Hospitality

 

Today’s post comes from the former HoCoHouseHon, who took time on a busy Christmas Eve to pen these words:

If you’re going out to dinner tonight - or any night - take a moment to consider that your whole experience depends upon the hard work of immigrants, from the line cooks to the bussers, from the servers to the managers, from agricultural workers to the contractors who built the restaurant. Immigrants are fundamental to our entire way of life. 

Tonight is when Christmas is celebrated in some Latin cultures, and the majority of my staff is missing Christmas to serve everyone who celebrates tomorrow. So be kind. Say thank you. Every time you go out to eat, remember that there would be no hospitality in this country without immigrants.

So be grateful, and pray with me that the amazing people who truly make our country great can always call America their home.

*****

Way back in 2018 when the County Executive race was getting ugly with sneers like, “He loves those illegals more than he loves us,” I wrote:

This is every bit as much a local issue as a national one.

As HoCoHouseHon’s words above remind us, this issue is still, sadly, as relevant as ever.

Yet again we see people manipulated by fear and a mindset of scarcity, a small-minded “othering” of those who look different, worship differently, or sound different when they speak. It’s absolutely true that “immigrants are fundamental to our way of life” but all they see is “those people are going to take my stuff.”

There are many fancy ways of justifying it but in the end it is as base and as coarse as that: Those people. Those people. Sure, I believe in “we the people”. But not those people. Those people are going to take my stuff.

Not much has changed when it comes to folks whose idea of democracy is voting to ensure that they they can exert outsized influence over who gets in, how many, where they live, and where their kids go to school. Some of these people are very nice people. Some of them will tell you they believe in things like “God is love” and “Love thy neighbor.”

But:

You can't say you "love" someone and then vote in such a way that you place their lives and the lives of people like them in real danger.

An amazing thing about love, and justice, and generosity, and respect: they don’t run out because they are shared. There is no finite “pot of good stuff” which will be diluted or drained when we decide to place value on the lives of the undocumented, or people of color, or Muslims, or the poor. In fact, our democracy can only be made stronger by welcoming diversity, by including our neighbors.

All of them.

It still comes down to this: When you have more than you need -  -  build a bigger table, not a higher fence. 

You think building a bigger table is too expensive? The cost of a higher fence far outweighs it: a democracy that is not truly a democracy, a land of plenty destroyed by a fearful grasping for resources, a community where “those people” lead parallel but lesser lives. 

Today is Christmas, you say. Hanukkah begins today. Just celebrate, already. Why are we talking about this? Simply because these words weigh so heavily on my heart today:  there would be no hospitality in this country without immigrants. But how do we show hospitality? How do we embody the ancient responsibility to welcome the stranger, to provide food, shelter, and safety? 

Today may be a day of many gifts. Tomorrow will be determined by how we chose to share. 

Village Green/Town² Comments