When I first moved to Houston at the age of 5, my parents hired a housekeeper. She came once a week and mopped our floors, cleaned out the showers and toilets and washed my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle underwear.

It didn’t compute at the time why when I tried to speak to her she would only look back and smile, and then rattle something off in a tongue I couldn’t understand. I had just come from Cincinnati, where the only racial diversity was between white and black people, and they all spoke my language.

It was a culture shock that took me several years to finally accept. My new hometown was home to several thousand Hispanic immigrants, many of them living in the U.S. illegally, and all of them looking for a better life.

They were doing the jobs the average person wouldn’t even think about doing. They mowed the lawns, they picked up the garbage on the side of the curb every Saturday morning and they built all those cushy 4,000-square-foot homes the Houston suburbanites enjoy.

Believe it or not, they still made more money than they could ever hope to make back home in Mexico, most of which they would send back home to their families who weren’t fortunate enough to make it over the border – migrant workers send about $10 billion a year, according to The Associated Press.

Now there’s talk in Congress about building a wall along parts of the Mexican border. There are people criticizing students in California for skipping out on class and hanging a Mexican flag over the U.S. flag in front of their school. And there are even more wondering why 500,000 people marched the streets of Los Angeles in protest of immigration reform last weekend.

These workers and their children are the people who depend on us for a better life, and there are an estimated 11 to 12 million of them living in the United States right now. Who are they hurting? Why are they seen as a threat to our society? If anything, they are doing us a favor. Would you be willing to clean a Wal-Mart bathroom for $5.15 and hour? Because they would.

The guest worker proposal is the best bet right now to help solve this problem. It grants illegal immigrants living in the United States right now to gain citizenship, and therefore actively participate in our society. If the bill goes through into law, the migrant workers will finally be able to get the aid they need without fear of retribution from the government. It’s something that should have been done long ago.

Instead of rejecting the immigrants coming to our country, we should accept them. We should make it easier for them to come here and have the same opportunities our families did when they migrated to the United Staes. And we should thank them for helping us out.