Editors note: In the last several years, the issue of immigration has been a much-debated hot topic in the United States. Because of the topics often emotionally and politically charged, many Americans know what their fellow citizens believe - or don't believe - about immigration, particularly regarding undocumented workers. Scores of undocumented workers live in the Four Corners, the unscientifically determined majority being from Mexico, followed by Central America and South America. In this article, Inside/Outside Southwest sought the stories of those undocumented workers to hear how they feel about being immigrants in the United States, as they work and live alongside some Americans who either welcome or resent their presence. Some names have been changed to provide anonymity.
Eleven years ago, 19-year-old Paco (not his real name) was attending college in his home state of Veracruz, Mexico. For four years, he had been thinking about leaving where he grew up to move to the United States. He had friends living in the U.S., and they had urged him to consider moving to a place where he could work to make money while deciding what to do in life.
When he finally made the decision to leave behind his family, the family farm and his life in Veracruz, Paco bought a bus ticket and began making his way northwest across the vast country of Mexico. He left Veracruz, on Mexico's eastern side and on the Bay of Campeche (an arm of the Gulf Coast), and traveled to the border town of Nogales, minutes from Arizona. The 20-plus hour bus ride was enough time for Paco to wonder what fate he would meet at the Arizona-Mexico border. He'd heard numerous stories about the dangers of crossing the border on foot. Those who knew firsthand gave him advice on what to expect. Even as grim as some of the stories were, Paco wanted to take his chance.
Eighteen years ago, Jorge (not his real name) was making a similar trek. The then-20-year-old was living outside Cuernavaca, in the state of Morelos. The small village he called home had little working opportunities. The main employer was a mine. Jorge made 60 pesos per week (about $6 U.S.). The miniscule amount of money for the young man was hardly enough to live on, even in a country where the cost of living is low compared with the United States.
Daunted by the lack of money, Jorge, now 38 and who had been a labor worker since he was 13 years old, left Morelos and found work in the construction industry in Manzanillo, a city in the state of Colima on the Pacific Ocean. Still, the money was too little. Facing desperation, Jorge turned his attention to the United States.
Only a few years ago, 31-year-old Maria (not her real name) left her native Guatemala (she requested her hometown not be identified, for fear of reprisal) to escape a trend in the small Central American country: extreme violence against women, both physical and sexual. Though her mother begged her not to leave, and her boyfriend often had a hand in abuse against her for considering the idea, Maria's risky decision to leave hinged on a glimmering hope of a better life anywhere. In fact, Maria's initial intention was to leave Guatemala for Mexico, where she hoped a different fortune would appear.
Crossing the border
After Paco's long ride across Mexico, he got off the bus at the Mexico-Arizona border and, like others at the same time, walked up to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection station. An agent stopped Paco. He asked him if was American. Paco honestly answered "no." The agent then asked if he had a passport. Again, Paco said no. The agent then asked where he was going. "Phoenix," Paco replied. Another question: "Do you have a visa?" Nope. The agent, knowing Paco was a Mexican national, asked the requisite questions. Then he waved Paco off ? to the United States.
"It took me about 15 minutes to cross the border, and that was it," Paco says. "Just like that."
Once in Arizona, Paco stepped into a waiting car and headed to Phoenix.
Jorge's story has some similarities. Like Paco, he traveled by bus to the border town of Nogales. Once he arrived, Jorge walked into a store in search of someone to help him cross the border. With money in hand, he was prepared to hire an aide - called coyotes - to set up help on the U.S. side. He succeeded. The coyote charged Jorge $300 to help him cross the border. With several other people in tow, the coyote took the group to a crossing path in the desert.
After 45 minutes of walking, Jorge and other immigrants piled into a truck in Arizona and were off to their destination: Santa Ana, Calif. At the time, Jorge was hardly surprised at the ease of making across the border on foot. But he knows that border crossings by walking are no longer as simple.
"It was very easy," Jorge says. "It's not like that today. People can't do it the way I did."
Before Maria came to the U.S., she spent just less than a year in Talisman, Mexico, hoping that she had escaped a brutal life in Guatemala.
"It wasn't to be," says Maria.
