For several years, I worked in the fitness center at a country club in Palm Beach County, Florida. It employed people from all over the world, but many were from Central America and the Caribbean, and quite a few were from Haiti.
One employee with whom I spoke often was a Haitian man named Maurice. He was quite a comic and it was always fun to chat with him for a few minutes when I went out to check on the pool attendant at 6:30 in the morning before going back into the fitness center. Maurice would then continue watering the clay tennis courts, blowing off the deck and getting the area ready for the members’ activities.
I sometimes spoke French to the Haitian employees just for fun, but French isn’t quite what they speak and I couldn’t understand a word that they said to each other in Creole. When I greeted Maurice in French one day, I was pretty surprised when he replied just like a Parisian. Not long after that, I noticed him speaking Spanish to the lady who brought the towels to us. I mentioned it to the tennis pro and he told me that Maurice was fluent in at least seven languages. He never went to college and I don’t even know if he went to an ill-equipped Haiti high school, but somehow, he was better educated linguistically than most of the college graduates I knew.
The irony was punctuated by the fact that one of our fitness attendants was a teen girl whose family was Costa Rican. She spoke with a thick accent, but one day I learned that she didn’t speak much Spanish at all. I thought she was kidding, but she told me that, indeed, her mother hadn’t taught it to her because she wanted to raise her like an American. One language.
I never asked Maurice anything personal, but it became pretty clear that he was here illegally and was trying to bring the rest of his family over. After a long shift at the country club, he would go home long enough to change and head over to his other job at the grocery store. For all I know, they weren’t his only two jobs.
Incidentally, it’s not unusual for a Haitian to work several full-time jobs. I saw other employees working minimum-wage jobs at various places in the area. They would greet me cheerfully, with none of that nervous pride that so many Americans would display in such circumstances. They were just happy to be working, earning money, presumably saving up to have their families and/or friends and/or extended families smuggled out of that hopeless, desperate country.
Every few months, I would come into work and someone would tell me that someone had been "sent back" – it was almost like there had been a death. I don’t know how it happened. Haiti doesn’t even have a census, so I’m not sure if they noticed people missing. Most likely, someone had snitched.
I haven’t talked to anyone from the club in years, but to this day, I’m endeared to the people of Haiti, as all the Haitians I have ever known have been hard-working, strong and selfless people. If anyone should be immune from deportation, it is them.
I hope that Maurice is still in the United States and that his wife and children are here as well. Had he been born here, he would probably be a brilliant doctor, professor... someone who can learn seven languages just for the heck of it can do just about anything.
I’m grateful to the country club for hiring such people when doing so is frowned upon by many. I’m grateful that I, a country girl from a small white town, can look upon the people in Haiti not as people who are "not like us" but as people who are just like us. If I had been so unfortunate in birth, I too would break laws to make life better for my family. It’s what people do.
In the coming weeks and months, when the debate begins about how many people should be allowed to move here from Haiti, and when radio blowhards are yelling about how we should deport them, I hope that this country (especially the South Florida part) continues to hold up the message with which we used to greet our guests:
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
with silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"