Our Friend Alfredo
by James Kilbourne
My partner Sergio and I have a good friend whose name is Alfredo. He is an almost startlingly handsome young man in his late thirties, and has bright eyes that constantly sparkle with a ready humor, which comes to the surface with the slightest excuse. When Alfredo speaks to you, he does so in a soft, almost seductive voice, and he looks right into the center of your mind, listening with great intensity, weighing each word you say to him. Everybody loves Alfredo. He is a good and kind man whose intelligence and lightness of spirit make him a joy to be around. He is the kind of friend who would do anything for you. And we would do anything for him. But there is nothing we can do for him today. He learned this afternoon that his 17-year-old son was found dead this morning in Mexico. It appears to have been a heart attack caused by a congenital heart condition that Alfredo hadn’t even known about.
Alfredo looks older and very tired tonight. He stared in our faces today, trying to find some hope, some chance for comfort, even just for a few seconds of relief from reality. He found nothing beyond the hopelessly inadequate knowledge that we love him and are deeply hurt with him.
Alfredo came to this country 10 years ago in order to make a better life for himself and to be able to provide for his family back in Mexico. We sat speechless for hours with him this afternoon. When we finally moved, it was to begin the arrangements for him to fly back for his son’s funeral in Cancun. We took out the suitcases, determined which one was needed, and started to pack his clothes. But, wait. Alfredo doesn’t have his papers. He is an “illegal alien”. Okay. So we arranged for a round trip ticket from Tijuana to Cancun. There was a flight at 6:00AM the next morning. It would be all right. There are buses or “drivers” who can be paid to bring him from Los Angeles to Tijuana. Getting out of the United States is tricky, but doable.
Alfredo has always worked very hard. He has an entrepreneurial heart. However, he lives under a constant threat of being fired because he doesn’t have his papers. He is spending a small fortune trying to become a legal resident through an organization that works on these problems, but it will take years to be legal here, if it ever happens. He never sees the tax and Social Security money that he pays each week, because he doesn’t want to draw attention to himself by requesting anything back from the federal or state government. He drives in fear of being stopped, as he cannot obtain a legal license in California.
Alfredo’s sister, Wendy, called him back in the early evening. She had been working with him on ways to get him to Cancun, but now her advice completely changed. She knew that he couldn’t go. Alfredo has a younger son who counts on the money he sends him each month, and with the terrorist situation the way it is, getting back into this country, a dangerous and costly proposition to start with, becomes all the more difficult. Alfredo cannot attend his own son’s funeral.
Tomorrow, I will have a well-reasoned discussion with you about immigration. Tonight, I have a few things to say:
God damn you if the only two words you can find to put together when talking about people who leave their homelands to seek a better life for themselves and their families are “illegal aliens.”
God damn you if you think that an American has a right to earn a living, but a Mexican doesn’t.
God damn everyone who said the Alfredo's of the world have no right to be in the United States. Alfredo provides services in the health field. May all the services you take for granted cease immediately. Find your own health care. Wash your own dishes. Clean your own houses. Pick your own goddamned fruit.
God damn you if you have anything to do with that hundreds-year-old cesspool of a corrupt government in Mexico that kills its people’s dreams and forces its best and brightest to flee their borders to feed their families.
God damn you for every collectivist bromide you’ve regurgitated while people wallow in poverty.
And God damn everyone who can think no more deeply than to dismiss the immigration problem by saying, “the law is the law.” Fix the goddamned law.
Look into your children’s faces and think of Alfredo tonight. If you live in America, give thanks for the United States of America and the Bill of Rights and your blind fool luck that you happened to have been born here. Vow to do something TODAY so that no father has to go through what Alfredo is going through ever again.
God bless you, Alfredo. Please take comfort in knowing that you are a wonderful human being and a wonderful father who did everything for his child that a man could do. You do honor to my country by coming here and by living here. I am not a religious man, but I respect the sincerity of your belief. If there is a heaven, your beautiful son is now in the arms of his God.
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