Though Mexico shares a border with Guatemala and the country gets its own share of undocumented immigrants, it's not always a hospitable place. While in Talisman, Maria was victim to more abuse. Literally destitute and nearly suicidal, Maria says she felt trapped. She could stay in Mexico with an uncertain future. She could return to Guatemala and likely face continued abuse in a country where her story is characteristic to the hundreds of killings of women and girls that the country turns a blind eye to and fails to detain and bring justice to the perpetrators of violent acts.
"My country does not seem to care," Maria says. "It's a sexist society. The men run everything. They do nothing when a woman is killed. They do nothing when the maras (street gangs) beat you and take your money. I don't dare speak about it because how do I know they won't beat me because they don't want to believe (it)."
Eventually, Maria became involved with a young man in Mexico who wanted to go to the United States. She readily admits that she was uncertain of the man's intentions for fleeing Mexico, meaning she said it was likely because he was dealing drugs. Together, the duo, along with three other of the man's friends, began making their way north toward the Texas border. Maria's "friend," who she declined to name, seemed to have enough money to help pay for their travels; it's why she suspects he was involved with drug smuggling. Still, she said she was desperate enough not to care about his activity, because his access was her ticket to a different country.
When asked if she was part of the drug smuggling and dealing, Maria emphatically says she was innocent. When asked if her involvement with the man she curiously tries to protect is in some way complicity, Maria goes silent. Minutes later, she again says she had to take care of herself without regard to the intention of others, because she saw her situation as essentially hopeless.
Though these immigrants are here without permanent residency, have a legal status or have visas to support their presence, they do not believe they are criminals. And while they realize that they are a very small group in a sea of an estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S., according to the Pew Hispanic Center, they live and work among their peers who are in this country for similar and different reasons. They believe they have a majority sentiment about how immigrants from Mexico and Central America, at least, feel.
"I don't see myself as a criminal. I didn't take anybody's money," Jorge says.
People these immigrants know, they say, are not designing their lives to rip off the United States, to take what they can without something in return, to get free health care, free education and welfare. They aren't weighted with guilt for crossing borders, whether it's in the dark of night of an inhospitable desert or in broad daylight given a pass by a U.S. Border Patrol agent. They don't have expectations of being given the same government benefits that U.S. citizens receive, though they recognize that they get them in indirect ways. Reduced to their simplest reasons and expectations, these immigrants are in the United States because of willingly making the choice to survive, thrive and escape economic depression, warfare and threatening violent situations.
These aren't stories of guilt and shame. They are stories of pride and risk-taking. Those who are here for other less ethical and morally devaluing reasons, and they do exist, don't speak. They thumb their noses and turn face, walking away seemingly without much knowledge about how their actions paint a stereotype of their fellow countrymen.
The human side
Paco, Jorge and Maria are the faces of immigration. They are undocumented immigrants living in the Four Corners, each having his or her own reason for fleeing their home countries to a new one that provides, at least compared to where they came from, different and often better circumstances in life.
Though their stories have some similarities, they show how immigrants come to the United States for various reasons. Paco's choice was based on finding direction in a new country that he learned about in college.
"I thought I was going to go see what the No. 1 country is about," says Paco, who works and lives in Southwest Colorado. "I always heard it was the country of opportunity."
Jorge's decision to emigrate to the U.S. was purely out of economic necessity. Unable to make a livable wage in Mexico, he took many risks to find a way to cross into the U.S. When he paid his coyote $300, it was expensive then. Jorge also was not sure if the coyote would see him through the border crossing, given that coyotes often take peoples' money and flee without returning the "service." At that time in 1990, Mexico was filled with unskilled laborers who were competing for ultra-low wages. Jorge explains that moving to other states in the country was futile, because the lack of jobs and high wages was almost nonexistent. During the 1980s and early 1990s, Mexico's economy struggled because the country had accumulated large external debts as world petroleum prices fell. According to economic data, the country's unemployment rate in 1989 was 20 percent.
"You don't make enough money to work and live anywhere in Mexico," Jorge says.
Looking back now, Jorge left Mexico before the country's economy worsened. In 1994, the widely known Mexican peso crisis took place when the country's currency suddenly experienced a severe devaluation in the first 22 days of former president Ernesto Zedillo's presidency. Former President Bill Clinton and international organizations loaned Mexico $50 billion to help. (According to Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, the U.S. made a profit of $500 million on the loans after the crisis ended.)
