He cried for a week when his parents left him. It was for his own good. For as long as it'd last.
Rufino Santiz Díaz was in the sixth grade when his parents left him in the care of his older siblings. He understood that they did it out of love and hope for his future. But no one could have predicted the tough choices he'd eventually have to make.
Imagine not having a country to call home and your life being in limbo because of decisions you didn't even make. It sounds like a bad dream, but that's living for Rufino and a lot of other people who are being let down by the U.S.'s weirdly anti-immigrant policies.
I say "weirdly" because it is. It's weird that a country built by immigrants has become one that turns them away by the millions. It's especially weird when you consider that the U.S. plays a big role in foreign policy that makes people come here in the first place.
Something we can all do to help is to stop viewing immigration as a political issue — it makes politicians act like idiots. Immigration policy is a matter of human rights. Despite their own complicity in human rights abuses — *ahem* slavery — even the founding fathers of the U.S. seemed to know that.
And for folks like Rufino, the faster we recapture that idea, the better.