Get Your Tired, Your Poor, and Your Huddled Masses Out of Here

Get Your Tired, Your Poor, and Your Huddled Masses Out of Here

“Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.”

-Mark Twain

My grandmother had a simple guiding principle in life- be kind. That’s good advice for how people should treat one another. Perhaps it would be a better world if it also applied to our institutions.

I’m an old guy, but I’m still trying to learn. Frequent weeks-long visits to my daughter in Colorado have taught me quite a bit. I compare the experience to watching a football game from the sideline rather than on TV in the comfort of your living room. It presents a whole different experience; you get a much better feel for what’s going on out there.

I had followed the immigration debate in the news… numbers on top of new numbers. Millions streamed in across the border illegally, so millions needed to get the boot. The problem with such an impersonal presentation is that it can cause one to miss the underlying reality of the situation- we’re dealing with people.

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President George Washington: “A free people have always given liberty to strangers who arrive among them.”

It’s a small town tucked in between the mountain tops of Colorado, born of a mining boom in the past century and now home to hard-working men and women living in modest homes. I was surprised at the large percentage of Hispanics, many of whom migrated here from Mexico, “strangers” from another land.                   

I met the family on day one.

“Dad, you’ve got to meet my neighbors across the street. They’re the nicest people in the world.”

I’ve often heard the exaggeration- “nicest in the world.” In just a few days, it occurred to me- oh my goodness, these are the nicest people in the world: Roberto, a carpenter; Maria, a housekeeping worker; and Mateo, a sweet eight-year-old boy. There was one other resident in the home- a little dog of unknown ancestry named Coco. Roberto meant it when he said it.

“We love your daughter, so you are family now too.”

They lived in a well-kept three-bedroom townhouse with a basketball hoop in the driveway. I cemented my position with the family by shooting hoops with Mateo.

“I am so happy you play basketball with Mateo. I am just too tired to do much with him when I get home from work.”

I thought I knew what tired was during my working years. Let me tell you what real tired is. Get up at 6:30 in the morning; drive an hour and a half to Aspen, or an hour and forty-five minutes to Snowmass, and work eight to ten hours under the baking hot sun in the summer or in the mountain cold in the winter, make the long drive back and arrive home around seven or eight.

I learned Roberto was part of a daily migration of workers to the lands of the rich and famous. The worker bees can’t afford to live in the places where they work, so they have to endure the long commute. (The average sale price of a home in Aspen in 2025 was over $17,000,000.00, but if you don’t have that kind of cash on hand, you can always rent a place, the average rent being a mere $31,000.00 a month.)

Maria’s job was in town, so she was home by 5:00 PM, in time to make dinner and spend time with Mateo on his homework. After school, Mateo stayed with a neighbor until Maria arrived. Most Saturdays, Maria drove to Aspen to clean one of the multimillion-dollar homes, or to Glenwood Springs to visit her ailing mother.

I’ve always been a conservative SOB, but the picture troubled me- lower-income people, mostly immigrants, many of whom were undocumented, driving hours a day and working their butts off to serve the “needs” of the wealthy. Over seven thousand people travel to Aspen every day to do whatever needs to be done for its six thousand residents, forty of whom are billionaires, and for the thousands of tourists who flock year-round to this monument to exclusivity. I remind myself this is America and I try to blot out images of poor servants scooping up scraps that have fallen off the master’s table in medieval England.

They went to church every Sunday. They dragged me along once. The entire service was in Spanish, but I still felt like I gained some points for the final tabulation. My daughter and I went to the Children’s Mass on Christmas Eve. At one point, children are asked to come to the front of the church, and more than twenty kids stepped forward. All but four were Hispanic. 

I felt like family. Maria sometimes brought us tacos or burritos. They had us over for dinner on my birthday. Mateo didn’t have one, so he called me grandpa. The neighborhood was 90% Mexican, and everyone was friendly.

I was the stranger among them, and I was welcome.

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President Abraham Lincoln: “Immigration is the lifeblood of our nation.”

Maria came here with her family as a child, and she has since become a citizen. Roberto’s path was a little different. He came to the U.S. on a work permit fourteen years ago, got a Social Security number, and paid taxes. And then he was introduced to Maria. They went out to dinner one night, just months after they met.

“Maria, I love you. Do you love me?”

