So tonight at NightWatch I met a guy who’s been in the U.S. for about a dozen years, and he told me how he traveled through six countries and swam through rivers and risked his life to get to America. Why? “Everybody knows that America is free.” He’s from a country that’s very poor and has no jobs. “I like work,” he said over and over, smiling. He’s worked since the day he got here. He loves working. He loves having the opportunity to work. He loves helping people. Someday he wants to go to Africa and help people there, too. He’s heard that people are really poor there. “They don’t have water.”
He thinks America is beautiful, every part of it. In his country, young men are forced into the Army. There’s great poverty and violence. “America is free.” He knows that some people don’t understand or approve of those who come here illegally (although he is now a legal resident — and so very proud!) But he told us that people from his country love to work and will gladly mow lawns and clean houses and lay concrete and build houses and work in restaurants and on tobacco farms and in chicken houses — anywhere they can get work. “I like work.” “America is free.” “America is beautiful.”
We met him downtown. He has a home, a car, a job. We offered him soup, bottled water, hot chocolate. But he kept saying “No, no, give to those who need.” The only thing that he would take from us was a Bible, in his native language. He was so happy to get it. His eyes lit up. “This is really going to help me,” he kept saying. He was so excited to have that Bible. “I love Jesus,” he told us, smiling from ear to ear. When I thought of all the things I’ve heard people say about people like him, it made me really sad. No, America is not always beautiful. But he sure is. And I’m glad he’s here. Even if he wasn’t born here. I was. Neither of us chose. I guess you didn’t either. He makes me want to live in the America that he sees.
