Good Samaritans Still Exist

This story breaks my heart on so many different levels.

Deported Samaritan: ‘I never could have left him’
Illegal immigrant gave up his trek to U.S. to help 9-year-old wreck victim in Arizona desert

PHOENIX — An illegal immigrant who gave up his long walk into the U.S. to help a boy whose mother was killed in a van crash in the desert said Wednesday that he never thought of leaving the child.

“I am a father of four children. For that, I stayed,” Manuel Jesus Cordova Soberanes said in Spanish from his home in the Mexican state of Sonora. “I never could have left him. Never.”

Authorities said Cordova may have saved the life of 9-year-old Christopher Buztheitner, whose mother was killed when their van ran off a cliff in a remote area north of the Mexican border on Thanksgiving Day.

You can read the rest of the story here, if you haven’t already.

Take a look at Manuel Jesus Cordova Soberanes:

He’s just an average guy, the kind of guy that you might see trimming tree branches from a cherry picker or hauling rebar at a construction site or waiting on a street corner with his friends for work.  He’s a father of four children back in Sonora and now he’s the guardian angel of a little American kid.  He gave up his own chances for work in America to stay with a helpless child, fully knowing that he would be deported once he got the child to safety.  Not exactly a character worth demonizing, is he?

If anything, I hope that the one thing people will take away from this story is that not all Mexican immigrants are evil, soulless parasites bent on destroying our country from the inside out.  I’ve never understood the human tendency to want to group things and people together into strictly-defined stereotypes, except to say that it must be based solely on fear and ignorance: these unfamiliar things frighten me and I don’t know what to do with them, so they’re bad and must be kept away at all costs.

It’s been this way throughout history, so it’s not as if I’m expecting the natural human mindset to change any time soon.  But I’m still saddened by our general stupidity and hatefulness as a nation.  I know that we have a problem with our borders being so unsecured and permeable – not only with regard to Mexico, but overall — and I certainly don’t have a solution.

But the solution isn’t to demonize Mexican immigrants who are, for the most part, simply looking to better themselves and their families in the best way they know how.  They’re our neighbors and our coworkers and our history and probably our future.  And God knows we have bigger issues to deal with than someone who’s just trying to do an honest day’s work.