Pro-immigrant readers see what's in front of their eyes

Mason Sergio Mejia shows up at short notice and saved us last year during the great mothball debacle. 

     Monday's column, "Show me where the immigrants hurt you" rang a lot of bells. The floodgates opened. On Wednesday, I printed a few few of the anti-immigrant replies, mostly Fox News lies chewed a few times and spat back by their well-trained viewers.
     But lots and lots of pro-immigrant comments came in as well, and as Friday's column can only run 750 words, I thought I would jump the gun and run a few today as well.
     You know how I like a good historical argument, and Alan Rhine, of Glenview, offered this:

     In your Monday column you reference a letter that you received that asked what the founding fathers would have thought about the immigration trends from the past 30 years? This reader should consult the Declaration of Independence to see what was stated by the founders who signed this document. In discussing the repeated injuries and usurpations of the King of Great Britain, one of the points made was that:

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

     The same Declaration of Independence did not speak favorable about the native Americans, who were the indigenous people that were already here. Another complaint against King George was:

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

     Immigration reform is not a new issue. To me it appears that if the founders had responded to your assignment, they would have been more concerned about harm from the indigenous people than from immigrants. 
   P.S. Alexander Hamilton was not born in the 13 colonies. If he had not immigrated from the Caribbean Island of Nevis, we would not have the play about his life.

      Unlike the nebulous imagined generalities of the antis-, supporters of immigrations have almost universally actually met immigrants. Bill O'Connor of Lake Geneva writes:

     Thank you for this opportunity. The youngest of our three was a sophomore in high school, and I knew from experience he would be around less often. I attended classes, learning to teach English as a second language.
     My first volunteer assignment was on the southwest side of Chicago. Spanish speakers, male and female, working jobs all day and arriving for tutoring on time and enthusiastic. Aquilo, a fortyish male student wanted to learn English so he could communicate better with his teenage children as well as his co workers. After about a year, I gave him a final assignment. Write a presentation on any subject and present it to me the following week. The following week he appeared all smiles and with a single construction bolt about ten inches long. His company makes these and he explained the process thoroughly. His closing statement with a huge smile, “ and these are the bolts that anchor the new street lights on 294”.
     I retired and moved to Southeast Wisconsin. A new setting but the same enthusiastic, prompt students. Elana is a single mother of two sons and was working fifty hours a week at her factory job, 6 am to 4:30. She showed up every session at 4:45, willing to work. On one occasion she was troubled. She had heard of another mass shooting at a school and feared for her sons. I suggested we compose a letter with her concerns and send it to a politician. Several weeks later, she walked into our session beaming.In her hand was a letter from Senator Tammy Baldwin, sympathizing with her and outlining her gun control efforts.
     I do not know if these people and many others I tutored, are legal and I do not care. They are doing the same thing my ancestors did, working hard and trying to improve. These are two, there are thousands and thousands just like them.

     A frequent theme is the hard-working nature of immigrants.

     This is Mike Shawgo from Second Pres. My experiences with immigrants have all been from them stopping by at the church. The first time, a group of about six guys showed up on a Saturday, when the church is open for tours. One of the tour docents came to get me to see if I could help them. The church has various supplies that we use for our lunch bag program, which wasn't open at the time. They were trying to talk to me, but my Spanish is limited. Then one of them got their phone with the Google Translate app. They were asking if we had any food. I brought out some sandwiches from lunch bag refrigerator, and also retrieved a bunch of plastic shoe boxes that had toiletry articles, wheeled them out on a cart and set them out on a table so they could take anything they needed. They picked out just a few things, then a couple of the guys started putting the lids back on the boxes, stacked them up and put them back on the cart, which I thought was nice. Then as they were leaving, saying "gracias" over and over, one of them offered to help me get the Google Translate app on my phone, which he did.
     Another time, again on a Saturday, an immigrant showed up at the church. I was there because I had volunteered to help re-set and screw down pews in the balcony that had been moved for scaffolding. This guy was sitting in a pew, and as I walked over he got out his phone with Google Translate and said he just came in to pray. I tried to speak with him a bit, and he said he had just recently arrived, and was looking for work. That gave me an idea, and I checked with the other volunteers who were working on the pews and asked what they thought about asking him to help with screwing down pews. I said I would pay him something. They said that would be great, so using my translate app, I asked if he would like to work on a project here at the church, and I said I would show him what it was. He was very enthusiastic after I showed him what we were doing, and he started screwing down pews with a passion (this was just using a regular screwdriver). He was really going to town, so one of the other guys and myself just quit working on it. One other guy had a power screwdriver, and after a while the immigrant went to him asking for the power screwdriver, which he gave him, then that guy also sat back and let him do the work.
     A group of ladies were having a meeting in the church hall and had ordered pizza for lunch. After their lunch, they had leftover pizza and came in to the sanctuary and asked us if we wanted leftover pizza. I told the immigrant we were breaking for lunch, and to come back to the church hall. Luckily one of the ladies could speak Spanish, and she described the pizzas. He said at the table with us, and was telling us (with the app) about his wife and daughter, and how he was trying to make enough money to bring them to the US. When we tried to get him to eat more pizza, he said no thanks, he was getting to fat (gordo). Then he went back to work. Meanwhile, I went to an ATM and took out $100 to pay him. When he was finished, I asked him how much pay he wanted for his work. He didn't want to take any money, and said, I think, something about that he had done the work out of the goodness of his heart (I recognized "mi corazon", and he put his hand on his chest). I said no, he did the work so he had to be paid. I gave him the $100 but it was folded up bills so he didn't know right away how much it was. But he immediately crossed himself, put his hands on his chest and looked up "to heaven." We never saw him again after that.

     There is no limit online, but I realize I can't go on forever —  I have dozens of these. One more and we'll wait til Friday. Paula Hyman, whose 3rd grade CPS classroom I visited in 2006, writes:

     I was in charge of helping my brother-in-law clean and declutter his condo. I hired a decluttering company, and she brought along three Venezuelan immigrants to help, one man and two women. Neil, I have never seen cleaning people work so hard! They spoke little English, so we used our phones to translate. They happily got right to work cleaning, scrubbing, mopping, and organizing everything in the condo. Although they worked fast, it took two all day sessions for them to finish. The condo has not been that clean since he moved in twenty-five years ago. Everything was shining, immaculate and looked like new. These people were not afraid of hard work. You could tell they had pride in their job and were grateful to make some money. It took two days, but my brother-in-law’s place place took on a whole new life. (I won’t give you details on how disgustedly filthy and cluttered it was.) I am going to hire them to do jobs at my house where I can use some help 
     Each of the immigrants had spouses that worked and kids in school. The kids all loved school here in Chicago, which was good to hear. They were each living in a decent apartment in the nicer part of East Rogers Park. I have been telling everybody that I encounter about my positive experience with these “lazy, criminal migrants.” Although I do not speak Spanish, their enthusiasm for the USA was palpable. They were so grateful to be safe in the United States. I really enjoyed working with them and gave them each a grateful hug when we parted. I plan on staying in touch and I am hoping to help them in some way.

     That'll do for today. Thanks everyone for writing in. It's a relief to remember that there are still good, decent people here, people who are able to see what's in front of them, instead of surrendering to fear and fantasy.