Working Poor & Life Chances
Like sardines in 18-wheelers, swimming across the Rio Grande, walking through the desert and evading border officials, immigrants flee poverty and war-stricken nations, searching for a better life — the “American Dream.”
Yet without legal documents and the English language, immigrants, who are among the poorest, say it is difficult to overcome a life of menial jobs and poverty.
According to the U.S. Census “Poverty in the United States” report, African Americans have the highest poverty levels at 22.7 percent of that population. Hispanics follow with 21.8 percent below the poverty level. The national average is 12.1 percent.
Immigrants say they are the lowest paid of any working group, often earning below the minimum wage.
“The reality is that the American dream is hard to get and many lose their lives just trying to get here,” says Maria Sauceda from Michoacan, Mexico, now a legal resident.
Twenty years ago, her husband Ramiro made the trip, and although his first try was successful, he almost died, she says. It took four days— much longer than anticipated. Blistered, hungry and thirsty, his group fought to survive, she says. “They ate a wild dog they caught in the desert. They drank foul water from a puddle where a cow lie — dead,” she says.
Five years later Sauceda left behind three children, ages 14, 13 and 11, to join him. Six-year-old Jose got to come. “He was the youngest. I couldn’t leave him,” she says.
Still undocumented, her husband earns the family’s only income (they have six children) of about $250 per week at a company whose name Maria chooses not to reveal.
“You just get used to living like this,” says Sauceda, adding that in Mexico her husband earned a quarter of that, barely enough to eat.
Twenty-three-year-old Vladimir Rojas, a business administration graduate from San Salvador, El Salvador, arrived in Houston in March 2002.
Rojas, who lives with his 67-year-old mother, says without proper documentation and knowledge of the English language, he “can’t hope for anything better than the job at the appliance repair shop.”
Rojas says he’s on call and earns $80 per day, regardless of whether he works eight or 15 hours. “In El Salvador, the minimum wage is 1,150 colones,” he says. “The equivalent of $120 per month.”
Rojas’ first attempt to come in November 2001 cost him $2,500 up-front, but failed midway into Mexico, when the “coyote” abandoned the group in Chiapas.
“A friend sold his car in order to lend me the money to try again,” he says. “Again, it cost $2,500 up front and another $3,000 if we made it.”
Behind a 2-foot wall of apples and bananas, Rojas says he and 85 others spent 36 hours, crammed in an 18-wheeler, headed to Mexico City from Guatemala.
“Five men and thirteen women fainted,” says Rojas. “The cooling system worked but there were too many of us. The last hours were of terrible anguish.”
From Mexico City to the Arizona border, the group, including three children, boarded another 18-wheeler. The wall that hid them was made of frozen fish. “Instead of dying of heat, this time we were freezing to death,” says Rojas.
Thirty-nine hours into the 43-hour trip, the ice was gone and again, they suffered from heat and hunger and their bodies ached from sitting in one spot, says Rojas.
Rojas says they were then separated into groups of 40, 36 and 9 and prepared for a day-and-a-half of walking in the desert.
News, that the first 40 were caught, came five hours after departure. The second group was caught 16 hours after they began. Taking a different route, Rojas’ group went last.
“We walked for three days,” says Rojas. “We ran out of food, water and medicine but made it across and walked another eight hours.”
They too were caught, and held in El Paso.
His 12 siblings, already in the country, chipped in and borrowed to come up with $7,500 for bail.
“I didn’t go to court because I didn’t want to be sent back,” Rojas says. “I’m living here as fugitive,” he adds jokingly.
Micaela Chavez, her husband and their two children, arrived in Houston at 6 p.m. Apr. 19, 1995. She remembers because she had “such high expectations,” she says. Her illusions died when Chavez, a tenured nurse, found herself scrubbing toilets, she says.
Post 9/11, her husband’s boss of 8 years, cut his hours, she says.
“He was an EMS worker for 22 years,” says Chavez. “The last three weeks, he’s worked one day, making about $100 per week.”
“He’ll cut a yard here and there, and with that extra $15, we eat.”
While October’s rent for their 2-bedroom apartment at Gulfgate Southway Manor is paid, “we are living day-to-day and I don’t know what we are going to do,” says Chavez.
© Copyright World Internet News 2006-07
Top of Page
|
