Many people who are angry at today's immigrants do not seem to realize the incredible suffering that these people endure, simply because there is a hope in this country that they do not have in their own. Somebody once said, "Nobody leaves their own country because they want to," and this is so true when it comes to many immigrants. Fathers leave families, mothers leave children - not to benefit themselves personally, but in a desperate attempt to help their families.

This is the exact situation of a woman from Honduras whom I met four years ago. First she was just my friend. As time went on, we became closer. I greatly respected her ability to sacrifice her personal needs for the benefit of her family. She worked hard, lived very simply and sent most of her money back to her family in Honduras. She is only a little over five feet tall, but her family look at her as a giant and depend on her. She never once brought up the idea of marrying in order to become legal in this country. She has always said that she would only marry for love.

Recently, after six years in this country, she decided to visit the people in Texas who had helped her when she first arrived. Halfway through the visit, I called her to advise her that I needed emergency retina surgery and ask if she could come back. I purchased a ticket from Laredo, Texas, to New York for her. The day she was leaving, she called me from the airport to tell me she had been picked up by immigration officials. In New York, we don't make a big fuss over illegal aliens but, as I have learned over the last six months, they do in Texas.

I went through four different attorneys in Texas in the last six months trying to help my friend. The only one who was especially helpful was the legal aid attorney whom I spoke to in the beginning. Unfortunately, because of his huge case load, he was transferred before her case went to court. I then went through a series of private attorneys, and I could only say I was reminded of a comment someone made about the attorney for a certain celebrity: He was good at getting someone out of jail when their time was up, and that was the way I felt about the attorneys I dealt with. I was shocked to find that, even as an attorney, I couldn't get a telephone call returned. I actually called one attorney seven days in a row before I finally got to speak with him. I realize that these attorneys deal strictly with people in prison, and are not used to getting calls from their clients, or from their families who don't even know where their loved one is located.

In any event, I was able to speak with my friend every night. We even set up conference calls. She organized a line of women each night, and I would call El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Miami, New Orleans and California, etc., so that her fellow prisoners could advise their families where they were and speak to them for a short time. At least that part of the experience was very fulfilling. There was no surprise for me that she behaved like a mother hen, even in prison, and helped so many people around her. I find myself worrying how they are doing now that she is not there.

The end of the story hasn't been written, but she finally was released and is now with me. We have decided that we want to spend the rest of our lives together and I'm proud to have now made her my wife. As we have been told by my friend, an immigration lawyer here in New York, it won't help her immigration status because she has already been deported twice, and so it may mean that I will have to pack and become a Honduran.

We are all descended from immigrants, and we need to remember that. I am proud of the fact that I live in the New York City and surrounding area where, more often than not, people realize the importance of these new immigrants. In 1997, I wrote a column saying that older people in the community owe a debt of gratitude to the immigrants who care for them at home when no one else will. Many an older person is still living at home because of these people, when without them they might be shuffled off to a nursing home.

Che Guevara once said that he dreamed of the day when there would be no borders. Right now that seems like just a dream. My hope is that Jacob Smith's generation will succeed where mine and following generations have failed. Maybe then we can truly have one world, one people.