Barbarians at the Gate
The security and prosperity of a great nation are under assault. The question is, by who?
Ana arrived at the Magill door like Mary Poppins in a huipil. Stella and Shane were born in late December and our hands were full. Our oldest, Jess, was a good kid for a 4-year old, but he was still 4 years old; always in motion. I had just started a full-time-and-a-half job in venture capital and Alexandra was starting a full-time-and-a-half job as mom of 3, on an energy pack depleted by 9 months of carrying 2, and then the delivery. We looked for help.
Ana had a distinctly Mayan veneer. Black hair, brown eyes, and bronze skin. Wide, short, solid, and purposeful. Always with a smile, but no need for small talk. Ask her to do something, she did it. ¿Qué puedo hacer por ti ahora, Alejandra?
“What has happened to us in this country? If we study our own history, we find that we have always been ready to receive the unfortunate from other countries, and though this may seem a generous gesture on our part, we have profited a thousand fold by what they have brought us.”
- Eleanor Roosevelt
We hired Ana part-time to help with house cleaning while Alexandra focused on the kids. She soon shared the kids and we split up the house chores. Her natural skills as guardian and kid catcher were astounding, her tenderness with children pure mana to us as frazzled parents. Our confidence in her as middle inning relief was absolute (a gratuitous baseball reference, sorry).
At 40, Ana was already a grandmother, with her daughter now expecting #2, unattached, and not yet 20. Ana held a deep faith and was distraught with her daughter’s wayward irresponsibility, but working multiple jobs for various families from dawn through dark left no time to sentry her own. So, we hired her full time to help lessen the load.
“The bald fact is that the entire restaurant industry in America would close down overnight, would never recover, if current immigration laws were enforced quickly and thoroughly across the board.”
- Anthony Bourdain
The 2 women grew close; Alexandra and Ana. Both were shaped by challenging childhoods. They were smart and ambitious women, convinced that much better things were possible very far from home. For my wife, that meant a bolt from the Paris suburbs and an oppressive home life, west across an ocean and then a continent. For Ana, that meant an escape from grinding Guatemalan violence and poverty, north across a border and then a second.
Ana arranged for her father to try that perilous route as well, but his coyote couriers decided at the last moment, perhaps there was more to squeeze through ransom. Ana made the journey from San Francisco to Tijuana, where she swallowed her panic and stepped into a van with said kidnappers gunned up and threatening carnage. She didn’t have the money. She did bring what she could, perhaps half, and on her knees begged in tears to let her return to California with her ailing padre. They took every dime and anything else of value, then shoved them both out of the van. Alive, at least.
“A child on the other side of the border is no less worthy of love and compassion than my own child.”
- President Barrak Obama
Ana became family to us, as trusted with our kids and home as any loved abuela or tia. When we vacationed we took her with us. Not to watch the 3 rapscallions while the majestic couple frolicked and partied (Alexandra was a spendthrift who didn’t party, which explains how we afforded to buy a family home in San Francisco). But to gift Ana a few days of escape from the daily battles that consumed her life.
I think there are pictures of her in one of our old photo albums, waist deep in the warm waters off Poipu Beach in Kauai, staring wistfully out to the endless horizon, where the blue sea met the blue sky. On our final day of that trip Alexandra asked if she was eager to get back home. No, she said, no not at all, she never wanted this trip to end. She would just float in these calm Hawaiian waters forever if she could, free from it all.
Who could imagine depriving Ana of that dream?
Stephen Miller, Goebbels reincarnate, wants his scalps. Three thousand a day, and snap the fuck to it. Tom Homan, brownshirt-in-chief, is happy to execute. Sir, Yes Sir! Gardeners are tackled mid weed whack and leaf blow; day laborers corralled and zip-tied in Home Depot parking lots; visa seekers ambushed at their monthly immigration appointments. All are stunned and confused while cuffed, some punched and thrown to the ground, few get an explanation. And then disappeared. Inhumanity in the extreme, for your Fox viewing pleasure.
"Shall we refuse the unhappy fugitives from distress that hospitality which the savages of the wilderness extended to our fathers arriving in this land? Shall oppressed humanity find no asylum on this globe?"
-President Thomas Jefferson
I think about Ana now, from the idyllic perch of my Provence apartment. Those pesky Magill tykes she chased around, fed, and held sleeping to her bosom late into the night, are now in their 20s. Alexandra and I divorced 10 years back, but still the closest of friends and allies. The Hawaiian family holidays are over.
I did nothing to merit my gender (male), skin tone (white), or place of birth (America). And those prized gifts have afforded me a great shot at life security, affluence, and self-realization. Ana and millions like her were gifted little, yet made my effort x10. Yes, border controls and a well regulated immigration system are modern necessities. But would a bit of humility and humanity be too much to ask?
Afterword
According to this 2025 report by the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy:
For every 1 million undocumented immigrants who reside in the US, public services receive $8.9 billion in additional tax revenue. (They paid $96.7 billion in federal, state, and local taxes in 2022.)
More than a third of these tax dollars fund programs - including Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment insurance - that undocumented immigrants are barred from accessing.
In 40 of the 50 US states, undocumented immigrants pay higher state and local tax rates than the top 1 percent of households living within those borders.
Additionally,
Almost 1 in 4 entrepreneurs in the US are immigrants.
About 46% of the Fortune 500 companies were started by immigrants or their children.