The New American Dream by Dona Pearson If not for the immigrants of our past, where would America be? We would not exist as a nation if there had not been people who were willing to risk all to come to the New World as pioneers, as pilgrims, to try to make a better life for their children and for themselves. And in America today there are many such pioneers, the immigrant workers from south of our border. They come to work and they come to find a better life for themselves and for their children. These people are generally smaller in stature than Anglos, but the young ones are strong and the older ones are persistent, not afraid of hard work. They come to the United States, El Norte, willing and eager to work and to make money, catching chickens, doing domestic work, field work, factory work, the hard and sometimes dangerous work that no one else wants. And do we welcome them? Some of us do, realizing that there are many more similarities between us and them than there are differences. They laugh, they cry, they have children whom they spoil with attention and gifts. They fall in love, they get angry, they fight sometimes amongst themselves and sometimes with the inhospitable Anglos. Most hispanics are religious and have respect for tradition. Music, dancing, laughter...all part of the life of the hispanic immigrant, and at the center of his or her life is La Familia, the Family, with great respect given to one's parents and grandparents. The myth of the "dirty Mexican" is way out of line, although that has been an epithet used to describe all Spanish-speaking people. Even when forced to share a single-family dwelling with 2 other families, the rule is usually cleanliness, both in one's person and in one's surroundings. They love pretty clothing for their children and themselves, and most are usually very clean and neat when they go out in public, having been taught by their parents to possess a sense of pride in appearance. And the stereotype of the lazy Mexican leaning against a cactus snoozing with his large sombrero for shade does not show the ambition, the enthusiasm, the drive that brings them from very far away to this place, where their lives may be at stake but where opportunities exist which are entirely impossible back home. This is the dilemma of the immigrant: to come here and leave all that is familiar behind, one's culture, home family, sense of self, in order to make more money than one could ever possibly earn at home. And often the worker sends a great share of that money back to his home town, to his family, in order to help them or to help them to come here, too. The hardships of the immigrant are manifold, and his lack of self-defense against those who would exploit him or even harm him is very easily linked to his lack of understanding of the English language, which is very difficult to master by an adult learner. But they do come here, and many of them also learn to speak English well enough to get by, to get the job done. These people are worthy of respect for having had the courage to try to live the American Dream, while many of us native-born Americans have forgotten what the American Dream means, in our affluence and our apathy, and can only find it in our small hearts to hate these people for taking something from us. In reality they are giving us something amazing: a new and modern perspective on the basis for our even being a country at all. Poetry