Living "Illegal"

The Human Face of Unauthorized Immigration

Marie Friedmann Marquardt, Timothy J. Steigenga, Philip J. Williams, Manuel A. Vásquez

• Publisher: The New Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781595589019
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Emigration & Immigration
• Index: Social Sciences

A myth-busting account of the tragedies, trials, and successes of undocumented immigration in the United States. For decades now, America's polarizing debate over immigration revolved around a set of one-dimensional characters and unchallenged stereotypes. The resulting policies—from the creation of ICE in 2003 to Arizona's draconian law SB 1070—are dangerous and profoundly counterproductive. Based on years of research into the lives of ordinary migrants, Living "Illegal" offers richly textured stories of real people—working, building families, and enriching their communities even as the political climate grows more hostile. In the words of Publishers Weekly, it is a "compassionate and well-reasoned exploration of why migrants come to the U.S. and how they integrate into American society." Moving beyond conventional arguments, Living "Illegal" challenges our assumptions about who these people are and how they have adapted to the confusing patchwork of local immigration ordinances. This revealing narrative takes us into Southern churches (often the only organizations open to migrants), into the fields of Florida, onto the streets of major American cities during the immigrant rights marches of 2006, and across national boundaries—from Brazil to Mexico and Guatemala.

1

Why Migrate?

Making Sense of Unauthorized Migration

The tiny town of Santa Ana, Mexico, can be found at the termination point of a narrow two-lane paved road that juts from the highway linking the sprawling metropolis of Mexico City to a midsized city called Jilotepec.¹ Where the paved road ends and a network of red dirt roads begins, a small cluster of homes and shops is anchored by the local Catholic church and a grassy town square with a covered pavilion in the center. In 1998, the average monthly wage for a family of seven in this town was 600 pesos—approximately $60—and 70 percent of the population earned less than the minimum wage for Mexico. Yet for those whose trained eyes are familiar with the small towns and villages of this region of Mexico, Santa Ana did not appear impoverished.

Most of the homes in the colonia were flat-roofed, single-story concrete block structures with three or four rooms, a small interior courtyard with outdoor kitchen, and perhaps an interior bathroom. A few were much larger two-story homes with pitched roofs, large satellite dishes, modern indoor kitchens, and multiple indoor bathrooms. Rather than having a courtyard, many had a garage for the late-model pickup trucks in which their owners drove many times over the course of each year to visit “home.” The trucks almost always displayed Georgia peaches on their license plates, since most of the owners lived and worked in Atlanta. Of the approximately five hundred residents of this small town (referred to by locals as a rancho), very few were working-age men and women. Those who could had migrated al otro lado. They crossed the border into the United States, using the only viable strategy available to them for sustaining and maintaining their communities and their families. They went to the “other side” not only to earn a living but also to better the situation of their families and, many hoped, realize their dreams. Most of their dreams were simple: to earn enough to build a home for their family or to open a small shop in the nearby town. Yet these dreams required money, and the cornfields surrounding this rancho had long ago ceased to provide the means for earning and saving cash. The migrants came back often, though, in trucks filled with family members, to celebrate births and mourn deaths, to mark rites of passage such as baptisms, and to gather for important holidays of the community: the town’s annual feria (fair), the feast day of the Virgin of Guadalupe, Posadas, and Christmas.

Since the late 1990s, their visits have become less and less frequent. With few exceptions, the fancy homes lie empty and their owners’ shiny trucks rarely cruise the rancho’s dirt roads. Homes are still being built, and important community celebrations continue to happen with the support of the “migradollars” sent from Atlanta. Those who send the money still dream of returning to visit family or perhaps to settle down and start the small business they once imagined having in their hometown. But for now, at least, they cannot. The vast majority of migrants from this rancho, and from countless others like it throughout Mexico, are unauthorized. As tightened border enforcement has increased the risk and cost of crossing, while economic instability has made their ability to earn a living in el norte even more crucial, these unauthorized immigrants find themselves, strangely, trapped inside the United States. For many, this means living thousands of miles from their spouses and children, with the knowledge that a visit could result in detention and perhaps death. For those who were able to bring their families with them, this means that their children know the place they call “home” only through photos and phone calls, through internet searches seeking images and information. Herein lies the first and perhaps most profound paradox of unauthorized immigration from Latin America: unauthorized immigrants are settling, by necessity, in the United States, while the few who have had the good fortune of being offered a route to legalization continue to live their lives constantly crossing borders.

