A guardian angel on the border comes to the rescue

"You gotta remember, when I started, I was doing all this pre-Google," he told me.

Born in Houston, Texas, and raised as one of nine kids, the Mexican- American Villasana at first had no use for hyphens.

"I thought of myself as American growing up," he said. "I wouldn't think of being Mexican until many years later."

It was also years later that he'd learn to speak Spanish. His parents remembered well the bigotry and racism they experienced as children, he said. And they didn't want their kids to experience the same sort of thing.

Now Villasana speaks four languages -- Spanish, English, and some Italian and French.

Like they say, join the U.S. Navy and see the world. And he did. He left for Desert Storm with the Naval Reserves in 1989, and later relocated to San Diego. There, he developed an international consulting business that required him to often cross the border into Tijuana. His specialty: helping US companies do business in the Mexican medical/health care field. You have to do and say the right thing to open doors in a foreign country.

Villasana learned a lesson that seems to have eluded the person in the Oval Office: South of the border, you get more with honey than with vitriol. Before long he was known as "The Mexico Guru," and he was giving seminars about doing business in Mexico. He even wrote a book, titled: "Insider Secrets for Doing Business in Mexico." I asked him to share one of those secrets.

"Whether you speak Spanish has nothing to do with it," he said. "The key is knowing how to talk to the Mexican people, including the Mexican government. If you approach them with respect, it puts them at ease. And they want to help you."

Reuniting children with family is a labor of love, with an emphasis on the "labor" part. The organization operates in the red.

"This is dogged work," he said. "It's hard, and it's depressing. But I keep going because, I know that on the other end of this long road is a child who needs help."

This is a good man. Just the kind of person we need when things on the border are so bad.

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Ruben Navarrette's email address is ruben@rubennavarrette.com. His daily podcast, "Navarrette Nation," is available through every podcast app.