Immigration Vibes

Yesterday I was walking home from work when a man approached me, babbling rapidly about money. He handed me an index card upon which he had written "out of work, 3 kids in Romania, need many to bring them here". i've never felt bad about refusing someone like I did with him. Truly I didn't have any cash to give him, but for some reason it just hit me that this poor man (if he were telling the truth, of course) had come here for a "better life" and to give his family one, and was instead wandering the streets collecting minute amounts of money in order to fly his children over. It's again one of the times I wish I had more money, wished I could have paid for a plane ticket for one of them or something. I have no idea how much it costs to fly in from Romania, but I'm pretty sure it's a lot more than you'll get collecting on hte streets of New York.

Whenever I have an experience like that, it makes everything in my life seem so minute and ridiculous. Really. Here I am upset because I'm struggling to pay the CABLE bill and this man is starving on teh streets trying to get his children back. Who wouldn't feel bad, right? Again, it's the American way of life. We struggle with the idea that we're not it in this world, that there is more to the situation than it seems. I complain about my job on a pretty regular basis, not unlike all my friends, who also complain. But at least we have jobs. At least we're citizens who don't have to worry that they'll take our jobs away for not being here long enough, that someone will figure out we snuck our way into New York.

I went home and watched TV and cooked dinner and read a book and went to bed in my own bed because I could. Because I had all that available- food and entertainment and a warm thick blanket when the air conditioning got too cold. But I wonder if he did, I can only imagine what kind of place he's living in and can't blame him for begging in SoHo where women pay several hundred dollars for a bra from Agent Provocateur or more for a pair of really nice shoes. When all he wants is for his family to be in the same country. Makes you wonder what it was that you thought was so important before, right? I'm sitting here super concerned I won't get into my first choice grad school program and he's worried that he won't get breakfast or dinner the next day.