by Ruthann Miller

Created on: January 01, 2009   Last Updated: May 29, 2011

IMMIGRATION REFORM: Why We Don't Embrace It As a Nation

I'm not a racist. Or, at least, this is what I always told myself. I firmly believed that I respected all people no matter their ethnicity or the color of their skin. Even though I grew up in a household that was most obviously racist, I felt I had risen above' that upbringing, and was living an open-minded life. That exalted opinion of myself changed when my blonde, blue-eyed white-bread daughter fell in love with an illegal, Mexican national. It didn't occur to me that anyone picked up on my subdued distaste of immigrants, until I realized that my daughter had been downplaying her involvement with this young man for quite some time because she didn't want to have to introduce him to her mother. Never mind that they had already been talking marriage, or that she was entertaining the idea of returning to Mexico with him. Those facts all were less hard to face than, apparently, facing me with her choice.

That all started to change one day in May, 2004. I got a phone call from my daughter while I was at work. I could barely understand her. She was sobbing uncontrollably, and just told me to "Please come. I need you!" Thoughts of every mother's worst nightmares were flying through my head as I hurriedly gathered up my things, closed my desk, and rushed off to her apartment. When I got there, she was still sobbing, and just threw herself against me, and couldn't get a breath long enough to tell me what was going on. Bit by bit, I extracted pieces of the story between her cries. There had been a horrible accident. Alba, a Mexican girl she had befriended, had been life-flighted to a hospital. "Oh, mama, Gato is dead!" she wailed about a boy I only knew was a best friend of her boyfriend, Antonio. Afraid to ask about Antonio, she next volunteered that Antonio had been driving the car and was now being held by authorities in Iowa. Apparently, she had driven all night with Antonio's brother to see him in a hospital in Iowa, and had just returned home. His injuries were minor, I was glad to hear, but his situation was anything but. He was being charged with two counts of vehicular homicide. Alba's unborn child was killed, as well. It was a very long and painful recovery for Alba, but recover she did. I learned a lot about the depths of my daughter's compassion during that time, and I was about to learn a great deal more.

This story has many twists and turns and ups and downs that we all had to go through. The briefest

• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5
• Next Page >>