The So-Called Threat to Our Borders

Two events inform this narrative.

First, I was called out of my advanced math exam at 10:00 am on January 18th, 1963. I was six months short of 18. The school secretary at Benjamin Franklin Sr. High, in New Orleans, told me “Your mother has delivered a healthy baby girl, and both mother and daughter are doing fine.” I imagine the secretary had never before given such a message to a boy my age. I convinced my mother to ditch “Michelle” and call her Sally. At the end of “Sally” came a fine old French name – similar to my mother’s maiden name. And not unlike my Hispanic surname. “What kind of name is that?” I was often asked.

Sally was a fussy, colicky baby. On some afternoons, it fell to me to dandle and coddle her, more daughter than sister. I loved her deeply, but I hated the tantrums. I couldn’t have predicted, then, that she would love Trump and despise immigrants from Mexico and Central America.

The second happened when I was nine or ten. I don’t remember at all. Like many family stories, it lives in memory only by the retelling. And my New Orleanian mother told it this way: “Antonio Padial, you’re under arrest!” She vividly summoned the image of the half-Cuban nine-year old, in his cowboy pajamas, rubbing his sleepy eyes and staring in terror at the immigration agent.

In truth, I felt no terror. When you’re young, sleep is a coma. But she felt terror.

About “you’re under arrest”: It’s a convoluted story, hard to condense. You would think that any child born to my mother, who never surrendered her American citizenship, would automatically be an American citizen. But she was so smart that she skipped grades and entered LSU at 14. She eloped when she was sixteen. The regulations at the time (I have no idea whether they’re still in force) stipulated that, if the mother was a minor, she must have resided in the U.S. for a certain number of years before she could claim U.S. citizenship for the child.

My parents had a bitter divorce. And Cuba being Cuba granted custody to the father. So my mother was on legally shaky ground when she took me to New Orleans. So many stories.

Knowing that my father could seek custody at any moment, my mother sought the advice of an immigration lawyer who  advised her to secure permanent residency and eventually citizenship for me was to initiate deportation proceedings. There, she could truthfully declare that Antonio Padial had a great grandmother, a grandfather and grandmother, and two great aunts to coddle and protect him in New Orleans and who could document her residency in the U.S. through her school records.

The immigration lawyer was correct. But my mother never imagined that the deportation proceedings would be conducted at six in the morning by a bully who had no idea of the thinking behind the proceedings.

My mother and I first lived in decommissioned Navy housing at the end of the Elysian Fields overpass and ate chicken gizzard stew. She made a pittance working at an insurance company but later did better as a medical technologist. My mother had me when she was 19, in Cuba. She had Sally when she was 37, in New Orleans.   A lot of water under that bridge.

Sally and I are at opposite ends of the political spectrum. We do as families do when this happens: don’t talk about it. Except when you do. On a recent call, Sally ranted about “the open-border policy” that allows people from Mexico and Central America into “our country”. I reminded her that I was once a sleepy immigrant under threat.

“I’ve heard the story of the sleepy-boy arrest a hundred times! You can’t possibly  compare yourself to them,” said Sally.

Well, yes, Sally, I can compare myself to them.

I remember High School. I remember the jokes about Castro, beards, and cigars. I remember Bishop Clayton’s grimace at having to welcome Antonio into the Episcopalian fold. Nothing like hand-picking strawberries in the hot sun, I’ll grant you, but oppressive and belittling nonetheless.

“We had two different mothers,” Sally and I agreed. My mother wept when Stevenson lost to Eisenhower. Her mother admired Laura Bush’s inaugural-day blue coat.

Well, let’s get back to immigrants, and especially New Orleans immigrants. And in New Orleans I was not alone.

Jews arrived in 1724. Tolerated by the French, booted by the Spanish, they went on to found a great hospital, Touro Infirmary, and the Delgado Museum of Art.

The Irish arrived in two waves: lace curtain and shanty.  The Irish Channel, once a slum, is now pricey. And there’s the food.

They were followed by the Italians. In the 1930’s they were looked down on. Now they are as New Orleanian as the fleur-de-lys. And there’s the food.

Followed by the Vietnamese. It didn’t take long before they cheered the Saints. And also there’s the food.

And there were those unwilling, chained immigrants. Blacks constitute 70% of the NOLA population now. And there’s lots of food.

This is what happens with immigrants. The first generation loses the language. The second generation remembers the culture dimly. By the 10th generation only cooking and music survive. And, boy do they survive in New Orleans, justly renowned for its cuisine and musical innovation.

We have jazz, blues, gumbo z’herbes from Dooky Chase, and klezmer from the Cajun Kosher Kitchen. Anything from Clancy’s on Annunciation Street in the Irish Channel, or garlic-laced oysters from Mosca’s, the Italian shack on the West Bank, or pho from Lilly’s in Metairie. In New Orleans, as in every U.S. city, it takes many immigrants to weave an American fabric.

So, yes Sally, I compare myself to them. I haven’t endured a smidgen of what they endured, it’s true. Yet, like them, I felt lesser. I don’t want anybody to feel that way.

And so, to all immigrants, I say welcome. To new immigrants I say thank you. Thank you for mopping hospital corridors. For harvesting fruit. For nannying children, with whom you fall in love, and from whom you are wrenched away with barely a farewell.