Until Columbus Day is canceled, I’ll forever support ‘illegal’ immigrants
Do you really agree with ICE or is your anger at immigrants misdirected?
Writer’s note: The following post is a combination of a prior IDSC post written on January 15, 2022 with a shortened version of an IDSC post published earlier this week on September 17, 2025. After reading the post from three years ago, it is as relevant today as it was at the time.
I grinned as soon as I saw that my favorite bench was free. After walking about 45 minutes to get to one of my favorite hangouts, I planned to hang out in this park full of statues, casually watch the geese, and enjoy the peace and quiet while I gave my legs a rest. At least, that was the plan until a neighbor (who was walking across the street) spotted me at the entranceway and invited himself to tag along. I expected him to continue walking once I sat down, but he sat down next to me. Peaceful walk in the park plan failed!
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The 40-something, athletically built Black man was in a chatty mood — and I sighed. His wife had already glared at me on more than one occasion for chatting with her husband on a stoop by our parking lot. I didn’t want that kind of smoke, and I definitely wasn’t the “other woman” type. But a park is a public place, and he was clearly not leaving. So, I got comfortable and started looking for geese. I expected the usual trivial small talk from my neighbor, but my eyes widened when he bluntly grumbled about how he wishes “all these Mexicans would go home.”
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I’m prepared to hear this conversation from a MAGA crowd, but I’m still caught off guard when I hear it from someone in a minority group. “Go back to Mexico” is too much like “Go back to Africa” for me, even if one set of people came over voluntarily while the other was kidnapped.
I’ve heard this distaste for Mexicans from another Mexican immigrant (who has legal citizenship now), from a brown-skinned Brazilian man and a handful of Black men of varying ages. The one thing these men have in common is they are all blue collar workers who have been pushed out of their current jobs or are too old to do manual labor they once excelled in. And this attitude toward migrants is troubling to me.
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THE REMAINDER OF THIS POST WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON OCTOBER 15, 2022.
“I don’t want Mexicans coming over here to the United States,” he said to me. “All Mexicans are criminals anyway.”
When he made the comment, my head shot back like someone punched me — similar to my response while geese-watching in the park. This was unlike the time a white woman instructor told an Asian student to “go back to your country” in one of my grad school classes. (By the time I got ahold of that instructor’s end-of-year review, I wrote a livid explanation of how horrendous I thought that comment was — and a gross overreaction to an innocent question about the Chicago Manual Style Guide. Long story for another day.)
This wasn’t even like the time when a Puerto Rican/Mexican neighbor thought we were chummier than we really were and used the n-word to describe someone who was Mexican. (Her father oddly also didn’t want her to date Mexican men.) Again, I responded and let her know in no uncertain terms that neither the slur or the anti-Mexican stance was OK with me.
But in this case, I was talking to a Mexican man — straight out of Mexico who did come to the United States illegally but gained U.S. citizenship later. I asked him to repeat his comment. He did again — and in front of his white wife. I was speechless. Not only was it extremely dangerous to tell white people that “Mexicans are criminals” — spouse or not — but he was describing someone who fit three categories in which he checked off the boxes: Mexican, immigrant, (formerly) illegal resident.