Prayer Request

Two years ago if you had asked me how I felt about outsourcing I would have told you exactly what was in my head: it sucks, it shouldn't happen, and American jobs should stay in the hands of Americans. I, like most Americans, felt anger and betrayal when I thought of the American coporations eliminating hard-earned American jobs and handing them to foreign coporations and individuals who would do the job for less. I felt the fear when I thought on the direction of our country, of the future of my family, whether I would be able to go to college, if I should even bother.

Thankfully, my mother's job was never eliminated and it likely never will be. Many of her friends, however, found themselves jobless, replaced by a new coporation headquartered in India. The new company shipped many of their offshore employees onshore, to work side by side with the company that has employed my mother for the last... nearing thirty five years now. No one was pleased, and many of the people my mother has worked with for years showed their true colours when young people with a different complexion, a different accent, and a different background, walked through the revolving doors of their office building. Some searched for different employment, others ignored the newcomers, and others were truly ugly and hateful human beings, welcoming these young people to this strange new country with dirty looks, sneers, inordinate workloads and never a helping hand.

When my mother found Naveen and Sara, I was just getting ready to leave for college. They would come over to the house and cook with my mother, they taught her how to cook Indian food (and how to cook it well!), they watched movies with her, gave her books to read. They went shopping with her, asked her to bring them to their apartments when it was too rainy to take the bus, went for walks with her by the river in the spring and summer, held her arm when she needed help going up a curb, laughed at her jokes, talked to her when she was lonely. They were always there for her, even though America had been so cruel to them, so unwelcoming. Naveen's mother and father call my mother his "auntie," and she has a place beside his family at his wedding in India (as soon as they decide who his bride is... a story for another day). Sara's boyfriend (also a story for another day) in Texas sent my mother a coupon for a huge turkey over Thanksgiving, and emailed my mother, Naveen and I his gratitude for taking care of Sara when he couldn't be here for her. Sara and Naveen are like siblings to me. They are far from home and they don't have any family here to hug them when they are scared, to tell them jokes, to reassure them when work has been unbearable.

My view on outsourcing changed drastically as I got to know Sara and Naveen. They are people too, just here trying to do their jobs. They were sent here by their employers, and if they had refused they would have been without employment. They don't want to raise their families in India, they want to stay here and live and work and just live. They love this country, despite all of the trials her people put them through.

We took Naveen with us to Washington over Thanksgiving. I sat on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial with him, looking out over the reflecting pool, the WWII Memorial, and the Capital Building, and told him about a country ripped in two not too long ago by a disagreement over the value of a man. I told him about a nation that would send its babies off the war, to kill more babies in a country no one had ever even heard of, as I ran my fingers over the names of the friends of my parents on the Vietnam Wall. We stood in front of the White House and discussed the irony of the homeless people not 1,000 feet away from the most powerful man in the free world. I told him of the millions of people who died in a war much too recent, for no reason other than their faiths, their backgrounds, the people they loved. He had never even heard of the Holocaust, he didn't know that slaves were used in this country based solely on the colour of their skin, he didn't know about our Revolutionary War. He knew nothing about our country, or about the history of Western Civilization at all, but he is learning, and he is eager to learn.

If he is going to live in this country, and raise a family here, he needs to know about the United States and at least the important events in our history.

Sara went back to India over the summer and was transfered to work in Texas so she could live with her boyfriend.

We just found out last night that Naveen's visa will not be renewed, and he has a week to leave the country.

I held my mother in the kitchen while she wept, while she repeated "I'm loosing all three of you" over and over, sobbing. It's hard to not be steaming mad when you have to hold your mother in your arms because you're afraid she'll topple over from a broken heart. It's hard to not want someone to pay, it's hard to not want to be able to make everything right, so so badly. To be able to tell her that he can stay, that he can be her adopted son, as he has become, that he will still be here when I go back, that his life will be all right and nothing will be scary anymore.

But I can't tell her that. INS isn't renewing visas these days because of the outcry against outsourcing, from people like the person I was two years ago. Naveen is a hard worker, who deserves a chance to make his life better, just like my ancestors got when they left the slums of Dublin and the pastures of Poland and boarded ships bound for a strange land they had heard whispers of, promises of a better future for their babies and themselves. He is a hard worker, and a good man, and he deserves to be able to stay in this country, if only for as long as he is needed on shore. His employers are fighting to keep him on shore, because there is work only he can do.

I'm praying he stays on shore, if only for a little while longer, just long enough for them to figure out what we can do to keep him here indefinitely. I love Naveen because my mother loves him like a son, and anyone who my mother loves like a son or a daughter is a brother or a sister to me. The colour of his skin doesn't matter, his accent doesn't matter, his birth doesn't matter. He is my brother, he is my friend. We share this world, we share this country, we share this state, we share this woman who loves us and cares about us. I will do anything and everything to make sure he stays here, and lives a long and happy life in this country.

Sometimes the people of this country infuriate me. If you can see where I am coming from, and I hope you can, please pray that Naveen's visa is extended and he isn't put on the next flight to India from JFK. And if that can't happen, please pray that I can figure out how to heal my mother's breaking heart.