At the same time, Mexico entered into a pact with the U.S. and Canada to form the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The trade bloc - like others worldwide - was intended to form a large free-trade area with taxes, tariffs, and trade agreements. For many immigration advocates and critics, NAFTA is a compass point in the debate about the ongoing issue. Several economists have quantified the negative and positive effects of the policy. Some argue that NAFTA has helped poverty rates fall and real income rise in Mexico. They also point to the rise of maquiladoras - Mexican export factories - as a boost to the country's trading power. Economists with the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for International Economics say that NAFTA helped the factory sector of Mexico's economy rise 15 percent from 1994 to 2005.
Critics of NAFTA say that it has benefited mostly business owners and upper echelons of all three countries. They say that even with an integrated market, the U.S. has acted unilaterally and with increasing militancy to block the movement of labor. Critics also argue that the trade pact has devastating effects on Mexican farmers, who endured dramatic drops in food prices and demand because of cheap imports from U.S. agribusiness. Agriculture is a particularly thorny piece of NAFTA. Many students of the immigration issue in the U.S. look to NAFTA's almost punitive impact on Mexico's agriculture industry. When the pact was put into place, Mexico endured a flood of agri-products from the U.S. that directly competed with what Mexican farmers were trying to produce. The outcome led to an increase in the immigration trend, says Teresa Molina, an economist who lives in Cuernavaca, Mexico.
"Mexico lost its agricultural market to U.S. imports of beans and corn, mainly," Molina says. "Many areas in Mexico stopped producing because it couldn't compete with the U.S., especially since the U.S. agriculturists were subsidized by their government."
To be sure, undocumented workers from Mexico have entered the U.S. looking for jobs long before NAFTA was in place. Molina and Jorge simply underscore that the trade pact was one of the main motivators in the last immigration trend that has been going on for the last 15 years.
Different work ethic
Some employers rely on undocumented labor workers because they realize the value of hard work and the opportunity to have employment. In fact, some employers in the Four Corners prefer to hire these types of workers for those reasons. Few would speak on record about their hiring practices, most assuredly because of the legal implications of knowingly hiring people who are not legal citizens.
Stuart Robertson, an Arizona landscape businessman, is among those who rely on undocumented immigrants for labor work. Roberston says he lives in between two barrios in Arizona. Sandwiched by areas that are heavily Latino - noncitizen and citizen - he took to gathering his employees from these areas because he learned 20-plus years ago that the workers had high standards and made efforts to do a good job in return for pay.
"I'd just go look for telltale signs of a house - you can always tell where they live - and knock on their doors," Robertson says. "I'd hire them and they'd make up 40 percent to 50 percent of my work force. With (the immigrants), I always had someone to do the work."
Robertson believes the immigrants' work ethic hinged on their desire for a better lifestyle and a future in a place where jobs were abundant and salary was exponentially higher than from where they came. He says of the hundreds of undocumented he has worked with, including Jorge, the vast majority are honest employees willing to have taken the risks in an effort to attain something better and something more. "Most of them are eager to make something of themselves. I don't think they feel guilty for being here and not being legally documented. They are true entrepreneurial people who wanted to come across and succeed," Robertson says. "They weren't here to grab the money and run. A lot of my guys really did try to do it the right way."
In working with the employees, Robertson says his experience was that the immigrants felt that they were making the right effort to be able to clothe and feed themselves and their families, even if that meant entering the U.S. illegally. Robertson acknowledges that some immigrants are in the U.S. to traffic drugs or play the system. He said only since the early 2000s has he seen a change in the attitudes and motivation of undocumented immigrants in Arizona. He attributes it to a general shift - the younger people are not as ambitious and carry an air of "machismo," which serves a barrier between them and their communities. For those who are different, Robertson says he always encouraged his undocumented immigrants to become part of the system by learning to speak English, obtaining drivers licenses, opening bank accounts and contributing to their communities. For some, like Jorge, the message stuck.
Soon after arriving to live and work in Phoenix in the early 1990s, Jorge says he knew that to make more money, learning English was imperative. "Stuart told me every morning that I needed to learn English to move forward."
