This entry is part of my journal from Semester in the West. For all SITW journal entries, click here. For all SITW posts, including blog posts I wrote while on the program, click here. To learn more about the program, click here.
camp: with Bill deBuys, Northern New Mexico
The border fascinates me. I am drawn to stories of migrants staking everything on their ability to walk invisibly through the desert and compelled by the way so many twisted realities intersect just south of the places I have grown up calling home. I feel moved to help individuals, and part of me wants to drive to Nogales and stuff my trunk full of as many willing bodies as I can find before passing through a checkpoint back home. I feel powerless to change policy—when so many sessions of Congress have still failed to pass the DREAM Act, what hope is there for an open border? I want to speak Spanish with the authority of a journalist who cares. I want these people to know that in my eyes and the eyes of so many others like me, they are not illegal. I say a prayer—that everyone walking ceaselessly through the desert makes it to the Promised Land safely.
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