Perspective

I despise attempts to shame the citizenry of an entire nation into silence when they have no logical reason to be ashamed. It is vile, and it demeans not only the history of the nation itself but all the lives sacrificed throughout the decades to keep and maintain it.

Understand that the following comes from the perspective of an immigrant to this nation the son of parents and grandson of grandparents whose own native land no longer wanted them, disavowed them, and whom they threatened to have executed if ever they set foot on their country’s soil again.

Granted, the regime fell, the system changed, dictators were summarily executed, and we were able to visit our homeland once more, but if they had remained in power, it would nevermore be an option.

I know what would have become of my family had America not opened its arms and received us, and because of this, in spite of its many shortcomings, I will always have a deep and profound love for this nation. Hence the reason I’m still calling for repentance thirty years in. It’s not hate; it’s not aversion that compels me, it’s love.

Because I’ve lived through what certain other people have lived through, I find it all the more difficult to understand where all the hate and vitriol is coming from. There are those whom this nation received from places arguably far worse than my homeland, who now insist that the selfsame people who accepted them with open arms are somehow racist.

For the sake of clarity, and to fully understand just how insidious this new narrative is, let’s play a game. It will require your imagination, I can’t promise it will be fun, but by the end, I believe it will be illuminating to the point that you will no longer flinch when presidential candidates and elected congress members imply that you are racist.

Imagine you were going about your day, running errands, keeping busy when suddenly you hear a cry of despair coming from a dark alley. Being a decent human being, you go to investigate and happen upon a dirty, disheveled girl, begging for your help, and insisting that if you do not help her, if you do not intervene, she will surely die.

Your heart is stirred with compassion. You take the dirty girl into your home, you take the rags she was wearing and replace them with your clothing, you show her where she can take a bath, then show her the spare bedroom where she can sleep rent-free for as long as she wants, you feed her, and you make her feel welcome.

In no time at all, the girl looks very different than she did in that dark alley. Even though you are eating a little less so she can eat too, even though you are making sacrifices and allotting resources that could have gone to your own children, rather than show gratitude she begins to list all the things she doesn’t like about her room. At first, you let it slide. Maybe it’s just her culture or something, but one day, as you are sitting down to lunch, she takes the plate you prepared her, throws it across the room, and starts screaming about you having to tear down your entire house and rebuild it the way she wants. Otherwise, you’re a racist.

You calmly put your knife and fork down, and say, “if you don’t like it here, you can always go back to where you came from. No one is keeping you by force.” Then you go back to your meal.

Some come to this country hoping to assimilate, while others come to this country hoping to transform it. Just because you don’t want to embrace Socialism doesn’t make you racist. Just because you don’t want to do away with the Constitutional Republic untold numbers died to preserve doesn’t make you xenophobic, or a hateful human being.

Reject the narrative, reject the label, and realize that this war of words is not about migrants, immigration, race, or ethnicity. It’s about transforming this country into another Russia, Cuba, or Venezuela.

Just my perspective as someone who has lived it, and understands the power of propaganda. 

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr.