Immigration

The other day I found out that my host padre spent approximately five years in the US to work and send money home to his family. First, I’d like to point out an interesting statistic that I learned during PST, approximately 50% of Guatemala’s GDP is made up of remittances (money that people send back home from the States). Can you believe that! They actually depended on this income as part of their budgeting! So you can only imagine what happened here in Guate when the US economy collapsed. I hope I can continue learning more about economic development while I’m here, I find it fascinating. Anyway, back to the point. So he was in the US for five years and while he was telling me this I felt a mixture of emotions ranging from feeling guilty to feeling in awe. In his first area that he lived he worked full time at a fast food restaurant and then as a cleaner in a hotel chain. Then when he moved cities he worked at another fast food place and as a janitor at a school after hours. Then he worked at another fast food chain restaurant and said that oftentimes he had to sleep in his car in the parking lot because he didn’t get off until 2am and then had to open up the store at 5am. They also made him dress up as a corndog in order to promote a special that the fast food place was advertising.
It made me think a lot about immigration in the United States, it made the topic hit home. I’ve only seen immigration from one side more or less. My mother’s half of the family are all immigrants and came to the States legally but we’ve definitely had friends and family members who didn’t come legally at first and have had to work around the system to finally become citizens. But I’ve never been exposed to someone who is working in the States with family back home, not personally at least. My host padre wanted to be home and would have much rather preferred to make his living in his own country but people here make $2 a day! TWO DOLLARS A DAY! Can you blame someone for thinking well shit, I can make at least $50 a day in the US and send that home so that my family can finally have the house we’ve always wanted, the kids can go to a good school, etc. I guess I’m posting this because I want to share this experience and maybe it too will make you think about the different situations and difficult circumstances immigrants in the US have to go through and what pushes them to come to the US at any cost. Before judging or discriminating against illegals or “lazy Mexicans”, perhaps people should think twice about what incredible sacrifices these immigrants ares making in order to help their families at home (two jobs, sleeping in cars, doing work that would otherwise be humiliating if they were doing it back in their homes). Whether someone is legally or illegally in the US, he or she is still a human being that deserves the same amount of respect you would give to any other US citizen. Can you really blame a man for trying to provide for his wife and kids? Really?