What do immigrants look like? Like our great-grandparents, 80 years ago

It’s a safe bet that at least some of the Californians who rant and rave against the masses huddled on our southern border are kin to an earlier wave of immigrants.

Those earlier immigrants came here in wired together jalopies or battered farm trucks, their belongings and dreams tied atop them. They stole rides on west-bound freight trains, dodging police and steel wheels alike. Many of them walked mile after mile, often hauling babies – their future – wrapped in tattered blankets.

They were escaping a crippling depression or a choking dust bowl or both.

Later, WWII GIs, after proving themselves a great generation, saw a brighter future on the Pacific shore and returned here to build a new life.

Probably, not many of these folks would have been considered the “best people” of their day. But they were good enough to plow and plant a valley that feeds the world, create parks and sound stages to being life and laughter to millions and create a technology for a new century.

Luckily, we didn’t build a wall on the Arizona/Nevada border.