"Maybe I should write about my Dickies painter's pants"

Not long ago, I met a 7-year-old boy named Jackson—wide-eyed, uncertain, unable to speak a word of English.

The reading I was assigned to translate for him on my first day of volunteering in his classroom was about how monarch butterflies and Mexican bats instinctively know when to leave their homes, guided by the weather, by the seasons. Unbothered by borders like the one Jackson had crossed on foot a month earlier. Unbothered by laws other than those imposed by nature.

Jackson asked me to take him to the nurse. He wanted me to translate that the pizza from the school cafeteria always made his stomach hurt.

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This week I wanted to write about my Dickies painter’s pants. The ones I wore on Monday to drop the kids off at school. To go to Target to buy laundry detergent. The ones I got at Sherwin-Williams, where I waited in line with a dozen construction worker immigrants.

I wanted to write about how I first bought the Dickies pants for painting and how, at some point, they stopped being just for painting. How they became part of my wardrobe. How, once something becomes part of your life, it stops being about what it was made for and starts being about what you make of it.

Willy Chavarria t-shirt (good one on e-bay), Dickies painter’s pants, Justin cowboy boots.

I thought I might also write about workwear, about how many utilitarian pieces I own, how I style them:

Ropa de Trabajo denim jacket, Baku handmade shoes, tulle skirt by @alemazzinic,

I wanted to connect it all to Willy Chavarria, his recent show in Paris, Bernie Martinez Ocasio on the runway, the perfectly pressed khakis. And show you the Willy-inspired flower on my vintage French Lafont jacket:

But every time I sat down, I kept thinking about labor, not in terms of aesthetics, but in terms of who does it. Who wears the pants and doesn’t think about the pants, only about what needs to be done while wearing them.

I wanted to write about my Dickies pants, but instead, I kept balancing on the pendulum of truths one must hold simultaneously in order to read the coyuntural:

The fact that some immigrants have committed heinous crimes on American soil.

But also the fact that, statistically, immigrants are far less likely to be criminals than citizens. Most try their best to stay in line, to move unnoticed, to disappear into inconspicuous outfits that won’t catch a cop’s eye, walking with their heads down. Quiet.

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The fact that some immigrants abuse the system: foreigners who fly to Miami for a few weeks and leave with a newborn American citizen. Refugees who trade food stamps for cash. Asylum seekers who fabricate persecution stories. Tourists who overstay their visas.

But also the fact that many immigrants have legitimate reasons for leaving their countries: the Venezuelans forced out by a brutal dictatorship, longing for the day they might return. The kids who never chose to come at all, who have known no other home, for whom the “criminal” label feels sacrilegious, for whom deportation means exile from the only life they understand.

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The fact that some immigrants get opportunities they don’t really deserve, taking them from others with the right skills, just so a company can check a DEI box. And sometimes, qualified immigrants have no choice but to accept exploitative salaries that serve only their employers and negatively impact those citizens who can’t afford to work for less than a livable wage.

But also the fact that some immigrants work twice as hard for a chance to get a seat at tables where they are not welcome. Doing the most physically demanding jobs just to get a miserable salary and a criminal label. Jumping imaginary walls that no amount of credentials or hours of Inglés Sin Barreras can tear down.

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The fact that some immigrants embrace romantic decolonial theory, despise the United States, and see it as a failed project with an irreparable original sin. The fact that many privileged Ivy League students on student visas exhibit a suicidal empathy for terrorists whose only goal is to see the West destroyed.

But also the fact that the majority of immigrants don’t have time for, nor care about, Walter Mignolo. Let alone being victimized. Instead, they work with pride for a decent salary maintaining someone else’s home, watching someone else’s children so their parents can succeed in their careers and enjoy their time off in a sparkling clean house with a perfectly mowed lawn.

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The fact that the United States is a nation of immigrants, that borders are artificial lines arbitrarely drawn in the sand.

But also the fact that there is no nation without borders, and that immigration cannot come at the expense of those already here.

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The border of one truth,

blending into another.

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I wanted to write about Dickies painter’s pants but all I could think about was that the American immigration system is broken. That gringos are fed up of not being able to have legitimate, honest conversations about these issues without being cancelled, personally attacked, immediately labeled as racists or xenophobic. Not that some aren’t motivated by an actual hate for the other who doesn’t look like them, but from my experience, it’s the immense minority. Or perhaps it’s what I perceive based on how I was raised— to feel as worthy as my light-skinned siblings and my blonde friends, because I am, indeed, equal. Under God and the law.

So, instead, I’m writing to express my support for deporting immigrants who have committed horrible crimes. Send them back to Colombia on Gustavo Petro’s terms so as not to give him more ammunition to spew his anti-American rhetoric that so many applaud.

I’m also using this space to express my condemnation of mass deportations or any blanket policy that allow Jackson to be taken from his school, in front of his friends, away from his family.

I want to say how deportations are nothing new for us immigrants. That my grandfather would always warn us not to do anything dumb that would jeopardize our status. Because deportations have always been an imminent reality lurking in the mind of any immigrant. They have been carried out under every administration, although some with more backlash than others: Biden: 4.4 million. Trump: 1 million. Obama: 3 million. Bush: 1.8 million. Clinton: 2 million. Yet now, the headlines won’t stop—the debates, the outrage, the TikToks. It feels like a reckoning, a unique opportunity to push for a policy that upholds the law while recognizing the human toll.

A solution in which, once all the criminals are deported (and I don’t mean those who simply crossed illegally), the borders are secured, systems are put in place to prevent visa overstays, and employers are required to use E-Verify, a path to citizenship can be created for those already here. For those who love this nation, want to grow with it, see it as home, and respect its laws.

To demand from Congress a dignified pathway for future immigrants to access legal entry, preventing more people from risking their lives in deserts, jungles, becoming enslaved to coyotes, or drowning in the Rio Grande.

For the immigration process of a strawberry picker to be the same as the one currently available to people who have a million dollars for an investor visa.

For this crisis to not repeat in 20 years as it happened with 1986’s amnesty. To do whatever it takes to avoid this tragedy and all this pain all over again.

I wanted to write about Dickies pants, about the faces of those Willy Chavarria models who looked like the workers who actually wear them. That the United States of America is not perfect but is not condemned by its bloody past. That I love this country and what it stands for. That my greatest hope is for our leaders to find a way to enforce the law without ignoring the human cost.

Laura De Valencia Kirk.