An Immigrant's Tale

I have a friend in here named Omar and I call him “O man.” Funny, one of the closest friends I had outside was a guy at work I nicknamed “O man.” Then, I was arrested and like so many others, he fell off the map. I learned a lot about the real meaning of friendship and commitment after my arrest. Those are great words, but they don’t mean much until everything is on the line and you find yourself alone. The few who stick it out, you soon discover, teach you what friendship is all about.

            I don’t overuse the word friend anymore. So, when I say someone is a friend, I’ve made a determination that they can be trusted, that they’re in line with my values, my views, and they are at least trying to move forward. With those gut feeling standards in place, I can think of only five men in this environment whom I can call friend. Ironically, that’s about the same number outside who have hung in there through this midlife correction.

            This blog isn’t about friendship; it’s about Omar’s story and its relevance to today’s headlines. Omar is thirty-three and has been incarcerated since he was seventeen. If things remain as is with no change in goodtime earning levels, he will leave DOC custody in 2019. Omar was born in Chesterfield County. His parents are naturalized U.S. citizens, having earned their citizenship in the late 1980s. And that’s where the story begins.

            Before Omar was born, first his father and then his mother fled El Salvador. During the 1970s, that nation was engaged in an East-West proxy war. Communist rebels battled government troops. There were right-wing paramilitary death squads that went out at night and summarily executed regime opponents. In the mountainous rural areas of the country, the Communist leaning rebels exerted their influence and used violence and fear to intimidate the population.

            In all our debates and name calling about “illegals” and America’s immigration policy, we tend to hear very little about the people who come here. Why would they risk their lives and their stability to come to America? I tell the college guys they need to develop empathy and see struggles and difficulties through the other man’s eyes. America needs a lesson in empathy.

            Omar’s parents, a young couple with two small children, had had enough. Their children needed a chance to live in peace and prosperity. They left their two small children in San Salvador and made the dangerous trek north to America. That’s right, his parents came here illegally.

            They settled in Chesterfield County and began making a new life for themselves. They both worked hard, paid taxes (ironic isn’t it? Illegals pay taxes and social security). They sent for their two young children and had a third, Omar, a natural born U.S. citizen. And, they lived with the knowledge that it could all be lost if they were found out.

            America did a strange thing. It elected – not once, but twice – a former movie actor turned conservative champion. Ronald Reagan, the darling of 21^st century Republicans and Tea Party activists, saw a need to solve the immigration problem and his solution was positively radical. He gave illegals an avenue for citizenship. People like Omar’s parents who’d come here illegally yet began to build lives, pay taxes, and live the American dream, were given an opportunity to become citizens.

            Was it strange that Reagan – the man who brought the “Evil Empire” (the Soviet Union) to its knees – would be creator of this plan? No. Reagan believed America was the “shining city on the hill” (a beautiful biblical reference). People came here because they believed in the dream of America. Omar was there as a little boy when his mother and father – after months of English and civics lessons (learning things most natural born citizens don’t know) – stood in the main Federal courtroom in Richmond and took their oath of citizenship.

            Omar took a wrong turn at seventeen. He committed a series of armed robberies which gave him more than twenty years behind bars. When we first started talking he told me how much regret he felt. “My folks risked everything to come here for my brother and sister and then me. They wanted a good life, but I let them down.” And yet, like millions of families in this country, they have stood by their son. America, is after all, a land of second chances.

            I thought about Omar’s family as I watched the recent political go round over immigration. I’ve met dozens of men in here whose families came to this country illegally to find a better life. As these men do their time, their families wait and wonder: Will he be sent back? Will our secret be discovered?

            I don’t know what the answer is, but I know this: the immigrants have more faith in America than Americans do. They believe this country is a land of opportunity. They believe anyone here can start anew. We need immigrants. We need people who will say your economic level, your nationality, or your record will not keep you from being a productive member of society.

            My mother is two generations removed from men who came to this country in steerage from Italy. They entered at Ellis Island and clearing that hurdle they were automatically citizens. There was no seven year wait, or debate about locking the border. We forget that. We have always been a nation of transplants, people who left home and family, sometimes disgrace, for a second chance.

            What does this blog have to do with prison? Try this: America holds itself out to a higher ideal. We are the land of second chances, the land where you can get a new opportunity. It’s time we as a nation start living up to our ideal. For the vast majority of immigrants – legal and illegal – and for the vast majority of the incarcerated – America’s ideals are our only hope.

            We can be the shining city on the hill or we can be just another country. That is what the debate of immigration – or prison reform for that matter – is really all about.