Dead Man's Honda

After several miles of being lost on a freeway and following scant signs for the I5 to San Diego, we were spat into a line of vehicles along a desolate thoroughfare. We missed the border crossing in Tijuana. Now we were someplace else. We were not quite sure where. In our minds the border was just around the corner beyond our line of vision. In reality, it was.

Also in reality, it was five and a half hours away.

"Hey uh….your car is really leaking something there….like…uh…a LOT…" a young American female said with her sandy hair tousled out the window from where her head was thrust.

Desiree smiled. "Oh thank you!" she said cheerfully, as if we had just received a compliment.

"No, I mean, like it's seriously leaking…"

"Ok, thanks!" Lindsey and I chimed in.

"Yeah and uh…well…now there's smoke coming out of your car…"

"Really?" Des said with some alarm, looking up out of her driver side window.

"Yeah…like…a…"

Before the tourist could finish her sentence the engine thrust out a billowing cloud of smoke and steam which blocked her from our sight.

We pulled over.

"Are you kidding me?" Lindsey said. Her eyes were wide. Desiree looked anxious but commanded the situation.

"Look, we'll wait for it to cool off," she said smiling positively. "Lock your doors."

I started laughing. Our car had just exploded in the worst traffic jam I'd ever seen (I live in Los Angeles, so that says something), and we were still in Mexico. Mexico. The place three innocent-looking young females are never supposed to go alone. And they certainly aren't supposed to break down with their swimsuits on and absolutely no, I repeat no, radiator fluid, oil or anything else "repair" like.

I should probably mention that between the three of us our Spanish is limited to: "How much is", "I want coffee with milk" and "How old are you".

"Where the hell is your next Jiffy Lube?" was not in our vocabulary.

We sat next to the long line of barely moving vehicles for about forty-five minutes—pouring water in every crevice of the engine, gingerly pulling the cap off the radiator, and squatting to see how much of that water landed on the ground beneath. The car seemed to stop leaking. The smoke was gone. And the radiator was filled with water.

We got back in the line.

Within a few minutes the car overheated again—sending the temperature needle up against the H as if it were a magnetic force and forcing smoke against the windshield worse than before.

"Turn on the heater," I said to Des. I've had experience with overheating engines. So she turned it on in the near-90 degree desert and we braced ourselves against the rolling wave of engine exhaust that toppled onto our laps. The car didn’t stop smoking, so we pulled off the road. Again. We cussed, again. While pouring water back onto the engine we noticed that rather than sitting in the line of vehicles, many cars were yanking themselves out of line and gunning it up the sandy border of the road—barely missing us in their quest to cut off the line at the turn up ahead.

And so the line stood still. With every passing car we grew more annoyed. Couldn't they see they were the reason no one else was going anywhere?

Finally, we got back into the line.

Two hours later, we had moved about 40 feet.

The only way to keep the car from dying was to turn off the engine, put it in neutral, and push the car forward to keep the engine cool. Since it was the world's slowest moving line, it really wasn't that much trouble. But cars are heavy no matter what. And despite the fact that we were surrounded by people, only five people in an entire 6 and a half hours, ever stopped to see if they could help.

So there we were, pushing our car down the long, twisted road that really wasn't as long as it was just slow, in our swimsuits and flip flops in the hot Mexican sun. Occasionally we turned the engine on to get the car up a hill, but we did so with the heater blasting and our skin red and glistening. We couldn’t tell if we were blistering from the sun or the heater. And our water had long since run out on account of the radiator. Yet we moved forward only inch by inch, hour after hour.

Children exploited by their parents pan-handled in between the vehicles. People sold puppies that would no doubt die somewhere between the seller's arms and the buyer's homes. Grimy, pathetic-looking children in the gutter all around us made our stomachs ache. Their parents ignored them unless they wandered too far to beg. We took turns being heartbroken at the state of human affairs around us and then laughing at our predicament. The young couple high on weed in the car in front of us tended to laugh a lot at our predicament as well.

When we finally got to the border five and half hours from our first break-down—sunburned, sweaty, tired, hungry and severely dehydrated, the border officer asked:

"In what country do you hold citizenship?"

Desiree was flustered and exhausted and answered quickly, "California."

I would have laughed but I was too distracted by the officer's eyes. They were the opposite of crossed. Each eyeball looked a different direction. The strange-eyed man asked a couple questions and let us through. We could have had our trunk filled with children and cocaine, or whatever they sell in the form of brand-name prescription drugs, but he didn't check. If anything, Desiree's funny answer should have sent up a red flag and he should have checked out the entire vehicle. But he didn't. I was not comforted by that in the least.

