Broken Dream

    Call her Marie.  She came to this country in the back of a truck at the age of 40 from Latin America, leaving her parents and her two young sons behind in order to earn for them a better life in this, the land of opportunity.  In her country, she was abused by her husband and was left unprotected by an oppressive society.
    Once here, scared, confused, penniless, Marie worked hard cleaning houses, ironing, and doing other odds and ends.  With the soul of an entrepreneur she eventually became a saleswoman for a door-to-door cosmetics company.  As she was working two and three jobs, she hired immigration attorneys, each one promising to expedite her case through the Immigration and Naturalization Service.  Marie did not want to be “illegal”; she wanted desperately to be recognized as a human being—something her country denied her.  Attorneys who purportedly specialized in immigration, who spoke Spanish, who made nothing but empty promises, took advantage of her naïveté and cheated her out of her hard earned money.  Sixteen years later, without ever once losing hope or showing a broken spirit, and with the gracious help of another attorney who had the conscience the others lacked, Marie got her prize: her green card.  Marie was finally legal.
    She brought her two boys, now grown, to live with her.  They went to school, learned English, and found meaningful jobs.  And during that period they, too, cleaned houses, fixed cars, mowed lawns, and carried with them the optimism of their mother.
    In time, Marie had saved $50,000, even accounting for the sums stolen from her by lawyers and others who have no compunction about preferring to prey on the honest work and service of people like Marie instead of doing an honest day’s work themselves.  At this point, one is tempted to muse: who more embodies the American spirit, Marie or her “advocates”, the officers of the Court, doctors in jurisprudence?
    Marie fell in love with a man, also an immigrant with no education.  With their savings they bought a house.  Several years later, others more unscrupulous than the attorneys convinced them to refinance their home and “expand their empire” by buying a store, then another.  These realtors, mortgage brokers, and second rate bankers never told Marie and her family about contracts, property taxes, mortgages, and water bills.  They never checked income statements or cared about Marie’s ability to pay back the loan.  In one refinancing, the mortgage broker took more out of the property than Marie received in equity, and enticed Marie and her husband to trade “up” to a higher interest rate loan for the privilege.  The lenders were all too eager to write bad loans because they knew their next move: they sold them to a loan servicing company owned by a major Wall Street investment bank that would repackage them and resell them to speculators.  Warren Buffet observed, "John Stumpf, CEO of Wells Fargo, aptly dissected the recent behavior of many lenders: ‘It is interesting that the industry has invented new ways to lose money when the old ways seemed to work just fine.' ” ¹
    Marie and her family’s expenses climbed.  They couldn’t pay their mortgage.  They were in debt well beyond their means.  Their home was forced into foreclosure by that very Wall Street firm.  All of Marie’s life savings, her property, everything she worked for for years, and her American dream … lost.

    This is the people’s view of the immigration problem and the mortgage crisis in a single story; the view from the streets.  True, much of Marie’s and her husband’s fate are of their own making.  Yet, from our nation’s perspective, the solution is not as easy as building a fence around this great country, although six and one half years after 9/11 it is a national disgrace to still be speaking helplessly about porous borders.  No, the problem has other dimensions too.  The disparity in economic opportunity between Americas north and south creates the potential force that drives so many to risk their lives to find a better one here.  The difference in quality of life—justice, freedom, security—those things our Constitution guarantees for us, make that potential ever more irresistible.
    Any solution must comprise every dimension: border security, a fair and just immigration policy, an economic policy encompassing all of the Americas, and a concerted effort to replace oppressive societal practices with justice and self-government.
    And what to do with the illegals currently here?  Each case is unique, but one thing is certain.  It befits our great nation to start with recognition that they, like Marie, are all God’s children.

1- Berkshire Hathaway, Inc. 2007 Annual Report, Copyright 2008 By Warren Buffet