“Yes, Roberto, I do love you.”

“Well, then we should get married.”

Before dinner was over, they left the restaurant, hopped in their car, drove to Las Vegas, and got married. “Best dinner I never finished”, says Roberto.

Two years later, their excitement over Maria’s pregnancy was dampened by the news that Roberto’s mother was dying back in Mexico. He had been sending money back home to pay medical bills, but now the end was near. His work permit had expired by that time, and it was nearly impossible to obtain a new one. Traveling to Mexico and then returning to the U.S. would be a great risk, but he had to see his mother one last time. He crossed the border and went back to his hometown in Mexico.

 He was grateful he was able to spend those last couple of weeks with his mother, but after she died, he faced the challenge of returning home to his pregnant wife through heightened border security. Roberto declined to go into detail, but he was able to cross the border and get back to Maria so they could resume their life together. Once Mateo was born, he became the center of their universe. They wanted a permanent home for Mateo, so they worked hard and saved their money. Two years later, they bought the modest townhouse across the street. The home is in Maria’s name alone because Roberto, in his words, “doesn’t have papers.”

The phrase bothers me. He “doesn’t have papers”. I’m trying to make sense of it. Does that make him less of a friend, a neighbor, a husband, a dad… a human being? He works and pays taxes with his old Social Security number. He supports his family. He goes to church. He helps his neighbors. When the latch on my daughter’s backyard gate broke, Roberto came over and fixed it. When some boards on her porch needed repair, Roberto came over and replaced them. When my daughter had a flat tire, he came to the scene and put on the spare. When my daughter and I were having trouble getting a new sofa into her place, Roberto came over and helped us carry it in.

Roberto has been here for fourteen years without so much as a parking ticket. He works hard, pays taxes, helps his neighbors, volunteers at his church, and is helping to raise a fine boy. It's difficult to understand why someone wouldn't want him here.

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President Ronald Reagan: “I believe in the idea of amnesty for those who have put down roots and have lived here even though they may have entered illegally.”

Mateo has a special move. When I'm in my patented fly paper defensive position, he’ll bounce the ball between my legs, retrieve it, and drive to the basket for a layup. The fans on the front porch, Roberto and Maria, laugh every time he does it. So do I.

When Mateo came home from school, I would tease him.

 “Mateo, did you learn anything in school today, or were you just taking up space?”

“Quiet, Grandpa, or I’ll have to school you in basketball again.”

He is such a kind, sweet boy. My kids are all grown, so Mateo brings back that very special feeling that only the love of a child can bring to a parent.

Roberto and Maria sit on their porch together every night after a hard day’s work. Roberto has a can of beer, maybe two, and Maria has a glass of wine. When I see them together like that, I think of them at dinner the night they took off to get married. It looks to me that they still feel the same way they did that night. A sense of peace comes over me just to see the two of them together like that. It reinstalls my faith that there are still good, happy things in this life.

I felt bad for Roberto. The poor guy had to drive 3 to 4 hours every day for years just to get to and from work. Most of the neighborhood does the same thing. The pickup trucks are gone by seven, and the traffic builds up on Main Street heading out of town every morning. The flow will be reversed in the evening as the weary return home.

I wonder what the rich people of Aspen would do without these people. I know that at least 90% of the cars in this parade are occupied by Hispanics, and I’m guessing a good chunk of that number are without papers. God forbid that one of the ultra-rich up there would ever have to clean their own toilet.

“Do you ever worry that you don’t have papers?”

“All the time. We’re all afraid now. Many of the people down the street don’t have papers. There are rumors. People talk, they whisper. Some days they are afraid to leave their homes, drive their car, or go to the store. Last week a man from our church was grabbed by ICE at his child’s school… right in front of his boy. It’s not good.”

“How do you and Maria handle it?”

“We try to remember we are all in the hands of God.”

A mom, a dad, a little boy, a dog, a home, two jobs, a church, and a school… sure sounds like roots to me.

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President Barack Obama: “For all the noise and anger that too often surrounds the immigration debate, America has nothing to fear from today’s immigrants… The recent arrival of Latino immigrants will only enrich our nation.”

I’ve never seen so many young children in a neighborhood. There are little boys and girls everywhere. Mateo’s home seemed to be sort of a focal point, so I got to know some of the other children. An interesting dynamic was that the children all spoke both English and Spanish, while many of the parents only spoke Spanish, the obvious conclusion being they were immigrants… documented or not, I don’t know.