Unlike most of the Americans who were in Mexico, we were not there to conduct Christian tourism (volunteering at an AID agency or something) or to commit debauchery. We just wanted to leave the US for a weekend. Considering the time-frame of a weekend, that limits your options. Upper Baja California seemed like an ideal option for us. We could at least see beaches and little towns south of the border. We did see beaches and towns but we mostly saw bike-riders and impoverished people pimping out virtually anything to make money. We saw that, and of course, the inside of our car.

But in that line of hundreds of cars I wasn't thinking about being an American who came to engage in debauchery. I was thinking about what it must be like to try become one.

Last week I read an article in Christianity Today about reforming immigration in order to make it easier for undocumented individuals from Mexico to become citizens once they arrived in the United States. It also advocated for more lenient border policies with Mexico. The article quoted scripture about how we ought to treat strangers in the land, particularly undocumented individuals from Mexico. It took the position that Scripture always advocates for leniency and hospitality when it comes to “strangers” within foreign borders. It apparently forgot about this scripture:

Isaiah 1:6

Your country is desolate,
your cities burned with fire;
your fields are being stripped by foreigners
right before you,
laid waste as when overthrown by strangers.

Or this one:

Obadaiah 1: 11

11 On the day you stood aloof
while strangers carried off his wealth
and foreigners entered his gates
and cast lots for Jerusalem,
you were like one of them.

I am mis-using Scripture here just as much as the author of the article. I am picking out pieces to make a point and completely disregarding context. That’s why I didn’t like what the individual wrote, and why I don’t, for one minute, take seriously the two verses above in the context in which I just quoted them.

What made me the gloomiest about that article was that it only mentioned undocumented Mexican workers. It failed to address other cultural and ethnic groups at all. The individual who wrote it went to universities around the United States encouraging young people to advocate on behalf of undocumented Mexican citizens within the U.S. as well as to advocate for less stringent border controls along Mexico. I am a huge proponent of educating our young people. I become wary, however, when individuals attempt to politicize them before they are properly educated. Politicizing young people is the strategy of tyrants—not individuals who desire a just democratic polity. When Mao Zedong could not get his agenda passed by the adults of his country, he went to the students. They committed grave injustices against their elders and themselves before they knew what they were even doing. Politicizing young people is not difficult—they are more idealistic, easily impassioned. There's a reason people go to the young.

The immigration debate in the United States has become bifurcated primarily along Mexican v. United States lines. The wall Congress has recently agreed to build has been denounced by Mexico. It was hotly contested in states where undocumented Mexican citizens reside.

I am not opposed to reforming immigration in the United States. I am not opposed to increasing quotas.

I am opposed to people who cut in line.

I understand that the living situation in many areas of Mexico is dire. I’ve participated in volunteer work in the slums. The situation is tragic, miserable, and difficult for anyone to observe who desires the dignity of all human life to be upheld. But it isn’t the only place that is tragic. Our Latin neighbors are not the only ones who suffer. Places facing blight, ravaging illness, genocide, civil war, etc. have citizens who would love to get in to the United States on a guest worker visa, on a boat, a plane, or in someone’s suitcase. But they can't get here. Instead, they have to get on a list. They have to wait in line and meet requirements. Meanwhile, many of them languish in prisons, refugee camps, in regions fraught with violence and famine.

When individuals cross the border illegally they cut in line in front of genocide victims, refugees, well-educated and not educated, the starving and those ostracized politically, the sick, the oppressed, and the thirsty. Is it just to advocate on behalf of our Latin neighbors who enter the country illegally and not on behalf of those who have no ability to do that as well?

As I write this I can not forget the faces of the undocumented workers I have known who are beautiful, hard-working, have overcome oppression and are still at times exploited. Their stories break my heart. But I also can not forget the faces I have seen or have heard about that are filled with just as much pain and are just as desperate to come to a place that values freedom and opportunity.

I also can not look at a public question like immigration and say that it is just to advocate for one people group primarily. I can not say that it is correct politically or otherwise to compromise the safety of our borders in all directions. How that gets framed in Congress or the media, is another story. But here, where it is simply me, I believe we have a duty to humanity to view our immigration policies holistically, and not to march on the streets for one group to get in while others wither at the gates.

When I fail to get involved politically and fail to vote in ways that could transform our immigration policies—I am like those who drove past us and in the line when we were in need of help. Advocating for one people group—when there are millions in line behind them—and using Biblical (or secular) language of justice to do it—isn't just. When we don't change the system and we advocate on behalf of a select group, or those who cut in line, and misuse Scripture to do it—the whole system comes to a standstill.