is swirling in many shades of gray and blue, cement and steel, trapped at the border, the border trapped you, amigo.
Swollen feet, empty stomachs, bruises from assaults, walked a thousand miles to cross the Golden Door, for "Through this Golden Door has come millions of men and women. These families came here to work ... Immigrants have always made America great." Can you bear us witness, Ronald Reagan?
Central America: Fields that no longer yield, climate change, arrivals at and subsequent assaults in the cities that target the "campesinos," 5 feet tall and malnourished. Corrupt officials that no one voted for, the State Department, U.S. Aid, Contras, Oliver North, oligarchs that took their homes and fields and left them with the flag.
Come on! They were told there were jobs - which there are,
"Main Street across Illinois is covered with 'help wanted' signs," they were told. They heard that America is the land of opportunity. "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free ... Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me ..."
They were told that just maybe they can break on through to the other side. Jim Morrison. This land is your land, this land is our land. Sing it, Woody Guthrie.
Historical Lesson: The history of the border is one of push and pull, immigrant workers pulled in by jobs and pushed out when there is naught. "There aren't enough people to fill the jobs being advertised," said one economist this month.
There are cellphones these days. Word gets around that there are 10.7 million job openings, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. We need 1.45 million immigrants to fill the labor gap, says Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
But it's no longer like the days of Ellis Island when you could just come over without "papers," without having to wait in some non existent line (for the unskilled yet most essential of all) to fill these jobs, is it?
Seemingly not when you're foreign, dark like your (Native American) ancestors: Chapines, Nicas, Salvadoreños, Catrachos - people escaping extreme poverty and failed states, on the southern cone of the globe, and yes, when the "old country" is a rather new one formed by the United Fruit Company/ Chiquita Banana and a small number of wealthy criollo families open for business.
The Christmas Message celebrates the birth of Christ and conveys His message of love, tolerance and brotherhood, liberation.
The birth of Christ interrupted into the Roman Empire, the birth of the Sacred Infant, interrupted the tendency of things that saw the Hebrews subjugated to colonial authorities: "I have come to preach the good news to the poor!"
"That's what Christmas is about. It's about God interrupting, and it's about God coming as the stranger and disrupting plans," says the Rev. Dylan Corbett, of the HOPE Border Institute.
Whatever affects someone, affects me. We are one in Christ, and compassion is the true expression of our interconnectednes. What you do for the least of these, you do for me! Jesus, Joseph and Mary, were refugees too, they crossed into freedom, and they're crossing again.
• Cristobal Cavazos, of Wheaton, is co-founder of Immigrant Solidarity DuPage, and an activist for the Latino community in Chicago's Western suburbs. This essay is a response to an invitation for members of our editorial advisory Sounding Board to share some of their thoughts at the approach of the New Year.