An Illegal immigrant:

One cold, dark January night in 1958, as a frightened 19 year,
He climbed a chain link fence along the border between Mexico
and the United States. The first time he clambered over the fence he was caught and sent back across the border. Just hours later, he was back. This time he made it over and escaped into the night.

An undocumented immigrant, he spoke no English and had no job skills. He labored as a farm worker in California. One day a friend said to him, ‘you will always be a migrant worker,’ something inside of him snapped. He couldn’t accept that. He lived inside a dumped dilapidated trailer, the type that is put on the back of a pickup truck. He took English lessons and enrolled at a community college, while juggling jobs as a painter and a welder.

He won a scholarship to the University of California, Berkeley. From there he went to medical school at Harvard University. He became a citizen! Now, his office walls at John Hopkins are covered in awards. This is a man who wouldn’t take no for an answer. This 42 year-old, one time farm worker, from Mexico, now heads the Brain Tumor Center at the John Hopkins Bayview Medical Center in Baltimore. His name is: Alfredo Quinones-Hinojosa, M.D. He is a researcher with a difference. He puts in punishing 16-hour shifts, not just in the operating room but in a brain cancer research lab as well! A real human being with a goal in life to help the suffering of mankind! I, wonder how many boys, men, girls and women have tried to make it across the river, but were turned back time and time again, many incarcerated, and killed, that could have accomplished some great things like this man did. Of course we have had many make it and did lots of good things.

None were probably asked what they wanted to do with their lives, just, ‘you can’t come here cause you ain’t got no papers’! This is our country! No it isn’t it is God’s country, as is the rest of the world. We are all citizens of this world that God gave us. Why are governments and leaders so stupid that they cannot understand that we should all work together for the betterment of humanity instead of trying to rule and separate nations from each other? To bad we can’t rewrite our history from day one. When we let our imagination run away with us and think about how we would have done things differently, we have a lot of interesting thoughts. Which makes me think about the quote from Albert Einstein, “Imagination is more important than knowledge”. In my imagination, I would not have any politicians that were lawyers or ex-military, only teachers.