Mateo recruited a couple of boys for our basketball games so we could play two-on-two. I immediately cried foul as my teammate was three years old. I felt like the Washington Generals playing against the Harlem Globetrotters as my record was a disappointing no wins and twenty-three losses. It was all so much fun. The cherry on top was seeing how much Roberto and Maria enjoyed watching the contests.

 Basketball is fun for Mateo, but soccer is king. I won’t even try, so I join Roberto and Maria on their porch to watch the neighborhood kids, boys and girls, kick the ball around in the small yard next door or in the street. Drivers who frequent the area know to drive down that street with caution because of all the children in the area, but once in a while a car will pass by at an unsafe speed. One afternoon a car sped by, and an enraged Roberto ran to the curb screaming, “Los niños! Los niños!” I was afraid the driver might stop…afraid for the driver.

Mateo plays soccer on a rec team, and since Roberto doesn’t get home in time to catch his son’s games, I try to be there. If Mateo scores a goal, the first thing I think of is that I wish Roberto would have been there.

“He was awesome, Roberto. He looked like Lionel Messi out there today!”

Roberto and Maria love that boy. I can see it. I can feel it. The mere mention of his name brings a smile. They work so hard. I know it’s for him. They maintain a beautiful, spotless home. I know it’s for him. Roberto drives hours a day to get to a place where he can make enough money to support the whole operation. I know it’s for him.

And Mateo loves his parents. Maria showed me one of Mateo's school assignments. The question was, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" His answer touched our hearts:

"When I grow up I want to be a dad because my dad is a dad."

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President Donald Trump: “They come from Africa, they come from Asia, they come from South America… they are poisoning the blood of our country.”

People were scared. There had been increased ICE activity in neighboring towns. The math was simple; millions in, millions out. The who didn’t matter.

Men and women who had been here for five years, ten years, twenty years… students, teachers, fathers, mothers, sons and daughters, were being torn out by the roots and shipped to detention centers in faraway places the same day because they didn’t have papers. Many were taken to the ground, roughed up, maced, and handcuffed. You'd think they just knocked off a liquor store. The most unfortunate of those caught up in the sprawling ICE enforcement efforts, even U.S. citizens, were being shot and killed in the streets. You could feel the fear in this small town.

The knocking at the door startled me. It was loud, rapid. As soon as I opened the door, I knew. Maria was standing there, tears streaming down her face. They had taken Roberto.

My eyes welled up with tears. I couldn't think of a thing to say.

Words on pages of paper, thousands of words, thousands of pages, our laws. I knew two words that weren’t in there- be kind.

Mateo was with his mom. He looked lost and so sad. I will go to my grave remembering the sadness in that little boy’s eyes. I knelt down and put my arms around him, and again there were no words.

Maria didn’t find out where Roberto was until the third day. He was in Mexico staying with a friend.

“What will you do, Maria?”

“We have no choice. We can’t risk Roberto trying to come back. We will go to Mexico. That’s the most important thing, that our family will be together.”

It sickened me to see the “For Sale” sign in front of their home. There were no more basketball games. Mateo was a different kid. I never talked to him about what was happening, but I could tell he didn’t understand any of it. His life had just been flipped upside down. He had never even been to Mexico. His father was gone. His house was up for sale. He’d be leaving his home, his school, his soccer team, his friends… and his grandpa. There are some things in life that you know just by instinct, by the pure nature of things, and this was one of them. It was just so wrong.

I felt a crushing combination of sadness, anger, and helplessness. Roberto was one of the finest people I’ve ever known. The price he was paying, the price they were all paying- him, Maria, and Mateo was too high for the sin of not having papers.

I helped Maria pack up the bits and pieces of their life that fit into the bed of their pickup truck. It was tough putting the junior-size basketball I got for Mateo in there with the rest of the items.

The neighbors all gathered in the driveway to say their goodbyes. I struggled to hold it together as the truck pulled away, and Mateo leaned out the window and gave me a little wave. I walked back to my daughter’s home, my heart numbed by the event I had just witnessed. I stood in the living room and looked out the window at the lonely basketball hoop across the street. I sat down on that new sofa, too empty, too sad to cry.