Have you thought about the fact that we–IWC volunteers–are among the very few who have actually met asylum seekers as they really are?
Others may say “those people” should have made better decisions, they should have stayed and tried to fix things in their own country, or, worse, they are drug dealers, human traffickers, and criminals. But in the thousands of real, live asylum-seekers we see every year, what we observe is parents and children, whole or separated families who want nothing more than to live together safely, adults and teens trying to make the most of the desperate situation life has imposed upon them, men and women who long to do their part to co-create a peaceful society, and, as has been noted, essential workers and children, as the US has many unfilled jobs and a rapidly declining birthrate.
We see their generosity, kindness, and care for each other. They even care for us, as Treedy Chapa says when an asylum seeker offers to buy her a soda, “She who has so little, and I who have so much.” We see people who welcome us as Minnie Briones reflects on the six little boys who told her, “Tu eres mi abuela mexicana!” We see people who are, as Michelle Rumbaut writes, “exactly the kind of family any country should want as part of a positive, productive, self-reliant future.”
If anyone can challenge the hateful narrative going around, we can. In Traveling Mercies: Encounters with Asylum Seekers, our voices come out loud and clear in 71 true, first-person narratives by 31 observant IWC volunteers whose lives have been transformed by their encounters with asylum seekers.
Traveling Mercies: Encounters with Asylum Seekers is available locally at The Twig Bookshop in the Pearl district or you can get it on Amazon here on for $14.99, Kindle, $5.99. Want a sneak preview? You can read the table of contents and the first few stories free on Amazon (click below the cover photo) or hear four stories read by editor Mary Grace Ketner on NPR’s “Texas Matters” with David Martin Davies here. (scroll down to the Nov. 15 episode.) You’ll love the surprise he added at the end!
