The image above shows my mother-in-law, Janina Karter, at age 7, with her mother, Anna, and 9-year-old sister, Ruth (at right). It's from a 1939 photograph, taken shortly before their father, Gustav, left Poland for the United States. Coming to the U.S. illegally was not an option for the Karter family, ensnared in a web of xenophobia at home and abroad. What was our nation's responsibility to the three? And to what degree are we responsible for one another today? These are not new questions invented for these dangerous times, but rather questions framed two millennia ago by the scholar and theologian Rabbi Hillel, who asked, "If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, then what am I? And if not now, when?" Real and pressing concerns around immigration need to be resolved. But if in fact we, as Americans, still hold certain truths to be self-evident, including the unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, why would we choose to chase 12 million people from their homes? Why wouldn't we avail ourselves of our highest democratic ideals and find a better way? -- J.W. Click photo for larger image.

Reading a quote recently from a lawmaker about how illegal immigrants come here "to commit crime and impact negatively" on our country, I thought of my husband's grandmother, Anna Karter, and her two daughters. They were the threat once, the "Other" we wanted to keep out.

Now we are the descendants of the Other, and the Other has evolved into "We."

The debate isn't new. In fact, it feels as old as civilization, every incidence of man's inhumanity to man stemming from the failure to recognize the Other as a person just like us, wanting -- and equally deserving -- the same things we want for our families and ourselves -- sustenance, security, days unfolding in peace, the opportunity to thrive.

But the world is a scary place so we make it a little more manageable by lumping people together and slapping labels on groups. Wrong religion. Wrong color skin. Wrong language. Then it becomes easier to leverage our own lives and diminish the value of theirs. But what is the human cost of that kind of leverage?

Here is one of the millions of stories that testify to that cost.In 1939, Philips Electric asked Anna Karter's husband, Gustav, to represent the company at the World's Fair. That's why Gustav was in the United States instead of home in Poland with his family when Hitler announced Germany's pact with Russia and invaded Poland. Their daughters, Janina and Ruth, were 7 and 9 at the time. Anna tried to get herself and the girls to safety, but it was hard. Polish soldiers confiscated their horse and buggy so they had to flee on foot, dodging Nazi bombs as they walked the dirt roads.

The three of them made it to Lvov in southeast Poland, newly occupied by Russia, but when Anna chose not to relinquish her Polish citizenship and accept Soviet citizenship -- unaware of the consequences -- she and her daughters were sent to a forced labor camp in Siberia.

Gustav tried to bring his family here to safety, but immigration was limited by strict yearly quotas that hit especially hard Jewish families like theirs, who were fleeing the Nazis. Four times more people from Britain and Ireland than from all of eastern and southern Europe combined were being let into the United States at the time.

In Siberia, Anna was forced to chop wood. If she didn't meet her work quota, her punishment was spending time in a pit in the ground with water up to her chin. Janina and Ruth tried to help their mom the best they could, but they were still small, at 8 and 10.

The three were released from the labor camp in late 1941 after Germany attacked Russia, forcing Russia to switch sides and align with Poland. Suddenly finding themselves on the "right" side, Anna, Janina and Ruth were set free. But when they didn't have any money or anywhere to go, they were assigned to work on a government-owned collective.

The three of them lived in huts and worked the fields. The girls, almost 10 and 12 now, cut grass, ground wheat, and operated field equipment. Food rations were small and the labor was hard. Anna gave the girls a lot of her food to sustain them.

Gustav continued to pursue every available avenue in the United States to secure visas for his family, but he had no influence, no power. When Anna cabled him after their release from Siberia, he was thrilled to learn they were still alive, and immediately sent a reply, along with money, through his bank in New York.

By the time Gustav's cable reached its destination, Anna was dead. He found out in a note from his New York bank that said, in effect, "We couldn't complete delivery because your wife is dead."

Asking the bank to help him find his daughters, he redoubled his efforts to get visas for them, but by 1942 the U.S. State Department had created such a vast, bureaucratic web of regulations, the visa processing system was virtually impenetrable.

On Nov. 25, 1942, the murder of more than 2 million Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe was finally confirmed by the State Department. An item relaying this information appeared on page 10 of The New York Times.

Janina and Ruth spent two years in Russian orphanages while their father worked to gain entry for the girls to America, finally securing visas in late 1944. They arrived here, speaking no English, on April 1, 1945, after crossing the Persian Gulf on an army transport. Janina was 12. Ruth was 15. The Red Cross officials who greeted them on their arrival contacted Gustav shortly afterward, to tell him there must have been a mistake. The girls were so small after six years of hardship, the Red Cross didn't believe they were old enough to be his girls.

Gustav became a naturalized American citizen in 1946. Ruth and Janina applied for derivative citizenship the following year. Janina, who later changed her name to a more "Americanized" Janine, went on to marry and have three sons, one of whom I married.

She died at the age of 49, when my husband was 19, due in no small part to the stresses she endured.

I never got to meet her. I sometimes wonder, though, how her life might have been different if so many institutions -- so many people, one by one -- hadn't failed her and her mother and her sister at every turn.

I can almost picture the debates in the halls of Congress, the smoke-filled, wood-paneled restaurants of Washington, conversations animated by stiff drinks and cigars, while the great-grandmother of my two sons stood in a pit in Siberia in cold water up to her chin. And when all of those engaged in the great immigration debate at last returned to their comfortable homes, they tucked in their sons and daughters, and kissed them goodnight.

And still the debate rages on: Who do we see as human, in exactly the way that we are? Whose child is like our child? Deserving of all the same rights, and the same opportunities to thrive?

And who not?