We’re going to have an endless parade of illegal immigrants here in our country.
— House Majority Leader John Boehner

As Mexican immigrants continue to be criminalized for making their way into the U.S., I think about my parents’ journeys to this country and how little they fit into the spin of what Mexican immigrants represent. Thieves, rapists, murderers. Lazy, slothful, deceitful.

My mother’s family came from Mexico via Texas. The oldest daughter, she made her way to California through the fields. Literally. My mother picked cotton, fruit, and vegetables and met my father, who found his way from the Philippines, in that same soil.

Starting a family, my parents put the oldest of their brood to work right alongside them, hours of walking, bending, picking in the sun and the dust. Lazy? Slothful? Not quite. And, as far as I know, they never stole, raped, or killed anyone.

Just as my parents don’t fit the stereotype, the overwhelming majority of Mexican immigrants don’t either. They don’t risk their lives to cross into a country that devalues their skills, asks them to do jobs that “we” wouldn’t do, and gives them no credit for their contributions.

We ask them to be invisible, until it’s time to get them the hell out.  

The cycle of criminalizing immigrants continues. Instead of buying the tired old stereotype trotted out every time the status quo feels threatened by the different-colored faces in their midst, “we” the people need to do a little thinking.

One of the easiest ways might be to look to our own family’s history. Why did our immigrant families choose to come to the United States? Do they fit into the stereotypes of immigrant criminals? We know the answers. Now, all we have to do is keep asking those questions before we close the doors on everyone else.

Desiree Aquino