Nobody would want to be a tago nang tago

US-Mexico border in Tijuana

SAN FRANCISCO—Nobody would want to be an illegal immigrant, to be a tago nang tago.

One incident made this clear to me many years ago.

It involved a little girl. When I saw her she was wearing a nice white dress, perhaps one she used in going to church with her family in Mexico. I didn’t see her face, only her dress and the man she was with, who was probably her father or her grandfather.

They had just climbed down from the fence in San Ysidro, California, on the U.S.-Mexico border. On the other side was Tijuana.

The nice dress was probably part of their escape plan, a way to blend in and not appear like fugitives. It didn’t work. They had just stepped on U.S. soil when they were caught. I saw them being led away by immigration authorities.

I was with the immigration authorities when it all happened, riding in front of the patrol car with other UC Berkeley journalism students who were allowed to ride along with a border patrol.

That girl would be in her 20s today. I wonder if she and her family ever tried to cross into the U.S. again. If she did, she’d be one of thousands of children brought into the U.S. without papers who now have a chance to get legal status under the new executive order.

That would not have made her experience that day many years ago less traumatic. And it doesn’t change the fact that being an illegal immigrant is not a pleasant experience. Nobody would ever want to be a tago nang tago.

Who would want to have to climb a fence only to begin a life on the run?

Who would want to cross a desert, as many Latinos dare to do, taking some secret, often dangerous, path into the U.S. southwest?

Who would want to see Filipinos live as fugitives in the U.S., often at the mercy of employers or even a mean-spirited kababayan who could easily expose their status?

Finally, children of undocumented immigrants have been given a way out of a legal limbo in a country most of them have always known as home.

It was a victory for Filipinos like Jose Antonio Vargas and J.B. Librojo. Though he achieved his legal status years ago, it’s even a victory for former Philippine Olympic boxer Chris Camat who also found himself in a similar legal bind.

But immigration will, no doubt, continue to be a contentious issue in the U.S.

And after living in the U.S. for more than 20 years, there are some things I know to be true about immigration and the debate over it.

One, many Americans hate illegal immigrants, but they actually need them – even though they may not know this to be true, or would rather not admit it to be true.

Two, many Americans accuse illegal immigrants of taking their jobs, but many of them also would not want to take the jobs these immigrants are supposedly stealing.

What happened recently in Alabama underscored these points.

After state politicians imposed a rigid law ostensibly aimed at curbing illegal immigration, Latinos, even those who were in the country legally, got so annoyed with it, they left the state. That left farm owners scrambling to find workers to work their fields.

“We’ve had quite a few applications, but they don’t want to work,” one businessman told CBS News.  Another businessman told the Washington Post, “The whites lasted half a day, and the blacks wouldn’t come at all. The work was just too hot and hard for them. … We’ve been using Mexicans for 30 years, and now they’ve been run off… If this law sticks, what’ll we do then?”

This is not about portraying one group as being harder working than another. For, undoubtedly if the economic crisis deepens in the U.S., anyone needing to support a family would take on even the most back-breaking work.

But the biggest unspoken truth in the debate over immigration is that so-called illegals – many of whom are underpaid and treated badly – have played a critical role in the U.S. economy.

During hard economic times, that truth gets twisted around. Extremist views sometimes emerge.

There have been calls to militarize the border, even to build an electrified fence that could kill any would-be border-crosser. Many years ago, some San Diego citizens parked their cars at the border and beamed their headlights at the fence, in a campaign against the so-called “invasion” by Mexicans. Some Mexicans responded by bringing mirrors to the border which they used to reflect the light back to the U.S. side.

On the other hand, I have never heard any immigration rights advocate call for an open border, or demand that all immigration controls be eliminated. No.

What I’ve heard them say is this: Yes, these people are here illegally, but let’s treat them humanely. Yes, they broke the law, but they are not criminals.

There are immigrants who are criminals, who abuse system and commit crimes in the U.S. But those two groups – the criminals and the undocumented who came here in search of a better life – should not be lumped together.

Even some conservative pundits agree.

“The problem of gangs and drug violence should not be confounded with the behavior of the vast majority of illegal immigrants to the U.S., who by and large are seeking the same thing that every immigrant to America has wanted since the time of the Mayflower: to better their condition and that of their families,” Francis Fukuyama wrote two years ago in the Wall Street Journal.  “They are not criminals in the sense of people who make a living by breaking the law.”

My student experience at the border underlined this point.

One evening during our border visit, the immigration police let us see up-close a section of the fence dividing the two countries, a stone’s throw from where a group of men were hanging out. They were Latinos, mostly Mexicans, who apparently were hoping to get across.

With me was my friend Hugo, who is from Mexico. I followed him as he wandered toward the fence toward the group. He began chatting with the Mexicans. I couldn’t understand what they were saying, but it sounded like a casual, friendly conversation. These weren’t criminals, just ordinary people hoping for a better life.

Hugo’s own life and career illustrate the perils of life in Mexico, even for a middle-class professional like him. He recently left his job as a reporter for a major Mexico City paper. A war against the drug trade has been raging in his homeland. The risks had just become too high, the threats of violence too real.

Of course, Mexicans from less privileged backgrounds have been struggling for a much longer time, and with more dehumanizing forms of violence, including poverty.

At the border that evening, Hugo and I stood next to those young men who were striving to escape all of that.

Eventually, the border patrol officer who was giving us the tour became uncomfortable with the scene. He politely told us it was time to go.

So Hugo and I had to step back from the line dividing the U.S. and the Mexico, from that fence where the young men from his homeland, a country so similar to mine, stood patiently, waiting, hoping, dreaming.

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