It’s easy to hate; it doesn’t take much, just a desire to think that you’re better than someone else. Understanding and compassion is much harder; you need to be able to put yourself in another’s shoes, to know that even if they appear different on the outside they are very much like you on the inside. They love, they feel, they hurt, they have dreams, disappointments and struggle, on different levels, each day to survive and attempt to thrive in an increasingly complex world.

This is the lesson that I learned 30 years ago in thesummer of 1980 while living in Chicago. Twenty four years old and newly minted from law school, with no real skills but for fluency in Spanish and a desire to change the world, I  joined Traveler’s Aid Society, a non-profit agency that offered immigration legal services to those individuals who could not afford to pay for private immigration counsel (Traveler’s Aid was much like our wonderful Philadelphia non-profits—HIAS, Nationalities Service Center and Catholic Social Services which add so much to our at- risk immigrant communities).

The U.S. Embassy in Tehran had just been taken over by irate Iranian students (one of whom is rumored to be the current President of Iran today) as the Islamic Revolution began and the pro-democratic, pro-American Shah was ousted. Like every American I was stunned and horrified. I didn’t know much about Iran, didn’t know any Iranians but knew that I hated them all.

Against this background of pure hatred, in walked my first client, Soraya, an absolutely beautiful, westernizedyoung Iranian foreign student barely two weeks older than I. She had been studying at a university in Chicago and living with an American family in the area. However, similar to INS actions post 9-11, Soraya, like all Iranian students, had been ordered to report toImmigration after the fall of the U.S. Embassy so that our government could see and know where all Iranianstudents were and thus somehow assess which ones, like the students who had overthrown the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, were a danger living among us. It sounded reasonable, just like it did post 9-11. After all, it is good to keep track of who we let into our country and allow to remain. However, in Soraya’s case there was one major wrinkle: Soraya and several others hadmisunderstood the government’s directive and did what they were trained to do: they immediately reported to their Foreign student advisor, believing that he would tell them how to properly register and report.Unfortunately, he totally misunderstood the law and told Soraya and the others that reporting to him was sufficient. It was not and the INS responded quickly by placing Soraya under deportation proceedings. They froze all monies coming from Iran to the U.S., thus cutting off Soraya’s entire income and ability tofinancially survive.

With no money and carrying an Iranian passport,Soraya’s previously friendly U.S. host family became hostile and literally threw her out into the street. This is how Soraya arrived at my office that summer day and how she taught me lessons that I will never forget.

I stared at her, thinking: This could be me. How can I hate “me”?  How can I hate her just because I don’t understand? I represented Soraya, securing her status in the U.S and gaining, as a result, a special friend who helped to make my years in Chicago equally special.

It is now 2010 and although I have lost touch with Soraya I have not lost touch with the lessons that she taught me. Unfortunately, others have not been lucky enough to have had a Soraya in their lives and thus have not yet learned that hating those who appear to be different on the surface is not constructive at all. In response to one column in which I described Paula, a“Dream Act” child who had been in the U.S. for 17 of her 18 years of life, since infancy, and could not attend college because her parents had violated the law by overstaying their tourist visas, one reader responded: “Paula should pursue the opportunities available to her in their home country and stop whining about theinconveniences caused by her illegal status”.

To this reader and to the others who feel like him/her I say: Yes, there is great anger over our broken immigration laws but sometimes we need to pause, to put aside our first reactions, those that make us hate and resent, and understand that there are Paulas and Sorayasout there who are the innocent victims of our laws and our poorly thought out immigration system. Remember: You, too, could have been a Paula or a Soraya and you would have wanted, have needed, the compassion and understanding of others rather than their anger, hatred and scorn.