Yesterday, I marched with immigrants. I don’t think I marched for myself. I marched for those who could not march.

I am an immigrant and so is my second son. But I have papers and so does my son. That makes a difference. I don’t think I did much to earn the honor of receiving papers. It just happened. We were lucky. Two of my other children were immigrants, but they chose to return home. The life of an immigrant was not for them. The call of home, of identity, was too strong.

My grandmother was an immigrant from England. She came to Australia to be with her sister and, I think, to escape from a less than wonderful world. To escape from crowding and bigotry and a marriage. She came to a land where she could not marry her partner of many years, where her children needed to remove their one pair of shoes after school. I wonder if she found her new country to be better. I never asked her and now I will never know.

My great-grandfather was an immigrant from Indonesia. He was sold for a bag of rice and became a companion for a captain’s wife. They say she brought him to Australia and treated him the way she did all her other children. But, even if that were true, did he feel equality, equity, humanity? He wasn’t allowed to marry. His skin was too brown. He lived as a fisher, was shipwrecked and saved those who were shipwrecked. A tram brought an end to him. His usual stop was cancelled, but he got off anyway.

My two countries, Australia and America, were once free of humans so in a way we are all immigrants. This world now has billions of people who continue to reproduce and who continue to search out new and better places to live. Humans are immigrants and I am human.