The following opinion page column by Peace College President Laura Carpenter Bingham appeared in the News & Observer on Ocotober 22.

RALEIGH - In North Carolina, immigration issues generate a great deal of emotion. Recent news stories describe the anger and resentment felt by some Tar Heels who feel that their way of life is being swamped by a wave of newcomers coming to our country illegally from Mexico and other countries of Latin America.

It's important that during times like these, especially when our economic security is in question, that we are mindful of the plight faced by many of our neighbors -- both those down the street and those on the other side of our nation's borders.

That plight was brought home to us at Peace College through the book that served as our summer reading assignment for first-year students: "Enrique's Journey" by Sonia Nazario.

Nazario tells the story of a Honduran mother, Lourdes, who in the face of extreme poverty leaves her two children with relatives and smuggles herself into the United States to earn money to send back to support her son and daughter.

As Nazario demonstrates through the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting that went into her book, Lourdes' motivation is common among undocumented immigrants who come to the U.S. In their home countries, they face a desperate, often losing struggle to survive, to feed and clothe their children and to pay for their schooling. They long for basic things that most of us take for granted.

Before leaving for the U.S., Lourdes had never been able to buy a toy or birthday cake for her children. In her hometown, children are sent into the landfill to scavenge for bits of food.

Lourdes and many others like her embark on hazardous journeys just to reach the U.S. border, with many dying along the way through Mexico from injuries suffered from hopping freight trains or from the beatings, rapes and tortures inflicted by gangsters and thieving police officers. Many immigrants carry no identification papers, so the dead often wind up in unmarked graves, lost forever to their loved ones.

Among those who do make it into the U.S., and are able to find work and establish homes in our communities, are many people who continue to suffer due to long separations from their families. Even though they are able for the first time to send money for clothes, food and things for their children, they're torn by the distance that separates parents and children.

What we've learned is that our hemisphere's immigration crisis is, in large part, a story of broken families.

I suspect most people would be shocked to learn that each year an estimated 48,000 Latin American children come -- on their own -- to the U.S. looking for their mothers or fathers. Many children die and disappear in their attempts to get here.

Lourdes' son, Enrique, made it -- after 12 years of being without his mother and eight life-threatening attempts to reach and cross the border. He found her where she was living and working, here in North Carolina.

Nazario's poignant story brought to light for us the human desperation that drives people to come north. It's a story that helped Peace students and our campus community more fully appreciate the agonies being endured by people struggling to provide for their families -- and desperate attempts to bring them together again.

It's an enduring picture for us all as we wrestle with complex and disconcerting immigration issues. Some are simply neighbors trying to find their way to reconciliation through a difficult world.

Laura Bingham is president of Peace College.