Before You Judge, Let a Refugee Take Your Hand

Please allow me to tell you about my friends.

My wife and I bought a home in Front Royal in 2004 and for the next ten years spent weekends here, then went back to DC to our places of work.  Our dogs loved to get in the car on Friday nights, but they were displeased by the prospect of leaving the open space of the mountain on Sunday night for the harsh city streets.

On one Sunday night trip to DC, my cellphone rang.  It was my friend Betty calling from El Salvador.  Betty is the mother of three kids.  Rudy is a teenager.  Karen, her daughter, is in the middle.  Angel Daniel is the baby.

Betty is a rape victim.  She, nevertheless, gave birth to Daniel.  For years, my wife and I served as Daniel’s sponsor through a program in Kansas City.

Betty asked me if I could buy or build them a house because it was urgent that they leave their home and community.  Betty and her kids live in an area called La Chacra where the Catholic parish of Maria, Madre de los Pobres (Mary, Mother of the Poor) is located.  I have visited the parish many times since 1991.

Betty explained that Rudy was being recruited to join a gang.  La Chacra is a very poor community, and three gangs operated there.  Betty said that the gangs had let it be known that if Rudy refused to join them, they would kill Rudy and his mother, Karen and Daniel.

We did not have the means to build them a house.  Thay fled the community, and I have not seen or heard from them since.

Zoila was introduced to me in 1991 as an assistant to the pastor of the parish.  She was a great host and well-known by all.

Zoila had several children.  Her family was living at a time of political repression and civil war.  One of her sons was killed by death squads and delivered to his mother in a box.  Another son fled the country lest he meet the same fate.

Daisy was an active member of the parish. She had a decent job and made a little money.  One night she had a letter shoved under her door instructing her to pay “rent.”  Rent is protection money paid to a gang.  Daisy was no longer to be found in the parish.

For ten years, I served as a member of the board of Salvadoran Enterprises for Women (SEW), an organization supported by Catholic nuns that helped to create and nurture small businesses for women in remote rural areas of El Salvador.

Women would gather and discuss why they wanted to start a business and how they could work with promoters on budgets and business plans.  They wanted to care for their families, and they stressed that they did not want their children to flee to the United States.

One such business was a bakery in a rural hamlet.  SEW had helped people in the community to start a natural medicine business and some women wanted to start a bakery.  SEW provided the oven.

On my first visit to the bakery, the bread and pastries were terrific.  The women worked with each other with some working a few days and others taking their place on other days.  They spread the work around.

A couple of years later I returned to the bakery and found that they were only baking bread.  I asked what happened to the “pan dolce” or pastries.   There had been tremendous rain, and the price of sugar had become so high that they could not sell cookies at a price that exceeded the cost of making them.

Life is hard in El Salvador.  The people there are gentle, kind and with amazing faith and when they flee it is for good reason.

I had the opportunity to go to McAllen, Texas and volunteer at the Humanitarian Respite Center run by catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley.  It was an intense and rewarding experience.  The people served there were not illegal immigrants, but people released from federal custody in coordination with U.S. Customs and Border Control.

300 hundred men, women and children would enter the center each day.  They were provided with some daily necessities like toothpaste.  Donated clothes would be offered if available. They would work with volunteers to determine where they were going and what time the buses left.  They could take a shower, use the bathrooms, take a nap and get something to eat.

A teenage boy from Honduras camel to the clothing room and searched from a t-shirt.  I asked him where he was going. Boston was his answer.  I told him he would need something warmer than a t-shirt in Boston in March.

Kids would approach me and other volunteers and point at their lips.  They needed some Chapstick for their sun-burned lips.  Vasile sometimes had to do.

One day I was standing in a corridor and a small boy, about 4 or 5 approached me.  He did not point to his lips or say anything…he just took my hand.  Perhaps I am wrong, but I thought his silence said that I appeared to be a nice person with a smile, and he trusted me and that I was there to help him.

We are living through a fearsome time for people like those I met in McAllen and in El Salvador.  We are told to fear them.  We show them an ugly face.

I wish my fellow Americans could get to know people like Betty, Zoila and that little boy in McAllen.  They all have stories, just like you and me, and their stories matter.  I also hope that before you pass judgment on immigrants and refugees, that a little boy will take your hand and look into your face and smile.