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Talking Story  by Polo

From The Asian Reporter, V17, #9 (February 27, 2007), page 7.

It was a Tuesday, it was too early, and Portland’s overcast was a full foot above the Oregon Convention Center’s twin glass towers. Our tired old Toyota was working real hard keeping her windshield clear. I could see only enough to know how lucky and cozy we were inside, because out on the boulevard named for the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr, guys were jamming the sidewalk, jostling for day jobs. For nailing shingles, for planting arborvitae. Mother Mexico’s ambitious children, two thousand miles from home. Glancing left and right, they were, looking out for la Migra. Immigration cops.

Over radio news, me and the rest of our rousing city was already hearing about rage on every Arab street. About European anger at extraordinary rendition. About Latin American resentment over their big bossy neighbor.

It seemed everybody on our wobbly little blue planet was mad. Mad at us. Even Canadians don’t like us anymore.

And then, that’s when it hit me (BAM) like Santa Fe lightning. Just as I was shifting from first gear to second; just as Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff was talking-stink about those 39,000 illegal Chinese he’s caught sewing Macy’s spring wear, steaming ham bao, and frying dim sum: it came to me — the answer to our grumpy world’s accusations, our solution to our thousands and thousands of wanna-be-Americans.

Make them Yanks.

All of them.

What could be more obvious? Tolol kami. What woodenheads, we are.

Mira, these guys reeeally like us. Like no one else does. They actually love America. They pay big bucks to crazy coyotes, to guide them across white-hot deserts. Pregnant ladies hold their breath, to have their precious babies born on our soil. They are men with hearts as strong as an ox, Chinese who’ll labor silent for 20 years to pay back Snakehead blood-loans. They think the world of getting themselves here, of making family here.

Think of it.

In fact — though I’ve got no hard science, only early morning radio news for facts — these folks are America’s only fans. They are our only friends.

Let’s make them familia.

And we don’t make family suffer. We don’t seal them inside airless semi-truck trailers or ship them in iron bottoms of tramp steamers. We don’t make them stand on that street named for America’s gentlest Dreamer, begging for work, praying their employer won’t stiff them, knowing Oregon’s courts have closed them out.

Family doesn’t do that.

Ayoh anak, I tell you true: Tuesday morning or not, Oregon rain or shine, newcomers have always made the best Americans. We work hard, save plenty, spend good, and send the rest home to our proud moms. And hey, with friends like that, who needs to worry about enemies?

anak (Malay, Bahasa Indonesia, Indo patois): child, boy, girl.

ayoh (Indo patois): let’s go-go-go.

Chinese undocumented immigrants: According to Homeland Security Dept. figures, nearly 40,000 nationals of China have been denied stay in the U.S., but are not accepted for return by their government. About 700 are kept in U.S. jails. According to Professor Xiao-huang Yin, chair of the American Studies Program at Occidental College, approximately 500,000 smuggled Chinese work here without any U.S. labor law protection, many live in urban East and West Coast Chinatown squalor. California’s San Gabriel Valley, for example, has an estimated 4,000 homeless Chinese, sleeping in shifts of up to 20 people on old mattresses, in so-called "garage inns," paying $4 per night, $3 during the day.

dim sum (Chinese): vast variety of little bites. Yum.

extraordinary rendition (who knows where we get these awful words): our government grabbing a guy suspected of participating in activities threatening Americans, without asking our judicial system, then shoving him into an unmarked jet, handing him to thugs from governments that have no problem with torturing prisoners into telling them whatever they want to hear.

familia (from Spanish, an Asian colonial language): a constellation of interdependent people, accepting reciprocal obligations of family. Need not be "related" in Western sense, by blood or law.

FOBA (Fresh-Off-da-Boat Attitudes) immigrant common sense.

ham bao (pan-Asian): nugget of tasty meat or vegetable enveloped by steamed bread. Double yum.

kami (Bahasa Indonesia): we.

la Migra (Span): officers of U.S. immigration law enforcement. At once: cops interrupting families lives and regular working folks following ambiguous (unclear) and ambivalent (hot and cold) orders from uncertain national leaders.

mira (Span, Indo patois): look.

Snakehead: Ethnic Chinese criminal organization operating in a number of countries.

tolol (Indo patois): dope.