What’s A “Good” Immigration Policy?

By Mariana Garza

What would “good” immigration policy look like?

I think about immigration — the act of entering and settling in a country of which you are not a native — constantly. I was never supposed to be an immigration lawyer, I stumbled upon this practice in a rather different way. I found myself on a weekly radio show in South Texas speaking in Spanish and playing old Los Tigres del Norte songs these days.

The plan was to talk about my bankruptcy practice, in addition to politics. We’d read tips about what to do if you’re pulled over, we announced “no refusal” weekends in Spanish. Then one Friday, from the middle of nowhere (Freer, Texas actually — where my older brother is a high school band director) a woman called and asked me about adopting a young girl who had entered this country without inspection. That is to say, who had entered this country “illegally.”

Then the calls kept coming.

People who had petitioned for their uncles, aunts, siblings, children. People who knew that the Rockport, Texas police department was stopping drivers for being brown, people who wished for a national Dream Act, people who simply wanted to say they were here illegally and they wanted to thank us for talking about immigration, people who had become naturalized U.S. Citizens.

Today in my office I met with a beautiful family. They speak English, their son has just lost his first tooth, they are expecting their second child. The father works in the oil and gas industry, the mother in a restaurant. But because she walked across a bridge two hours away from where we sat and talked, she was “illegal.” Because no one stamped her passport, a piece of paper that is simply for those who can afford it in places like these — she couldn’t afford a passport.

Twelve years ago, she was a teenager who desperately believed in a better life, a life where she could have a home and feel safe. She broke a law, yes. Simply put: she broke a law so she could survive. She left a country that has been gutted by our “good” policies. She left to find work, she left because she could read and write and she saw a better life for herself.

And work she did. From restaurant busing to grocery bagging to cooking to elder care to field work — she has done it all. She worked at a restaurant in a small town near my office when she was set up by her future mother-in-law to meet her husband. Since then, they have done nothing but work for a good “American” life. He is a citizen and she crossed a line two hours from here to meet the love of her life.

They enjoy the Olive Garden and watching their son play tee-ball.

So why are they different from you and I? What does “good” policy mean? I simply don’t know. I do know that I will prostrate my life, mind and soul for these people. For people who simply walked a meter to a better life, to better opportunity. Why? Because I have been there. I grew up in what I thought was a one-horse town. I desperately wanted a better life.

If someone told you that a “better” world was just an hour or two away, what would you do? If someone told you that your children’s school wouldn’t be shut down because of gun violence just an hour away, what would you do? If someone told you that you were safer, that your family would survive, that there was work, that you would live to breathe another day, what would you do? You know what “good” immigration policy looks like? Not like an open border, more like an open mind.

Mariana Garza is an attorney who lives in Corpus Christi, Texas.