I didn’t study for a civics test to become an American. I didn’t wait years for paperwork to be approved. I didn’t risk my life crossing borders or leave behind everything familiar in pursuit of safety or opportunity. I was born here, and that single fact granted me citizenship. Not merit. Not effort. Just chance. The older I get, the more I understand how much of my life has been shaped by that unearned security.
Growing up, I didn’t realize how much people hated immigrants. That part came later. What I remember instead is curiosity. I remember wondering what could be so bad about places in South America or other parts of the world that people would leave everything they knew to come here. I didn’t see immigration as a threat or a problem; I saw it as a question. Why would someone risk so much unless staying was worse?
At church, immigration wasn’t discussed in political terms at all. Every week we prayed for Haiti, for Rwanda, for the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and for other African countries. We prayed for safety, for stability, for peace. Those prayers shaped how I understood the world long before policy debates did. They taught me that suffering wasn’t abstract and that borders didn’t separate people from God’s concern. No one ever suggested those lives mattered less because they were elsewhere.
As I got older, I began to realize that while I was taught to care about people beyond our borders, I never had to worry about my own place within them. I didn’t have to think about whether enrolling in school, applying for a job, seeking medical care, or traveling could put my family at risk. I didn’t carry the quiet fear that a traffic stop or workplace encounter could unravel everything. That kind of freedom settles into you so deeply that you mistake it for normal, when in reality it’s privilege.
One moment that shifted how I understood immigration in a very real way happened during jury duty. I don’t even remember what the case was about, but I remember two of the witnesses clearly. They were immigrant truck drivers, and as part of establishing credibility, the attorney asked where they were from and what they did for work. Then came the question about what they used to do before immigrating. One said he had been a math teacher. The other said he had been an art teacher. That moment stayed with me—not because it was dramatic, but because it was quietly revealing. These weren’t people lacking skill or ambition. These were people whose talents didn’t disappear when they crossed a border; they were simply redirected by circumstance.
After that, I started asking immigrants I met—drivers, janitors, warehouse workers, service staff—what they used to do before coming here. The answers were wide-ranging: teachers, engineers, accountants, business owners, skilled tradespeople. Again and again, I was reminded that immigration doesn’t strip people of ability; systems do. Credentials don’t always transfer. Language barriers matter. Survival often comes first. People take the work that’s available, not because it reflects their worth, but because it keeps their families alive.
That understanding deepened even more during the years I volunteered doing taxes. For about three years, I helped prepare returns, and we regularly worked with migrants who had ITINs. They came in with pay stubs, documentation, questions—doing exactly what the system told them to do. So when I hear people confidently say that immigrants “don’t pay taxes,” I always find myself wondering who exactly they’re talking about. Because the people I sat across from were paying into the same systems I do—often without the possibility of receiving the benefits those systems provide.
Listening to immigrant friends and neighbors over time has made it impossible to ignore how uneven our realities are. People who work full-time, pay taxes, raise families, and contribute to their communities often live with a constant awareness of what they could lose. Undocumented immigrants contribute tens of billions of dollars each year in federal, state, and local taxes, including billions into Social Security and Medicare systems they may never benefit from. The country relies on that labor and that revenue while denying the people providing it basic security. Meanwhile, I benefit without ever having to prove I deserve it.
That contradiction becomes even clearer when immigration enforcement is framed as an economic or security necessity. If enforcement were truly about reducing undocumented labor, it would begin where immigrant labor is most concentrated and most essential. States like Texas and Florida rely heavily on immigrant workers in agriculture, construction, hospitality, and caregiving. When Florida passed one of the harshest immigration laws in the country, the impact was immediate—labor shortages, crops left unharvested, stalled construction projects, and billions of dollars in projected economic losses. The lesson was unavoidable: our economy depends on immigrant labor far more than our rhetoric admits.
So when enforcement intensifies selectively, often in places where the economic fallout is smaller, it feels less like problem-solving and more like performance. Immigration isn’t being addressed honestly; it’s being used symbolically. We demand labor, restrict legal pathways to provide it, and then criminalize the people who respond to that demand.
People often say immigrants should “come the right way,” but I never had to think about a right way at all. I didn’t wait in a years-long backlog. I didn’t need a sponsor or thousands of dollars in legal fees. I didn’t have to prove my life was worthy of admission. The system I’m protected by is the same one that shuts others out, not because they lack character or effort, but because opportunity is rationed unevenly by design.
What troubles me most is how easily citizenship becomes a stand-in for moral worth. Crossing a border without authorization is treated as evidence of bad character, while being born inside one is treated as proof of deservingness. But borders don’t measure values, work ethic, or humanity. The real difference between me and someone who crossed a border without permission is paperwork and probability. I was lucky. They were not.
For those who frame this debate in religious terms, the disconnect is impossible to ignore. We prayed for the world beyond our borders while forgetting the people who crossed those borders seeking safety and opportunity. Scripture is clear about welcoming the foreigner and refusing cruelty, yet policy discussions often sound more like fear than faith.
I didn’t earn my citizenship. I didn’t prove I was worthy of it. I was born into it. And acknowledging that doesn’t weaken my place in this country—it clarifies my responsibility. If we want a real conversation about immigration, it has to start with honesty about how arbitrary citizenship is, how dependent we are on immigrant labor, and how much of this debate is driven by optics instead of truth.
I didn’t earn my citizenship. I was born into it. And that truth should change how we talk about who belongs.
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