The overwhelming majority of migrants from Santa Ana have settled in Atlanta. They have purchased homes in the city’s suburbs and sent their children to the local public schools. They have worked to transform the landscapes of the city, as gardeners, and to build entire neighborhoods of new homes, as construction workers and masons. With migrants from other parts of Mexico and Latin America, they have revived failing business districts, installing in them shops and restaurants that cater to their wants and needs—and that introduce local residents to new flavors and styles. Many fill the pews of the city’s churches, as their music spills into the airwaves. Their desire for information relevant to them creates a need filled by new Spanish-language newspapers, radio stations, and television stations. Not only have their investments transformed the contours of the place they call “home,” but they have reshaped the places that, often grudgingly and sometimes with outright hostility, “host” them.

Beyond Push and Pull: Unauthorized Immigration in Context

An estimated 11.9 million unauthorized immigrants live in the United States. They constitute 4 percent of the nation’s population and 5.4 percent of the U.S. workforce. Their children, 73 percent of whom were born in the United States and are therefore U. S. citizens, account for 6.8 percent of the students enrolled in the nation’s elementary schools. Approximately three-quarters of the nation’s unauthorized immigrants are from Latin America, and the majority of them, a total of approximately 7 million people, are from Mexico.²

In the sending countries, poverty is endemic and opportunities for upward social mobility are scarce. The United States, on the other hand, represents the promise of a better life, or at least greater access to the resources necessary to get ahead in life. In 2009 per capita GDP in the United States stood at $46,436. In Mexico per capita GDP for the same period was $14,337. In Brazil, per capita GDP was $10,427, and in Guatemala the gap was even wider, with a per capita GDP of only $4,749 in 2009.³ As glaring as these wage differentials are, they mask even greater differences in the rural migrant sending communities of southern Mexico and Guatemala, where the minimum wage for agricultural workers is approximately $8 per day, though many work for less.

But these figures only tell part of the story. The fact is that wage differentials, crushing poverty, and the desire for a better life are insufficient predictors of migration. If the difference between Latin America’s poverty and the United States’ wealth were the sole driver of migration, we would see a great deal more immigration from Latin America (and the rest of the developing world) than we currently do. Research on immigration suggests that there is a much more complex set of economic, social, personal, and political factors that combine to influence who decides to migrate and when. Perhaps the most significant factors are the ones most rarely articulated: in our globally integrated world, we must pay particularly close attention to the economic, political, and military actions across borders that are taken by migrant receiving countries such as the United States. In other words, what are often described as “push” factors (poverty, political turmoil, and economic stagnation at home) and “pull factors (wealth, political stability, and job opportunities in the host country) tell only a part of the story, and not the most significant part.

While push/pull theories would lead to the hypothesis that the poorest nations are most likely to send migrants to wealthy nations, the data on global migrations reveal that it is not the poorest nations but the nations and communities undergoing development—that is, entering into global economic networks—that are the most likely to send migrants. Furthermore, they send migrants not simply to the wealthiest nations but to the specific nations with which they have developed durable and sustained relationships through such processes as commerce, trade agreements, political intervention, military action, and historical patterns of colonization.⁴

Migration is a process influenced by both macro structures, such as the international relationships of production and trade formed in an increasingly integrated world economy, and micro structures, such as the informal networks that migrants develop through which knowledge about the process of migration and assistance to settle in a new destination can be shared. Once such patterns are initiated, they become largely self-sustaining. In other words, migration follows migration, and entire communities of origin and destination are transformed in the process.

The forces that have created the unauthorized immigrant population and that have radically altered such communities as Santa Ana, Mexico, and Atlanta, Georgia, are complex and difficult to understand. In the United States, they challenge our notions of who we are as a nation, asking us to reconsider questions of fairness and to interrogate the political and economic systems that we largely take for granted. They require us to delve into our own history to gain awareness of how the actions of our government and our consumption patterns and lifestyles inextricably tie us to the immigrant flows that many Americans now decry. Moreover, because these unauthorized immigrants are part of the fabric of our everyday life—we share schools, neighborhoods, and churches with them; they pick the food we eat, build our homes, and take care of our children and elderly parents—they challenge us to understand their stories, struggles, and dreams. Given the current economic crisis, there is a strong temptation to dehumanize these immigrants and to portray them as overwhelming masses of faceless invaders who challenge the principles upon which our country is built. We shall see, though, that the stories of contemporary unauthorized immigrants bear much resemblance to those of other would-be Americans who came at the turn of the twentieth century, though the circumstances shaping their patterns of migration have given them precious few—if any—alternatives to “living illegal.”

Importing Labor, Exporting “McMansions”: Understanding the Forces That Propel Migration

In Santa Ana in the summer of 2002, Don Felipe, perhaps the most successful migrant to Atlanta, proudly offered a tour of his recently completed home. The two-story stone home seemed strikingly out of place in its environment, although it would have fit perfectly into one of the new, wealthy suburbs of Atlanta. It was surrounded by a high stone wall and wrought-iron gate, inside of which lived several ferocious guard dogs and grew dozens of fruit trees. The most striking exterior feature of this home was the large, attached two-car garage with modern electric garage doors. The home, with multiple exterior gables, five bedrooms, and two and a half bathrooms, had a contemporary-style kitchen complete with island and breakfast bar. The kitchen opened into a large dining room with carved mahogany furniture and a living room, the centerpiece of which was a large television. Many of the floors in the home were carpeted, a true rarity in the region.

