I applaud the Signal for its courageous report today in the face of overwhelming public support for Bob Kellar and his remarks:
His feet blistered as he crept closer to the U.S.-Mexico border. He passed dozens of holes covered with rocks – the unmarked graves of others who had died along the way.
“What if that is my fate?” Lopez said he had asked himself. “What if that happens to me?”
The American Dream kept him going – the idea that he could earn more than four times what he made in Mexico.
Lopez, 39, is an illegal immigrant.
He’s been caught and deported once, and has made the brutal trek across the border three times with hopes of giving his children a chance to have the education and shot at the American Dream he never did.
A wise journalist once told me that a newspaper’s job is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. And that’s what Jonathan Randles’ great reporting does today. Men like Lopez scratch out a meager living doing the chores that comfortable Santa Claritans don’t want to do. We know because we finally bothered to talk to one of them.
Good newspaper reporting also puts you, the reader, in the shoes of the person being reported on. We can see that Lopez’ decision to live and work here is rational, from an economic standpoint. He earns $250-$500 a week doing the work we ask of him, much more than he would earn in Mexico. His motivation isn’t different from the millions of western, southern and and eastern European immigrants who came here over the last two centuries.
And with Randles’ reporting, we can see a way forward. You don’t like that men like Lopez live in the shadows among us? Then support legislation that closes the borders and penalizes him but gives him a way forward out of the underground economy that Americans are only to happy to exploit. It’s the only way.
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