Taking that advice, Jorge enrolled in a class 10 miles from his home. The class was taught four days a week for eight months. Not having a car or ability to buy one, Jorge rode his bike 1½ hours to and from class. Taking the public bus was possible only when he had the money. There was a period of several weeks, Jorge recalls, that he had to run 10 miles to class and 10 miles home from class because someone stole his bicycle.
Like Jorge, Paco also immediately sought help to learn English when he came to the U.S. Today, both are fluent English speakers who have worked up the chain of economics. Jorge works as a landscape maintenance man in Arizona; he and his wife, a permanent resident from the Mexican state of Michoacan, own a home - legally - and pay taxes. Paco works in the beauty industry after working his way through being a dishwasher and working in the restaurant industry. He saved money to attend school and is self-sufficient.
Maria, who lives in northern New Mexico, works in the service industry. She lives in a house with several other undocumented workers, most of them from Mexico. Her friend Laura has applied for a green card - a status of permanent residency. Laura's parents entered the U.S. more than 20 years ago to "pay off their debts" in Mexico. Her parents later divorced; her mother married an American, who sponsored Laura to file for residency. Her father, however, remains an undocumented citizen.
"We have to lie on daily basis to be able to support ourselves, earn some money and pay for my nonresident tuition," Laura says. "But I don't know what to do. Sometimes I feel scared for me and my father. I'm still waiting for my green card. But my dad has no way of obtaining legal documentation."
Taxpayers
Though these undocumented immigrants are all full-time workers, on payrolls of their companies, they are contributing tax dollars to a system that likely will not pay in the end. Jorge and Paco pay taxes and have for the majority of the time they've lived in the U.S. Jorge has a fake social security number - one he purchased with several other false documents in southern California. The number is not stolen from a valid holder. The social security number is used by his employer to withdraw federal and state income taxes form his salary, as well as social security tax. It's the same for Paco, who has a valid individual tax number.
Laura is a student and does not work a full-time job in which she claims or files. Maria's case is dubious. She says she "sometimes" pays taxes yet she has held the same job for a few years with a large hotel chain that, ostensibly, does not pay its employees "under the table." Maria isn't forthcoming about her tax-paying status because she says it's an effort to protect herself from deportation or crimes against her.
The Internal Revenue Service reports between one-half and three-quarters of undocumented immigrants pay federal, state, Social Security and Medicare taxes. (They, of course, also pay sales taxes as all people who purchase goods do at businesses). A 2005 report, Economic Report of the President, says that immigrants working "on the books" contribute to the tax rolls but are ineligible for almost all federal assistance programs and most major state programs.
The government can track tax payment by undocumented workers because the Social Security numbers they use are not tied to a permanent, legally recognized resident. In other words, the Social Security Administration collects money that is not tied to a valid number. Taxes collected without that connection goes into the administration's Earnings Suspense File. According to 2005 records, that file has nearly $520 billion that can presumably be from undocumented, non-permanent immigrants. Of that, one rough estimate puts the amount of Social Security taxes alone at about $9 billion per year.
The implication of this is that the immigrants paying into the system will not get it back. Some immigrants can and do file income taxes and receive refunds. In fact, a growing number of them are doing so in order to reap the benefits of potential returns. However, as long as they use an invalid Social Security number, none will be able to draw on Social Security when and if they reach the required age.
Jorge chuckles uncomfortably at that thought. But he concedes that there is little he can do. He wants to pay taxes because he views himself as a resident - regardless of legal status - who lives in a community he says largely accepts him and his story. "I'm really not treated differently. They accept it," he says about his friends and co-workers.
Paco pays his taxes as a means to show that he wants to follow the rules and live as a permanent citizen would. It's one of the efforts he makes in case he tries to gain residency. He's less hardlined about it, because he says he does not plan to be a lifelong resident in the U.S. His plans are to move to Spain or South America. And not because of the immigration sentiments in the U.S. He simply wants to experience other cultures and countries. But he also pays taxes because of his ethics.
"I always respect people where I go. This is not my country, and so I show respect. For the people and for the culture," Paco says.
