The Wretched Refuge

(October 2021)

As I sat in the family room of my comfortable home watching the news images displayed on my large screen plasma television, I was horrified by what I saw. Thousands of poor Haitian migrants carrying all that they own, in tattered clothes gathering at the southern US border. Wretched individuals they were. As my maternal grandmother Anna Rosa would say, “miserabile.”

And maybe my grandmother would know. As a young girl she grew up on a farm up in the mountains above Naples, Italy. She once told me that they were dirt poor. So at the age of sixteen with no opportunity and only hope for a better future, she awoke early one morning, got cleaned up and dressed in her best clothes. She kissed her mom and dad goodbye and left with an older aunt for a new and better life in America never to see her parents again.

These Haitian migrants have stories to tell too. Haiti is among the poorest nations in the world and has been for years. How poor is poor? Well, 46% of all Haitians live below the poverty level. And if that wasn't bad enough, in January 2010 it was devastated by a magnitude 7.0 earthquake and has yet to recover. Finally, their president Jovenel Moïse was assassinated this past July throwing the country into political crisis and uncertainty.

Therefore, faced with all this misery and despair, many Haitians decided to look for a better life outside their country. These Haitians we now see at the US border were already living in countries like Brazil, Chile, Argentina, and Venezuela for as long as a decade. They were pushed out of these countries after the jobs dried up due to the end of the Brazilian Olympic construction or the global pandemic worsening. Not being able to attain legal status and struggling to secure decent jobs, they headed north.

They began their perilous journeys traveling by bus through Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia to Columbia. Then taking a boat to Panama. Next walking through the jungles passing through Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador, finally landing in Mexico and eventually making their way up to the US border. A journey like this can take years with Haitians sometimes traveling through 10 countries.

Many speak of being beaten and robbed between Colombia and Panama. Many have died along the way. Women have had miscarriages during the journey as well. Criminals steal their money. Police take their passports. They are vulnerable and easily taken advantage of.

The good news is the Biden administration allowed twelve thousand migrants to enter the U. S. and have their requests for asylum evaluated by immigration judges with an additional five thousand being considered for the same opportunity. Many others have not been so lucky and have been sent back to Haiti on chartered flights. I can sympathize with their plight and identify with their aspirations. And while we can't take them all in, we should try to do as much as we can.

Oh, and Anna Rosa, she did find that better life here in America. She settled in Brooklyn, N.Y., found work as a seamstress, married a man who worked hard in new home construction, gave birth to five children and lived to see ten grandchildren Today as in the past, these are all brave, determined people. There is no difference. They all come to be safe and secure. All are here looking for a new and better life for themselves and their families in America.