A few weeks ago, I went on my honeymoon to a resort near Playa del Carmen in the Mayan Riviera.  While I enjoyed myself very much, I made it a point to meet some people.  In meeting the staff, it would provide me a great opportunity to practice my Spanish.  In meeting some guests, I’d get to have talk to people with different perspectives.  In the end, I came to realize how very fortunate I was to take such a trip.

My wife and I stayed in an all-inclusive five-star hotel that was simply amazing.  We had a butler on-call, free access to their gourmet restaurants, and golf-cart shuttles to get us around the huge complex.  The bartenders used tongs to handle everything from the ice to the straws.  For someone not used to this, it was a bit overwhelming.

As we spent our honeymoon, I came to meet some of the employees who we kept running into time and time again.  As soon as I spoke to them in Spanish, there was an intimate rapport that was established.  In getting to know them and by watching them work, I thought to myself, “This person really busted their ass.”  As a result, my wife and I made it a point of tipping them well.

During one of our gourmet dinners, we ended up talking with our waiter.  He told us how he came up from Mexico City and now lives in Cancún. While our waiter didn’t say, my guess is that he moved to get work at the resorts.  Despite having a job that he likes, our waiter hardly his sees wife or nine year old step-daughter.  Despite it all, he sees something in his job that justifies being away from his family — all in the name of providing them with a better life.

My wife and I also had a chance to meet an older couple from Ann Arbor, who I’ll call Tom and Susan. Tom told me about something that he witnessed at the hotel that put things into perspective.  He was walking when he saw one of the guests just chewing out an apologetic hotel employee.  We talked about how the hotel’s service is very seductive, since neither of us are really accustomed to such service.  He pointed out that, when you’re not used to such things, you can easily get a big head and think that you could do anything that you want.  Instead of treating the employees like human beings, it’s easy to think that you own them.

Tom’s big point is that, despite the fact that the employees are probably paid peanuts (perhaps $6-7/hr plus tips), for many of the employees their pay is probably a small fortune.  Many like our waiter leave what they know in order to get something better for themselves and, sometimes, their families.  They’re happy with what they’re paid and settle.

As we were talking, a crazy idea popped into my head.  With all of this discussion about illegal immigration, should the best person no matter who they are get the job? I’ll tell you.  I’ve stayed at a number of different places and nothing compared to what I saw at our resort.  Even Tom, a non-Latino, saw the same thing as me.  The strange thing about my proposition? Tom agreed with me.

I’m not going to pretend to have all the answers to illegal immigration, which in my opinion hasn’t been addressed by the current administration. When it does come up, it’s only to raise one’s own political credibility or try to bring down that of the “opposition.”  We, as a country, are still benefiting off of the backs of illegal immigrants. Ask yourself, “What would possess someone to give up everyone and everything that they know and risk their lives to cross the border just to earn more money than they could expect at home?”

In my opinion, I think that our solution will ultimately start with punishing the employers that hire the workers and exploit them, developing a guest worker program and (the hardest part) having some type of legalization.  Discussing and, ultimately, resolving this issue will involve having a truly open discussion and being open to all options, until we ultimately arrive to a solution that works.  Let’s change the situation so that these workers don’t have to sacrifice their lives so that we can live ours.

Author: José A. Rodríguez