Hello neighbor,

Complain about the economy all you want. It’s sticker shock at the supermarket checkout.

But even if high prices hit us in the wallet, Tuesday’s election hinges on one thing: the immigration crisis.

Kamala Harris says she wants to fix it. “My presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency” » she assured the Americans.

But Donald Trump has elevated the “conversation” about immigration to the point where many of us worry less about nuclear war than about migrant shelters in our neighborhood.

There is no doubt: America’s immigration policy is a disaster. But has anyone really thought about what Trump’s commitment to “mass deportation” would mean?

If he is elected and does what he swears, he will do it. . .

Good luck with your landscaping.

Good luck dining at your favorite restaurant or fast food joint.

Good luck repairing your brick steps, replacing your roof, and repainting your living room. Or find a home health aide, or someone to clean your house.

Our economy relies on these workers – legal or not.

No one is more familiar with Staten Island’s immigrant population than the Rev. Terry Troia.

Rev. Troia has led Staten Island’s homeless agency, Project Hospitality, for decades. She doesn’t sit behind a desk. She patrols our streets on the coldest nights, looking for homeless people and, in many cases, getting those people back on the right track. She helps them find shelter and employment.

I asked Rev. Troia what she thought about what “mass deportation” would mean for Staten Island. I’ll let her tell you straight.

By Reverend Troia

For more than 400 years, immigrants have come to Staten Island to seek refuge from religious or political persecution or for a better way of life.

Eleven million of them were forced into immigration – taken from their families and land on the African continent and forced to build the America whose riches we enjoy today.

From early French Huguenots and Belgian Walloons, to African slaves brought to Staten Island by European slave traders during those same years, to the Irish who fled the potato famine of the early 20th century, to to Italians brought to America as skilled artisans. and construction workers, a few years after the Irish, Staten Island became a welcoming land for new immigrants.

And the burgeoning Jewish families from Eastern Europe who also settled at the turn of the 20th century, fleeing pogroms in Russia and banishment from countries elsewhere in Europe.

In the 1960s and 1970s, new arrivals to Staten Island included Albanian immigrants, South Asians from India, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan, and Asians from Korea, the Philippines, and China.

In the early 1980s, a significant population of Mexicans began to migrate to our shores from Staten Island.

Many came from the south to find work in the off-season. From picking oranges in Florida to picking sweet potatoes in North Carolina, our southern border neighbors have taken on the construction work of New York, which was once the territory of southern and eastern Europeans .

Mexicans migrated to neighborhoods near Staten Island’s major highways in hopes of being spotted for work in the morning.

From Port Richmond, near two major level crossings, the 440 from the Bayonne bridge and the 278 from the Goethals to the Verrazano bridge, the Mexican workers stood at the corner of the main roads, the access roads to the highways and the main street of Port Richmond. , waiting to be picked up for daily work.

Mexican workers and those from neighboring countries – Guatemala and Honduras primarily – who called Staten Island home would return to Mexico during the winter months or pick their produce in our southern states as construction opportunities diminished during the winter months.

When the September 11 attacks hit and immigrant workers at the Windows on the World restaurant were counted among the 3,000 New Yorkers who fell, life changed for all immigrant workers.

Tight border security, a necessary response to a terrorist attack, has led to many immigrant workers being unable to cross a closed border to return home.

Day laborers turned to creating new families, others lamented the loss of spouses, parents and children they would likely never see again.

There was a rise in alcoholism, depression, a profound loss of connection, a large separation of families among these immigrant workers.

New relationships formed and a working-class culture in Port Richmond transformed into thriving new families.

The children of immigrants – Americans because they were born here – filled our schools. Women began to work in produce stores, washing dishes, waiting tables, cleaning, looking after children and the elderly.

The best chefs at our Staten Island restaurants are immigrants, many of whom are undocumented and work hard to feed Staten Island restaurant customers.

They mow our lawns, install our swimming pools, care for our elderly.

Port Richmond was bustling with new businesses as day laborers began investing in their new neighborhood, which had become their new home.

Immigrants sent money to their hungry families living in poor places.

Immigrants from Port Richmond, looking for jobs and affordable rents, dispersed to other small commercial districts: Tompkinsville, West Brighton, New Brighton, Stapleton. Midland Beach and South Beach.

The new immigrant communities were more mixed: Mexican, Arab, Polish, Russian, Albanian, Ukrainian, Turkish, Egyptian, and many South Asian immigrants. Evidence of the growth of these new immigrant communities across our island was the new language services in schools. Voting information in a range of new languages. New Hindu and Sikh churches and mosques and temples here on our island.

And Staten Island restaurants reflect the wealth of new immigrant communities: Palestinian, Yemenite, Turkish, Polish bakeries, Ukrainian delicatessens.

New immigrant communities revitalized Port Richmond, Tompkinsville, Stapleton and made an impact in Tottenville, Great Kills and the coastal communities of Rosebank, South and Midland beaches.

We have Albanians running for office and public celebrations of the Hindu festival of lights Diwali.

Day of the Dead celebrations in churches and schools have transformed the holiday of Halloween into something more friendly and family-centered, rather than a scary scenario of ghosts and monsters.

We have a revitalized local economy and we still have a great need for more affordable housing, because no matter how hard new immigrants work, those here without acceptable immigration status will always earn less in side jobs, unable to find the decent type of accommodation that many of us enjoy.

Tens of thousands of Staten Island’s unstatus immigrants pay their taxes to prove that they are Americans and that their families’ futures belong here. Yet none of them will ever benefit from the social security they paid into. They increased Social Security funds, without reaping the fruits of decades of work.

A few months ago, an asylum seeker from Guatemala, who worked for more than 20 years as a maintenance worker in a Catholic parish and school on the island, after raising two graduate children for 20 years of higher education and working full time on our island in professional positions, after 20 years of waiting for his asylum application to be heard, lost his asylum application and had to return to his country and leave his family in Staten Island.

In the film “A Day Without Mexicans,” America gets a glimpse of what life would be like if immigrants disappeared from their jobs, from our schools, from our neighborhoods.

Staten Island is said to be a ghost town in mourning. America would lose its heart. The economy would collapse.

Twelve million undocumented immigrants deported across this country would change the face and heart of this nation, built on the backs of forced slave peoples from Africa and immigrants who crawled here through the sewers of Tijuana or scaled the border mountains for days without water. I endured the heat and thirst of the desert, or rowed boats from Caribbean islands and risked drowning.

Twelve million who responded to Emma Lazarus for the welcome, engraved in the Statue of Liberty:

“Keep, ancient lands, your legendary splendor! » she cries

With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearn to breathe freely,

The miserable detritus of your teeming shore.

Send me these homeless, these storms,

I raise my lamp next to the golden door!

Oh by the way: Of course, we want to eliminate criminals who entered America illegally. The same way we should treat criminals born here. But eliminating good people, trying to create better lives for themselves and their families, who work hard to do jobs that we don’t want or can’t do, jobs that make the lives of American citizens easier or nicer, is simply a mistake. and heartless. See through the ugly, vulgar and petty rhetoric we are bombarded with daily. In the privacy of the voting booth on Tuesday, vote with your heart.

Brian