Beloved Houstonian and Holocaust survivor, Walter Kase, used to begin his powerful story to my students like this: “I am the product of an accidental birth,” he’d explain.
“I was born to Jewish parents in Poland in the 1920s.” He would frame his tragic tale through this lens, reminding my kiddos that the terrible things that happened to him after Hitler and the Nazis invaded were a reflection of the randomness of where and when to whom he was born to through no fault of his own. In doing so, he also reminded my students of the blessings they enjoy through the accident of their own births and circumstances: they’re in America in the 21st century, and they get to go to a nice school with teachers who care about them.
And aren’t we all a product of an accidental birth? None of us earned the blessings or tragedies of our circumstances in utero.
For example, I was born to educated and caring parents who made the decision to permanently move our family to Houston after bouncing back and forth between here and Venezuela for years. My mother earned her citizenship in 2013 and attended the oath ceremony with my daughters. My father and little brother soon followed.
While our studies and hard work as a family certainly afforded us many of our current blessings, I was randomly born in Missouri while my dad was earning his degree there. Had I been randomly born in another country to other parents who, like my own, wanted to give me the best life possible in the United States of America but didn’t have the financial means to do so, I might be a target of Governor Greg Abbott’s latest cruel attack against immigrant children.
This week on Joe Pag’s radio show, Governor Abbott made the outrageous suggestion that children of undocumented immigrants don’t deserve an education. He plans on challenging the 1982 Supreme Court decision in Plyler v. Doe which ruled that states could not deny funding for the education of undocumented children . Should the Governor be successful in his challenge, this would be an immoral blow to both innocent children and the well-being of the state of Texas.
Generally, Americans don’t punish children for the crimes of their parents. But not Greg Abbott. While embracing his Christian values when it comes to denying women reproductive rights (a “value” nowhere to be found in the Bible), those same values seem to vanish when it comes to the countless lectures found in both the Old and New Testament about helping children and the poor and those who are strangers to our land:
“The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt” (Leviticus 19:34).
“Render true judgments, show kindness and mercy to one another; do not oppress the widow, the orphan, the alien, or the poor; and do not devise evil in your hearts against one another” (Zechariah 7:9–10).
“Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it” (Hebrews 13:1–3).
Perhaps one of the most well-known lessons summarizes it well: “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me” (Matthew 25:35).
And it’s not just the Bible that provides guidance to the head of the Republican Party in Texas.
Republican President Ronald Reagan — standing in front of the Statue of Liberty no less — spoke passionately about our American identity as a family of immigrants. In 1980, with Ellis Island within eye sight, President Reagan reminded us that “these families came here to work. They came to build.”
President Reagan goes on to explain that “0thers came to America in different ways, from other lands, under different, often harrowing conditions, but this place symbolizes what they all managed to build, no matter where they came from or how they came or how much they suffered.”
This god among the Republican Party shared his vision for America as a presidential candidate by insisting on the following: “I want more than anything I’ve ever wanted, to have an administration that will, through its actions, at home and in the international arena, let millions of people know that Miss Liberty still Lifts her lamp beside the golden door.”
He spoke of the families who entered through Ellis Island when we essentially had open borders. There were no papers or documentation required of these families in the years thousands streamed through our gates.
See, what the Governor seems to miss is that unless your family went through the immigration process that mine went through, your ancestors likely came here when there were true “open borders.” Unless your ancestors paid thousands for immigration lawyers and passed a criminal background check and took a citizenship test, the threshold for entering this great nation was lower then. Some of our accidental births afford us privileges and blessings that poor immigrant children today cannot enjoy.
And that’s how we should talk about immigration if we’re honest: instead of using terms like “legal” and “illegal,” we should talk about immigration for the “haves” and “have nots.” My parents were in the “haves” category, and the children Abbott targets today are in the “have nots.”
Legal ports of entry have been closed for two years due to a virus some in the Republican Party argued didn’t exist. Governor Abbott demands to maintain the COVID Title 42 immigration restriction while he fought schools who wanted to implement mask requirements to stop the spread of this deadly pandemic. His hypocrisy makes no sense and has no justification.
What will these children do if they’re not at school? Can you imagine that reality?
What will Texas do without these educated individuals who will grow up to become our doctors and police officers and teachers? The logic of teaching all children in Texas is that we build an educated and highly skilled population to benefit all us whether these children are legal, illegal, tall short, left-handed, right-handed .
Beyond the cruelty is an astonishing ignorance of this reality. We all benefit when we’re all better educated. It’s not a complicated concept.
If, like me, your family can trace their lineage to a far-off land, Greg Abbott does not deserve your vote. If, like me, you believe that an educated Texas is a better Texas, Greg Abbott does not deserve your vote. If, like me, you believe in the symbol of the Statue of Liberty and her promise, Greg Abbott does not deserve your vote.
Adult parents can face our courts should they be caught for breaking our current laws. But for the children who were brought here due to their accidental birth, may Lady Liberty’s promise and Lamp protect them: “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!”