Sister Cities
Saying Goodbye
Longmont, Colorado, USA and Ciudad Guzman, Jalisco, Mexico are Sister Cities. We work together for cultural exchange and understanding. Understanding between Mexico and the USA may be at a low point, but that did not stop this year’s young Sister Cities Ambassadors from doing what they always do. Earlier this year, a group of middle school students from Longmont and two lucky chaperones visited our Sister City in Mexico, Ciudad Guzman. Last week, students from Ciudad Guzman (and environs) reciprocated by visiting Longmont, staying with host families and reuniting with the US Ambassadors they met a few weeks before.
On Tuesday August 7, the day before they returned home, the Ambassadors from Ciudad Guzman (and their adult chaperones) came to speak at the Longmont City Council, to say good-bye, and to thank Longmont for its hospitality. Each young man and woman (they are aged 13–15) had something special to say about himself or herself, their host family, or how they spent their time. They were witty, sincere, and charming.
One lovely young woman, almost the last, spoke eloquently and sweetly. Then her face twisted as she struggled to say “I am very happy…” and tears fell.
Watching her, helpless, from the dais, I wondered what those tear-filled eyes were seeing.
— an old man with malice in his voice, growling “When Mexico sends us people, they’re not sending their best. They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they are rapists..”
— a howling little girl clutching a man’s leg as she is pulled away from him..
— children her own age, looking like her, sleeping in chain-link kennels under foil blankets.
We will never know for certain the reason for her tears. Perhaps she was simply sad to be leaving her new friends. Perhaps she was only homesick. Or perhaps she felt, as many of us listening did, the sorrow and the irony of her position.
I have never been any prouder than when that girl collected herself and gracefully finished her speech. I felt nothing but relief for her as she stepped gratefully away from the podium and into the arms of her American host mother. How I felt about myself and my country in that moment was much more complicated.
Longmont is, for all intents and purposes, a Sanctuary City, though we don’t use those words. We have a large population of immigrants from Mexico and South America, and most of us know them as an essential, integral part of our community. Not all of them are citizens of the United States. Not all of them can document their permission to be here.
So perhaps that tearful young Ambassador was feeling the words of hate spoken every day on the national (and international) news channels, that say Americans don’t think people like her belong here. Had she been afraid to come to the country that takes children away from their refugee parents at our border? Was she happy just to have made it to the end of her visit?
We hope our hate was not the cause of her tears. We hope her emotion was born from the love and welcome she found with her host family and the people of Longmont who came out to meet her. From the honor our city gave her. We hope. We can’t know.
After the meeting I spoke with some members of the city staff and some residents of the city. I was not the only person who suspected that anti-immigrant sentiment in the US, especially directed against Mexicans, might have had something to do with those tears. One member of the staff said it simply: “I am ashamed.” We are ashamed of what is happening in our country. But proud of our city, if we gave that child’s fears the lie. After all, what did she say? “I’m very happy.” I hope she was telling the truth.
The Other Sister City
It would be unfair not to say that Longmont has two Sister Cities. The other one is Chino, Japan, and young Ambassadors from Chino also addressed the City that night. There were no tears from any of them, but one young man boldly gave us two thumbs up with a crooked grin.
It would be unfair to omit a reminder that, in an earlier dark time in US history, immigrants from Japan had something to fear, too. Today we regret how we treated our Japanese immigrants and their children, unfailingly loyal to America, during the second World War. Today we honor their fortitude and their forbearance.
Election Year
This is an election year. We can’t discuss anything, even a group of exchange students saying goodbye to America, without coming back to the election.
Most of America appears to be less than enchanted with the Nativist agenda that the current administration in Washington has used to bring together its right-wing base. The miscalculation of Sessions and ICE’s zero-tolerance policy for refugees at our border with Mexico, the horrific images of children being torn from their parents, and the shameful news that some of the parents can’t be located and some of the children can’t be identified, seem to have persuaded many Americans to take a more moderate view of immigrants, regardless of their legal status or origin.
In a recent poll by Axios and SurveyMonkey, every group polled reported under 50% support for the zero-tolerance policy, except one. Fifty-eight percent of rural voters approve. The Axios poll was national in scope, so it is unclear whether rural Coloradans agree. Most rural areas have very small Hispanic populations, while rural Colorado is home to substantial numbers of Hispanic farm workers. This publication has already reported that a shortage of farm workers has led landowners to increase their usage of H-2A agricultural guest worker visas.
Here in the Fourth Congressional District, we have two candidates running to represent us in Congress. The incumbent, Ken Buck, blames the parents of refugees for allowing their children to be taken from them. The challenger, Karen McCormick, a mother of three herself, thinks children belong with their parents.
Will immigration be the issue that decides the winner? Between knowing and needing our neighbors from Mexico, will our rural voters see our resident immigrants for the human beings they are, and vote for Dr. McCormick? Will they remember that, one way or another, we invited our workers from south of the border here to work, and that we have hired them again, year after year, without so much as questioning their papers? That we’ve hired their children, too, both the ones who came with them, and the ones who were born here?
We know how the people of Longmont will vote. Because next year, when our guests from our Sister City Ciudad Guzman come to tell us thank you and goodbye, we want to be able to look them in the eyes, and see no tears.
