Have some empathy for immigrants

Bill Voisard criticized the three Mexican immigrants (“Immigrants failed to assimilate,” Dispatch letter, Tuesday) mentioned in his letter for not learning to speak English or becoming American citizens, as did his European ancestors.

One of my European ancestors immigrated here as a teenager with only her mother. They came to escape poverty and a class system that offered them essentially no hope of anything more in life. She married an immigrant, bore and raised four children, and lived a modest existence that today would be deemed below the poverty level. She and her husband lived beside their widowed daughter and were an integral part of raising seven grandchildren.

My great-grandmother’s entire life in America was spent within the confines of what now are German and Merion Village. There, she could live among other immigrants. When she drew her last breath in her 80s, she had yet to ever speak one sentence of English.

Whether she became a citizen, I don’t know. What I do know is that she was a selfless human being, who came here not to find riches or notoriety, but to do the best that she could with the cards that life dealt to her. I hope that no one ever criticized her for not having been able to learn a new language, among all of the challenges she knew.

Perhaps if those critical of immigrants could walk in their shoes, they would come away with greater understanding. Reynoldsburg