Why We Need Faces Behind All Those Issues

September 11, 2010

“You have never tasted anything like it.”

The words happily tumbled from “Jose’s” mouth, one caught upon the other, as he tells us about the back-breaking work of picking coffee beans on his grandmother’s farm in El Salvador.

“My brother and I were like mules, hauling these incredibly heavy bags back to her house,” he said. But even “Jose” knew what the payoff would be. He knew she would roast and then hand grind those beans, turning them into the finest cup of joe a person could imagine.

“Oh my God, it was so good,” he sighs, bringing the imaginary cup to his lips, eyes closed, a smile stretching across his face.

Every issue needs some tissue—human tissue, that is. For me, then, the immigration issue has taken on the face of “Jose,” the 17-year-old East senior who has more charm packed into his milk-chocolate skin than the night sky has stars. I have known—and enjoyed—“Jose” for three years now, his face a regular presence in the East High library, where he moves from table to table, hassling the freshmen, recommending a move on a chess board, plunking out an assignment on a computer.

But these last two weeks, I have come to know more about him than I ever could have imagined. I have learned that “Jose” and his immediate family crossed the U.S. border—uninvited--five years ago, when he was 12, his parents driven by the desire to provide their two sons with a good education.

I have learned about the myriad kinds of mangoes that grow just outside his grandmother’s door, one with a milky-white pulp that feels like sandpaper against the tongue. I have learned that, when a village of 25 is celebrating something special, the best way to kill a cow, tied with a rope to a tree, is to draw the machete quickly along its neck.

“If you don’t like blood, you would not want to be there when the cow is killed,” he recalls. “You have never seen so much blood. But he dies quickly.”

I have learned that, for someone who loves to learn, a young man who dreams of working in medicine, acquiring a Social Security number can be as daunting as attempting the peak of the Himalayas, an insurmountable goal seemingly beyond one’s reach.

I have learned that following the speed limit is about more than just safety, especially if you don’t have a license.

Ironically, if “Jose’s” dreams are to come true, if he can find a way to go to college in this country that has become his own, he will never again taste his grandmother’s coffee or bite into a mango freshly plucked from the tree out back. For “Jose’s” dreams to come true, he must lose his past and all the people he has left behind in the hills of El Salvador.

On this day when we mourn the loss of our own—three thousand who died in three places, some whose skin was brown, whose faith was not Christian, whose families are not from here—I thought it was important to talk about “Jose,” a student I have come to love, a human being who possesses gifts and knowledge, stories and dreams, just like the rest of us.