Alex

Tonight I talked to my son-in-law on Skype.  He lives in Brazil.  He lived in the US until about a year and a half ago, when he was deported.  He calls when he can get an internet connection, which is about every other week.  He lives alone in a city where he knows one other person, the guy across the hall.  He works by himself, seven days a week,  putting up sheetrock.

Sometimes when we talk on Skype he cries.  I say things to be nice, but they're too hard for him to hear.  He lives in pain all the time, because he can't be with his daughter.  We are working with an Immigration attorney to try to bring him back; she says he has a 50/50 chance.

Alex grew up on a farm near the border of Bolivia.  His family farmed to feed the family. ( I've seen pictures of his parents- they are my age, but they are under-weight and missing teeth and look about 15 years older than me.)  He didn't have shoes until he was seven years old.  He has no pictures of himself as a child; his family never owned a camera.  When he was in his early 20's his friends told him he should come to America- they had come here and had gotten jobs where they could make the kind of money and have the kind of life they could never have had in Brazil. So he came.

The illegal immigration situation in America is a problem that is dealt with in a way that makes no sense to me.  People are able to come here, get jobs, have families, have a good life.  And then, without warning, maybe six, eight, ten years after coming, they are arrested and put into detention centers where they are treated cruelly.  It is wrong that they are here in the first place, but it is worse for our government to look the other way, and then try to fix the problem by tearing families apart, which only creates an even bigger crisis.

I don't know if Alex will ever be able to be a part of his daughter's life again.  I hope so.  He made a mistake, but this seems like too big a price to have to pay.  He is a kind and decent person.  I miss him like he is one of my own children.