I Looked Back Over My Shoulder at Him, Crying

  "Do you have your ticket?" he asked, greeting me at the border.
  I looked at him, a little dumbfounded. "Ticket? What ticket?" I replied. "It's not like I'm coming to catch a movie or watch a play. I just want to be free. I just want to move to the land of the free."
  "Your ticket," he repeated.
  "I'm not wanting to board a train, or a plane," I said. "What are you talking about -- ticket?"
   A stern, impatient look crossed his face. "Ticket," he demanded.
  "I just want to be free. I seek freedom," I said. "I'm poor. I come with no money to buy my freedom."
   "Exactly," he said. "You don't have any money. If I let you cross into our country, you will make it poor. You will drag us down. You will go to our hospitals, at no cost. You will get on our welfare. You will drag down the wages. Then, after you've raped us of all this, you will send the money you make to your friends back home, and it will leave us and no longer benefit our economy. Our president was right. He said something about 's-hole' countries, and yours is one of them. Now, why do you suppose we would want to bring someone in from a s-hole country like yours?"
   He looked at me, as if to demand an answer. I sighed. "I'm poor. What kind of a ticket do you want?" I asked.
   "Money," he said. "Money is your ticket. If you have it, we'll let you in. What? You think we'll let someone in from an s-hole country?"
   "Please," I pleaded. "I just want to be free. If I have truly reached the border of America, please let me in, for I have heard you are the land of the free, and that this is where freedom begins, so to speak."
   "Not without your ticket," he said. "Not unless you have money. For you, if you cross that border, this is where your freedom will end, for we'll toss your illegal a-- in jail."
   I looked at him, quizzically. "Since when does freedom come only with money? Since when is freedom just for the rich, or the well off?"
   "The days of letting in the poor and huddled masses yearning to be free are long gone," he said. "That never was a good idea. So, these days, if you don't have money, we don't want you."
   I shook my head, slowly.
   "Are you from Norway?" he asked.
   "No," I replied.
   "Well, there you have it, you can't come," he said. "Unless you are from Norway, or Germany, or one of the finer countries, you can't come."
   I turned around, a tear forming in my eye. Whatever had happened to America? Whatever had happened to its ideals, to its sense of justice, to its ability to care for other people? All of a sudden, it seemed all they cared about was whether you could do something to make them richer or whiter. That was hardly the America I had grown up loving.
   I looked back over my shoulder at him, crying, not just for myself, but for America.