I thought about my mom this morning, who passed 3 years ago. I recalled a day in high school, a test I was studying for on the U.S. Constitution. She was frustrated with me because I was memorizing to “get the A.” The meaning, she said, was more important than the grade on a multiple-choice test.

My mother knew more about the Constitution than I because she immigrated from Italy in the 1950s. She naturalized before marrying my dad, and a civics test was part of that process. Imagine that–taking out your naturalization certificate to show your daughter, while I complained about memorizing all that stuff for a “silly test.”

Back in the 1950s, the U.S. government was more transparent about the need for workers to perform “unskilled” labor, something immigrants have always been eager to do. They want the chance at the American Dream so they do the work—all the invisible jobs most citizens don’t want to do.

Today, it’s a political football. Folks who scream “Do it the right way!” don’t realize how broken the system is. Many don’t care. It can take decades to get a green card. Yet there is a need for people to fill those jobs.

This week was a new low in an administration that plays “how low can you go” on a regular basis. Sure, let’s abduct people off the street without due process. Then we’ll create holding pens that are built for misery. What the heck- we’ll even joke about feeding them to the alligators. Laura Loomer claims there’s enough to feed 65 million alligators! Except there aren’t 65 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. That’s the number of Latinx folks. A coincidence? I don’t think so.

Anti-immigrant, racist sentiment is ugly but nothing new. Movements like this rise with White Nationalism. I know my mother would be as heartsick and angry as I am because she believed in the dignity and decency of humans. She had compassion. She saw the ugliness that was spewed but remained hopeful—because of the Constitution. She believed it would save us, if there were men and women of honor to defend it.

Today we celebrate the United States, no matter how imperfect our union.

We were founded on the concept of equality, but the reality is that only white men were granted it at our nation’s inception, a nation built on the backs of slaves and as tens of millions of Native Americans — our nation’s first people — were murdered.

For more than 200 years, others have fought the battle to make a more perfect union — for women, for people of color and all faiths, and for members of the LGBTQ+ community.

Right now, it looks and feels like all that work is being turned back. What breaks me is how badly I underestimated the extent of prejudice in this country. Nevertheless, I remain hopeful. I have no choice. I believe in this country, as my mother did.

As renowned civil rights leader John Lewis said: “Freedom is not a state; it is an act. It is not some enchanted garden perched high on a distant plateau where we can finally sit down and rest. Freedom is the continuous action we all must take, and each generation must do its part to create an even more fair, more just society. The work of love, peace, and justice will always be necessary, until their realism and their imperative takes hold of our imagination, crowds out any dream of hatred or revenge, and fills up our existence with their power.”

There’s much work to do. Time to buckle up.