“There is war,” Muhammed from Yemen wrote to me. “Everything is chaotic. Schools are closed. People have no food to eat. Everyone is scared. It’s very dangerous. Little kids have guns and other weapons.”
“The politics in Bangladesh is corrupt,” wrote Tamjid. “Schools are always closed because of strikes. Many students are afraid to go to school.”
“We came here because my father was threatened and my family was afraid they would hurt us,” Miguel of Colombia wrote.
Such were the 81 cards — hand-made, hand-written and colorfully illustrated in crayon — carrying personal messages to me from immigrant children now living in the U.S.
Six years ago, I gave a talk in front of some 150 students, teachers and parents at the Academy for New Americans, a public middle school for grades six through eight in New York City. The school educates recently arrived immigrant children who enroll knowing little or no English but who then graduate speaking English fluently. Afterward, one of the students handed me a large manila envelope containing the 81 cards.
The other day, provoked by the new deportation policy rolling out so thunderously nationwide, I looked at the cards once more.
Those adolescents had migrated to the U.S. from dozens of countries: Albania, Bangladesh, Chile, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Mauritania, Mexico, Morocco, Nepal, Paraguay, Pakistan, Peru, Spain, Tibet, Venezuela and Vietnam. Some of the families, the children wrote to me, had fled poverty, violent crime, civil war and other hardships. The cards provided a telling snapshot, a multi-cultural cross-section of immigrant youth in America yearning to breathe free.
The students told me where they hoped to go in life here in the U.S. Almost all said they intended to pursue educational and economic opportunities unavailable back home. They declared ambitions to become physicians, lawyers, entrepreneurs, computer scientists, dentists, mechanical engineers and, yes, professional soccer players.
“My mother, father and me are so happy to be here in the United States,” one student wrote. “Soon we will be citizens.” Another told me, “I come to New York to be someone in my life.” Yet another said on the back of her card, “Follow your dreams.”
How have these 81 kids, now roughly ages 18 to 24, fared since composing those notes to me? Did they graduate from high school? Are they attending college? Are they still dreaming the American dream?
I tried to find out. I emailed the teacher who originally invited me. No response. I also reached out to the school’s principal seeking updates on the kids. No answer. I followed up several times, always to no avail.
I suspect they’re scared — scared of the questions I might ask and scared to speak for the record, but scared less for themselves than for those kids. I have no idea whether the parents of these 81 children came here legally or illegally, are documented or undocumented, or have criminal records. Whatever the case, it may be that they’re all — students, parents, teachers and principals alike — now running scared.
I am neither a lawyer nor an expert on immigration policy, but what I’m given to understand could happen to those 81 kids is this: Even children who came here legally could be deported in certain circumstances, such as a visa expiring. The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, designed to protect undocumented individuals brought to the U.S. as children, could be terminated. If children have parents who are to be deported, the children may have to choose between going back home with them, or being separated from family for who knows how long.
Widespread concern persists about how humanely the new deportation policy is being enacted and enforced. The current campaign has run into considerable public opposition, with the courts intervening and voicing legal challenges that call for some flexibility. More than a few immigrant families with children who can afford to do so have consulted immigration attorneys to navigate the growing threat.
Make no mistake: the law is the law, and the law should be upheld. But the law is subject to interpretation, discretion and leeway. And at its heart the law is about the pursuit of justice, and should thereby acknowledge that some circumstances are special if not singular.
Our country is endowed with an immigrant heritage that is first in class around the world. The spirit of fairness demands that we demonstrate mercy and compassion, especially toward children who are guilty of nothing except being children.
The covers of the cards I received from those 81 kids frequently featured a certain word of greeting toward me. It’s the very word they still deserve to hear from all of us. That word is “welcome.”
Bob Brody, a consultant and essayist, is a former New Yorker and author of the memoir “Playing Catch with Strangers: A Family Guy (Reluctantly) Comes of Age.”
