Down on the border

In 1939, Frank Sinatra sang, “South of the border, down Mexico way. That’s where I fell in love, when the stars above came out play.” In 1989, Billie and I passed over the border with only a driver’s license. We went to Gracia’s and ate. We shopped for everything from gold to imported scotch to antibiotics.

Well, times have changed. The most recent change? Title 42, a federal emergency health authority that allowed U.S. officials to turn away migrants at the US-Mexico border on the grounds of preventing the spread of COVID-19. Was Title 42 effective? Like so many things these days, the answer depends on who you ask. As the Title 42 expiration date approached, more potential immigrants appeared. Our television screens filled with video of lines of immigrants, of families, of children. Opinions abound and are freely expressed.

Immigrant. A person who comes to live permanently in a foreign country. This is a simple, universal, straightforward and solitary definition. Some people like to point out that unless we are Native Americans, we are all immigrants. There is truth there. Yes, I know about the Bering Sea.

I found it impossible to watch these television images and not wonder, “How bad is it in Venezuela for these folks to have journey so far?”

Have you ever heard of the Darien Gap in the Pan-American Highway? The Pan-American Highway stretches from Canada to the extreme southern tip of South America. Except for the Darien Gap, a totally undeveloped 60-mile cavity between the borders of Columbia and Panama. It is an area of marshes, swamp and dense jungle that has repeatedly been judged too difficult and too environmentally frail for construction.

Let me restate this. There is a highway from the tip of South America to Edmonton, Canada EXCEPT for a 60-mile stretch in the middle — the virtually impenetrable Darien Gap.

Yet somehow, through the most inhospitable of swamps and jungles, Venezuelan immigrants have trudged northward to our southern borders. Dang!

How bad, how dangerous must life in Venezuela be? What do they believe our country offers them?

Why do people immigrate? Why do families immigrate? I suspect their reasons are very similar to those expressed in the great Irish immigration of 1845 to 1855. Starvation and disease, blight and hopelessness. Despite signs in windows saying, “No Irish need apply,” they found hope.

I wonder if the Mexican economy became vibrant would folks stay there? Just thinkin’.

I went to the porch to contemplate a closing quote for this Just Thinkin’. No matter how many quotes I considered, I kept returning to Emma Lazarus’ beliefs recorded at the base of our Statue of Liberty.

I wonder if Anna Wood (McBride) had any knowledge of those words as she entered the harbor and saw the statue. I wonder.

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door. – Emma Lazarus

Hal McBride writes a column, Just Thinkin’, published each week.