The Undocumented Americans (One World Essentials)

by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio

I asked almost everyone I interviewed for this book about regrets, but they didn’t tell me many. That’s not what they remember of their time here. That’s not what we’ll remember when we have to leave, by choice, force, or casket. The look in a mother’s eyes at her baby’s first word in English, my father’s heaving sobs when I handed him my diploma in Latin from the best fucking school in the world, Leonel’s first steps of freedom outside the church in the autumn cold after four months in hiding, the Mexican chefs behind every great restaurant in New York, the Upper East Side babies who love their Haitian nannies so much it makes their moms jealous, a day laborer’s first cold shower in America after wearing off the soles of his feet in the desert, the two young men who pushed Joaquín up the mountain when he wanted to die, Jesus Christ himself on the cross—Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.