So, where are you from?

(Immigrants trepid about living in 21st Century America)

It was one of those five or ten year blizzards that brought Coloradans together. The snow began falling at 6:00 a.m., and by noon, it was a wet, sloppy mess. I had gotten stuck three times already on my “short” trip to the grocery store, and by the time I tried to climb my little street (just three houses from my driveway!), I was stuck for sure.

Sunny days and authentic natural disasters bring the neighbors out in droves. That day, they all had shovels. Selfishly, we all had to pitch in just to keep the street clear for everybody else.

Most of my neighbors are Latino now. The subdivision “flipped” in the last half-decade or so. One young woman with a shovel came to my aid, and as we sweated and grunted and dug and pushed, we complained about winter’s onslaught. I was raised in Detroit, and have been in Colorado for 30 years - I had my snow stories.

Casually I asked, “where are you from?” She glanced quickly at me and her pause told me I had crossed some line of appropriate neighborly behavior. “I was born in Texas, but I was raised in Mexico,” she replied haltingly.

It’s plausible enough. Around these parts, most Hispanic folks never got the part about “sovereign U.S. borders” since the end of the Mexican-American war (1848). As the battle lines are being drawn over immigration, Colorado’s Hispanics are quick to remind others that they’ve been on this land for centuries, and been able to travel south and back relatively hassle-free. Those days are done.

Have the militant pro-Mexicans (“you need us,” “we deserve all the benefits”) and virulent anti-immigrants (“send them all back,” “America for Americans”) made us suspicious of each other?

A western U.S. pizza chain announced their plan to accept “pesos” for pizza, and in just a few days, the death threats and racist bile began to flow. The pesos promotion is news only off the border. Border towns in the South have done business in pesos for years, just as border towns in the North accept Canadian dollars (but not in Detroit, where Canadian coins would give vending machines fits).

While America figures out who “belongs” here, I hope we don’t lose our civility in the process.