Don Felipe spent his early years in a very simple, three-room stone home adjacent to this grand home, which he built for retirement. In his first home, he shared a bedroom with his seven siblings. Don Felipe had the opportunity to attend school for less than four years. He spent most of his childhood assisting his father in the cultivation of corn, wheat, and beans on the family’s ejido property. They had cattle and sheep but, particularly in times of drought, the family’s earnings from the land were not sufficient. So, like many other young people of his generation. Don Felipe migrated to Mexico City at the age of fifteen, accompanied by his older brother and his sister. His sister basically served as their mother, cooking, cleaning, and ensuring that they stayed out of trouble. She recalled that, as a teenager, “I took care of them, I washed their clothes, I did their ironing, I made their food. Uy, I did a lot! I took care of seven men, cousins and brothers.”

Some of these men attended secondary school in Mexico City, but Don Felipe and his brother went to work in a grocery store, partly to finance their brothers’ schooling. Felipe soon found a better job working for the Mexican government installing and repairing water meters. He lived for twenty-three years in Mexico City with his wife, who was also from Santa Ana, returning home for visits at least once a month and supporting his parents and siblings economically. Over the years, Don Felipe earned enough in various government jobs to invest in purchasing a Laundromat. He also bought property, on which he began building a home.

In 1978, when Don Felipe ran out of money to finish the construction of his home, he decided to try international migration. His older brother, on the advice of some friends from a rancho in the state of Hidalgo, had traveled to Atlanta the year before. As the first from Santa Ana to migrate to Atlanta and one of the first to travel to the United States, he returned with reports that jobs were plentiful and earnings were good. Hoping to support his family (which now included six children), finish construction on his home, and earn enough money to open another Laundromat, Don Felipe agreed to work for three years in Atlanta with his brother. He stayed in Atlanta for twice that amount of time, and returned in 1984 to purchase another small business. After only eleven months, Don Felipe and his brother found themselves heading back to Atlanta to earn more money.

Atlanta was initiating a period of rapid expansion as it began to draw middle-class and professional workers from around the United States. Though Atlanta’s economy was booming, this was during the “lost decade” for economic development in Mexico, when the government was forced to implement a series of economic austerity measures in response to a severe debt crisis. These measures, which were part of the Washington Consensus, sought to liberalize the Mexican economy and open it to foreign investment, producing widespread dislocation, particularly in such small towns and villages as Santa Ana.⁵ Not surprisingly, considering the economic situation of Mexico during the years that followed, Don Felipe’s businesses suffered in Mexico. His older sons, nephews, and eventually wife and daughters all joined him in Atlanta.

Don Felipe used his entrepreneurial skills in Atlanta as well. He initially worked as a laborer in construction, but soon established a small business as a stonemason who subcontracted for large construction firms. Over the years, Don Felipe’s business employed dozens of young men from Santa Ana. Don Felipe, along with a few others who migrated as undocumented workers before 1986, was able to attain legal status in the United States through the amnesty provisions of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act. Eventually he became a citizen of the United States, and he used the family reunification provisions of current immigration law to help his wife and children become citizens as well. Don Felipe and his family, in a sense, settled in Atlanta. He bought a small ranch-style home in the suburbs and worked hard to develop his business.

For fifteen years, Don Felipe worked building homes for the wealthy in metro Atlanta: “They’re houses that are just for very wealthy people, because there are houses worth $7 or $8 million . . . with twelve bedrooms.” Don Felipe lived modestly in Atlanta, but when he began construction on his retirement home in Santa Ana, in which he intended to live for about half of each year, he flipped through the magazines bearing images of homes like those on which he had worked for years in Atlanta until he found one that particularly suited him. He hired a group of men still living back in Santa Ana to build a replica next to his family’s ancestral home. The new home bears witness to the hardships that he endured and the eventual successes that he achieved.

Residents of Santa Ana often joke that, before the 1980s, no one from their town had heard of Atlanta, and certainly no one had been there. Norma, a young woman who migrated to Atlanta in the late 1990s from Santa Ana, explained how much the situation has changed:

Now, many people, almost the majority, have someone that lives in the United States, which makes them economically solvent, because there’s really not much work in the town. . . . I think it was just a bit before 1984 . . . it was a little before ’84, because many of my cousins, friends, they all lived [in Santa Ana] but someone began coming to Atlanta and from there, well they all started running to Atlanta, since there’s so much work, and so many people beg...