From the Annals of the Unemployed

Indeed, I am still of the unemployed variety, although I doubt it will last very long. I have an offer I'm tempted to take, so things should get at least monetarily better shortly.

After my unexpected cessation of employment, I spent several days understandably upset. On the 14th, my boyfriend flew me down to the Cayman Islands to join him on a Caribbean vacation. It was extremely romantic, and warm and sunny and awesome, and very good for me. On our last day there, we were having lunch at the bar/restaraunt at the resort we stayed in. The bar/restaraunt was on a little dock out in the water, which was cute because you could sit and eat and watch the fish and the water. We were all kind of sluggish, reluctant to leave, and we were just sort of zoning out waiting for the food. I noticed a boat out on the water, a boat that seemed very old and seemed to be sinking. The back end was so low in the water I thought it was submerged, and I pointed it out to my companions. We were alarmed, but there was a motor boat headed towards the distressed vessel and we watched as it pulled up beside it, and then returned to the dock. Obviously the boat wasn't in any drastic distress or the motor boat would have helped. We watched, bemused, as the overladen boat came closer and closer to the dock.

The boat had a blue hull, and a makeshift mast that was little more than just sticks tied together. As it came closer, I said "That looks like Cuban refugees", making this ignorant observation off of pictures in magazines like National Geographic. I was joking, I thought, because surely that couldn't actually be the case.

However, it was the case. The tiny, decrepit boat pulled up to the dock, where an official met them and kept them from setting foot on Cayman territory. The boat was very close to us, and I have never felt so filthy as I did there, sitting in an over-priced, unnecessary resort bar, eating over-priced gluttonous portions of food, while just yards away a boat full of destitute, starving, abused people are trying to win some sort of life back. It was humbling and horrifying, to say the least. I wanted to walk over there, give them my food, tell them how sorry I am, and then get in the boat with them. I wanted to apologize to them that America isn't the bountiful, beautiful, wonderful place that it's talked up to be. That they'll face persecution, hatred, prejudice, exploitation, and violence if they make it to American soil. And I wanted to cry to think that they came from something so much worse, that America looked good to them.

The people at the resort gave them sacks of food, new full jugs of water, and escorted them back into the ocean. They were headed to Mexico, where they would work themselves up the Mexican coast and then somehow into America. There were 12 people in a boat that was smaller than my living room in this tiny apartment. I hope that they find a better place and that they get to where they want to be, wherever it is.

I have a lot of opinions on this, especially since I have been homeless and destitute before. America sustained me, but a lot of the time it seems like it is only a living death I live here. There is so little life here, so little vibrance. I am not going to put any of my opinions on immigration here, because it is not theory that should decide this issue. It should be the dirt and blood and tears of reality that force a decision, a compromise, a solution.

Put yourself there, in a barstool in a resort restaraunt, surrounded by enormous wealth, so close to people stuck in a decrepit boat, starving. What could you say to them? How would you handle it?