Families Struggle to survive in America mirrors immigrant struggle

This article from Get Rich Slowly, written by “J.D.” reviews the Movie “The Farmers Wife“. A movie “follows a couple from rural Nebraska for three years (1995-1997) as they struggle to save their farm from bankruptcy”.

J.D describes the hardship some Americans face every day in vivid detail. Reading it makes your heart bleed for their desperate situation. Being a father of two, I can sympathize with the characters plight. Imagining how painful it must be to not be able to feed your own children makes my throat tighten, and my eyes well with tears.

Unable to feed their children, their farm not producing food due to drought, and jobs being scarce in their area, forces these hard working Americans to use Food Stamps. The generosity of Americans and the taxes we so willingly pay, are put to good use here, to help the hungry and the poor.

So why is it that we should have such compassion for only American families? Why is it that when a Mexican family with the same problems has no opportunity for food stamps, the father (and sometimes mother) must leave to find work hundreds or thousands of miles away?

The “demonization” of immigrants in this country is hypocritical. Citizens here base their racist opinions on the fact that the immigrants are coming here illegally, that they are breaking the law. Didn’t Rosa Parks break the law by refusing to sit in the back of the bus? Blacks and Women voting was against the law until…..

….well until it WASN’T.

So if your racist opinions about immigrants are shrouded in the legality of the act, then you are as ignorant as those who persecuted Rosa Parks for sitting at the front of the bus. Immigrants come here for the same reason as the characters in this movie turn to food stamps. To feed their children.

If you were in the same sitation, you would do whatever was in your power to feed your kids. Even if that means traveling half a world away to work in a country that hates you because of the color of your skin, because you were born over there instead of over here, because you speak Spanish and not English, because you are different. When all you want to do is feed you family.

Hath not a (Mexican) eyes? hath not a (Mexican) hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with
the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject
to the same diseases, healed by the same means,
warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as
a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?
if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison
us, do we not die?

An excerpt from the movie serves as a reminder of how any one can be a victim of uncontrollable circumstances and the sometimes difficult decisions that must be made as a result:

“The month of June and July, Darrel wasn’t working at all. Planting was taking forever, and he wasn’t working off the farm. FHA wasn’t letting us have any farm money to live on. And when I clean two, two-and-a-half days a week, that tells you that by the time we pay any bills, you have maybe $20 for groceries. For the month. If you call that desperate, yeah I’d say it’s desperate.

“I know he hated even mentioning it — it took a while for me to even be able to talk him into letting me do it — but I went and applied for food stamps. We’re only eligible for food stamps for a couple of months anyway. And Darrel even hated me doing it. But yeah, after we got on them, he was happy he had food to eat.”

Just because they’re U.S. citizens does not mean they are more entitled to feed their children than any one else. We are all equal in the eyes of God.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

…mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

The words of the Founding Fathers, never mention Citizenship as a requirement for being created equal. The government derives its powers through the consent of those it governs, citizens or not. Because we face a Despotic government we must heed the direction of our Declaration of Independence, which urges, “it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government“