America Still Represents Hope and Freedom for Immigrant Families

Like many Americans, I have spent the past two weeks bothered by the images of Afghans fleeing the chaos and horror that is currently engulfing their country.

These images gave me great pause and had me thinking a lot about my own immigrant family and their journey to the U.S. I never really talk about it much considering that I was born and grew up in the U.S., but the echoes of the land that my family left behind in Mexico still resonate with me to this day. A few years before I was born, my uncle was brutally murdered in a small Mexican town by members of a politically well-connected family. A minor altercation with one man led to an ambush a few hours later by a group of thugs. They shot and killed him in addition to shooting my father. Fortunately, my father survived.

At the time, my grandparents were subsistence farmers in the northern Mexican state of Sonora. They had no formal schooling and spent their lives working lands that their parents had also worked. My father did too. The youngest of nine, he had no formal schooling and tilled corn fields day in, day out. On the weekends, my father tried to make some side money by selling corn and cactus leaves in the streets of a small Mexican town.

So, it was one afternoon in the spring when an argument broke out between my uncle and another younger guy. The fight ended, but the revenge continued. The guy came back later that evening with several of his friends and family members. They did not waste time. They killed my uncle by shooting him repeatedly in the face. My uncle was unarmed. They also shot at my father as he raced away for his life. My father’s parents were in shock. They knew that their area of Mexico was without any real law and order. They knew that these thugs would eventually come back and finish off my father. Worse yet, because of their surname, none of these thugs would ever be arrested. Now, thirty years later, not one has ever been prosecuted.

So began my grandparents’ insistence that my father leave to “el Norte,” the U.S. My father did not want to, but fearing for his life, he opted to follow the rumors of farm work in Arizona and later in Colorado. It was in Colorado that my father met my mother, a U.S. citizen who was born to Mexican parents in the Rio Grande valley of Texas. The rest is history — my history.

I tell this story because it shows how my family, with their limited schooling, saw the U.S. For them, this land was one of opportunity, law, order, and justice. It was a land where if someone wronged you, there was due process and a way to ensure that their wrongs would be addressed. No family had influence over judges or police. No family had a final say on who could live and who couldn’t. American justice in their eyes was both blind and fair.

Fast forward to what we see now. We see this country crippled by grievance culture, wokism, crony capitalism, and a sense that those who are politically connected are worth more than those who are not. It is sad to see this because for centuries, this country was the last stop for immigrants seeking hope and justice. It was the only place where the rule of law was upheld and where people felt that they all had a fair shake. If this country were to fall, then families like my own would have no other option than to endure what they previously had — a broken, corrupt society where murders were committed with impunity.

Now, we live under a Democrat regime that operates by pitting groups against one another and employs professionally-drafted soundbites to avoid responsibility for perhaps the most haunting human catastrophe of our lifetime (the persecution of non-Taliban Afghans). We celebrate institutions like Yale University that once recruited the Taliban spokesman as a star undergrad. We employ ‘moral relativism’ and argue that maybe the Taliban is not so bad, as evidenced by the Biden administration begging Taliban leaders to spare the U.S. embassy and musing about their place in the international community.

All of this is deeply troubling. It is a real call to action for all of us. If one truly believes in this country or even tries to see this country through the eyes of their immigrant family members, then they will know that our system of law and government requires us to put in the work. It requires us to know civics and to get involved. There are no excuses. We must fight. We must organize. We must write, testify, and do what we can to ensure that the ideals of this country are preserved. I especially hold this duty in high regard because the default for my family–a rural Mexico where elite families could literally get away with murder–is frightening.

And as long as I can, I will continue to help further the cause of liberty and freedom. If not me, then who else?