IMMIGRANTS AT THE MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS GARDENS

The young woman in the elevator -a guest, perhaps- said to her companion, “Most of the workers in this complex are immigrants.” Her companion did not respond. She looked at me, sort of wondering if I understood her or was going to react, but I did not. The immigrant as the “other” has become such a complex and violent issue that, for a colonial immigrant carrying official documents, to engage in a conversation while riding an elevator would have been a waste of time, adding a sense of displacement to what was already being pushed around, felt in the atmosphere, and triggering more anxiety to the one some of us are already  going through. The ride was too short in order to answer questions such as: who is an immigrant, why is the society being led into seeing them as the target to be persecuted, jailed, what is the relationship between the current state of affairs and the life of a Puerto Rican homosexual who has spent so many decades as an outsider, often treated as the enemy? The young woman's concern reflected the kind of atomized mind that requires more than one answer, one approach to learn about the workers and some of the dwellers in the Morningside Heights Gardens complex.