Wading through Eden's Waste

We see them every day, they have become a part of our society here in California, and as a society we rely on them.  They live an elusive yet public existence, being part of our everyday lives, yet somehow avoiding detection.  I am speaking of the hoards of illegal Mexicans that flock to the United States and California in general, looking for a better existence.  In my home town of Fulton California, in the heart of the wine country, they would gather by the hundreds on the main street corner every morning waiting to be picked up for a day’s work.  Even at the high end catering business that I worked at the majority of the chefs were illegal’s.  I would often wonder how they could make it so far north of the border with so little, all the while avoiding detection.

            In the book Jasmine by Bharati Mukherjee the main character Jasmine details the trip that brought her from India to the United States.  She came to America the way that many people do, illegally.  With forged papers she makes her way through out of the way airports in third world countries to finally connect up with a shrimp boat that was going to be her final bridge into the United States.  On this fishing boat she is smuggled under a tarp with other immigrants from different countries until they finally make their landfall in Florida.  “I waded through Eden’s Waste:  plastic bottles, floating oranges, boards, sodden boxes, white and green plastic sacks tied shut but picked open by birds and pulled apart by crabs,”(Mukherjee, p.107).  What a way to be introduced to America.  Her late husband spoke of this “Eden” as a place of new beginnings, where he could get the opportunities that he deserved and make a life for himself.  Now, upon her arrival, Jasmine was wading through the filth of this supposed place of paradise. 

"Wading through Eden's waste"   

         Hearing of Jasmines story of how she got to the United States makes one consider how many of the illegal immigrants make it across the border.  It is not in an air-conditioned jet liner or the front seat of a car, but usually hidden under a blanket in the back of a hot van, or stuffed into a trunk of a car.  Much like the experience of Jasmine, the people that help facilitate this entry and usually the scum of the earth, just trying to make a buck.  These immigrants also have to “wade through Eden’s waste” in order to make it here.

            It is these sacrifices that people make that personally amaze me.  When you drive by that group of illegal immigrants on the street corner waiting for work, much of the time one has no idea of the suffering that they went through just to make it to that corner.  In the same way Jasmine went through her own personal hell to make it to America to fulfill her own destiny.