Civic Duty and Immigration Reform

This week I fulfilled my civic duty for the year...the dreaded jury duty.

When I got to the court house, I found out that we were all potential jurors in a murder trial. I'm going to admit that I was pretty upset about the whole thing. I do a lot of driving around with the kids to school, preschool and stuff and finding people to take that over for the two week period required overwhelmed me.

Yesterday the jurors went through interviews by the prosecution and defense. I was far enough down the line that I wasn't asked anything. But I sure did watch and listen a lot. One of the first things I noticed was that the defendant was a Latino man who required translation for the proceedings. This was quickly a topic of conversation among the potential jurors, and not to the benefit of the defendant. The guy sitting next to me shared his pretty prejudiced views quite freely.

I could only take so much of this before informing him that my husband and his entire family are Mexican, some who came legally and some who came illegally. Just this last Thanksgiving, Eddie's mom shared their family story with us for the first time. Not even Eddie knew how his family had immigrated to the U.S. His grandpa was a migrant worker who moved from Juarez, Mexico up to central Colorado. After a few months, he came to church sobbing on a weekly basis, he missed his wife and 12 children so much. His pastor spoke to his boss, who then sponsored him and his family for immigration. They moved to El Paso, TX one day before their 13th child was born! Eddie's father came into the U.S. as an illegal immigrant and spent his first year in the U.S. in the basement of a business in Chicago without heat. He remembers never being warm enough and trying to mime what he wanted for food to local restaurant employees. Sometimes he would get food, sometimes not. A few years later, he was granted citizenship. (By the way, almost 40 years after immigrating, Eddie's mom still speaks broken English and his father is still somewhat choppy. It's hard to learn a new language as an adult)!

Julie over at One Hand Clapping has a great post that gives us a different look at the immigration debate. We would do well to consider this debate from the eyes of an immigrant.

For me, I feel the defendant in this trial is feeling first hand the impact of being an immigrant who is not wanted. Out of 120 jurors, there were two Asians and one Mexican...that's it. The rest of us were white. Two of those three were excused because they did not speak enough English and the other was excused for other reasons. I believe that the people on the jury will take their responsibility quite seriously, but I hope in the midst they can attempt to put themselves in the place of a different culture, put their assumptions aside and try to understand life from the view of a stranger. I think this is an important aspect to the immigration debate as well. I know that my point of view was significantly impacted as I sat listening to my mother-in-law tell their family story. It was no longer an arms-length away. It became part of my story.