He adds one more thought - one that he knows is met by other immigrants like him with an admixture of doubt and apathy. It's the one effort Paco believes undocumented immigrants should make.
"I think we should learn to speak the English language. I'm grateful for what this country has given me. It's what we should do in return."
DOING IT THE RIGHT WAY
As American citizens fan emotional flames about the increasing numbers of undocumented workers entering the United States, some ask the question: "Why don't they get in line and do it the right way?"
The right way does not work, says immigration-rights advocates and lawyers. Immigration laws are nearly 20 years old, not having been updated as the growing number of undocumented workers begins to take a broader role in American culture, economy and politics.
According to government and non-government organizations, nearly 12 million undocumented immigrants live in the United States. The minority, however, crossed on foot, boat or other clandestine means to get here. Depending on the numbers used from various studies, anywhere from 45 percent to 60 percent of undocumented, permanent-status immigrants in the United States came here on a legal visa and then stayed after it expired. Those people who are "visa overstays" are here, immigration-rights advocates says, because the U.S. government is underfunded, understaffed and outdated in its efforts to apply the visa laws.
For those who are here for overstays or by some other means, the process for obtaining legal residency and/or citizenship is long and costly, says Flagstaff, Ariz., attorney Tony Gonzales. "The system is so backlogged that it doesn't keep up with the permits," says Gonzales, who specializes in immigration law.
The ways for immigrants to enter legally the U.S. are limited to four routes: getting a green card, petitioning by a family member in the U.S., proving political refugee or asylum status and being drawn from a lottery (which applies only to certain countries, Mexico not included).
Many of the undocumented immigrants in the Four Corners are labor workers who sought better economic conditions in the U.S. from their native Mexico or Central American country. Because so many come here with few working skills, they fall into the U.S. immigration category that includes hotel workers, landscapers, construction workers, etc. The number of green cards available annually for these types of workers is only 5,000. Considering that about 500,000 undocumented immigrants will enter the U.S. this year, those 5,000 available for them is a low number.
Most people filing for legal status, says Gonzales, do so through family visas. They are seeking residency in the U.S. for parents and siblings. Others are applying for work visas, which allow employers to sponsor employees to work in the U.S. The process for each kind of visa or green card depends on the priority the government assigns it.
While there are different ways and many variables included in applying for residency, Gonzales says the average wait for immigrants is six to eight years. The waiting time increases for those who have already been in the U.S. without residency status, because the government often denies their applications based on them entering before gaining proper approval. Gonzales says if an immigrant's application is denied because he's already in the U.S., he is banned from reapplying for 10 years.
The legal backlog and the costs including attorney fees and application fees that add up to thousand of dollars prevent many immigrants from seeking a legal status. "Even if they come here legally, like on a visa or work permit, there is still a huge time period," says Gonzales. Most of the undocumented workers still make labor wages that are below the average salary in the U.S., and many have families in their home countries that they support by sending money to them. Gonzales says there is little extra income to put toward legal fees for a very minor chance of succeeding.
Paco, an undocumented worker who came to the U.S. from Mexico 11 years ago, talked to an immigration lawyer two years ago to explore the process. A working, tax-paying resident of Southwest Colorado, who does not have a criminal record, Paco's attorney told him the chances of getting a green card were slim.
"She told me it was a ?maybe,' only a small chance, that I'd be able to get status or become a citizen," Paco says.
Jorge, an undocumented worker who lives in Arizona and emigrated from Mexico 18 years ago, says the same thing. "My boss tried to help me once, but it didn't work. It's too expensive. I haven't tried since. I don't trust that the papers will keep me from being sent back to Mexico anyway."
Teresa Molina, an economist in Cuernavaca, Mexico, says the immigration system and the U.S. gives workers a mixed message: "It says ?there is a job here for you' and it also says ?you need to hide, because if you come here to take that job and you are caught, you will be sent back.'"
Molina says undocumented workers don't think that their actions are breaking the laws. She says they navigate a system that is the same one that tells them they are doing it incorrectly. Still, she says Mexicans want to have legal status, even citizenship.
- Amy Maestas
Amy Maestas is a contributing editor of Inside/Outside Southwest magazine. E-mail her at amy@insideoutsidemag.com.