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 News from Around the Americas | August 2007 
America: Simple Dreams, Harsh Reality
 Christina Killion Valdez - Post-Bulletin
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| | "Santiago," right, who is in the United States illegally from Mexico, works as a roofer in Rochester. He supports a wife and 5-year-old daughter in Mexico and has made the dangerous three-day trek across the Mexican desert five times. (Ken Klotzbach/Post-Bulletin) |
Rochester MN - A roughly 70-mile expanse of desert, where rattlesnakes blend in with the rocks and Border Patrol trucks rumble by, ready to snare trespassers, stood between "Santiago" and his dream of a better life.
By age 16, he knew the small, Mexican town where he grew up had no jobs for him, and visas to work in the United States were scarce.
As a child, Santiago says he and his siblings lived with their grandmother because their parents couldn't afford a home. By the time he reached fifth grade, Santiago, who'd always been a good student, began missing classes regularly to work in the fields, earning what he could to help his family. He fell behind in his studies and dropped out to start working fulltime.
Even after he landed a better-paying construction job, it wasn't enough. His family struggled to put food on the table and pay the bills, and they continued to live in his grandmother's home.
He pleaded with his mother to let him go to the United States to work for his uncle. She refused. He was too young and the risks were too great, she told him.
Finally, when he turned 16 in 1996 he felt strong enough to make the journey - the journey millions of people before him had made.
Now 27, Santiago lives and works in Rochester and continues his clandestine existence, supporting his wife and 5-year-old daughter who remain in Mexico.
Jumping the border
Slightly more than half of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States entered the country illegally. They evaded customs and immigration inspectors at ports of entry by hiding in vehicles such as cargo trucks. Others trekked through the Arizona desert, waded across the Rio Grande or otherwise eluded the U.S. Border Patrol, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan research organization supported by the Philadelphia-based Pew Charitable Trusts.
But the rest of those 12 million people originally came here with legitimate nonimmigrant visas, such as tourist or business visas, then overstayed their limits. Some entered with Border Crossing Cards, which allow short visits to the border region, and then violated terms of admission.
In his case, Santiago paid a "coyote," or guide, $1,400 to help him make his way across a barren stretch of Texas desert. The cost is more than 10 months' salary for a Mexican citizen making the average salary of $4.48 a day.
On a typical day in 2006, the Border Patrol refused entry to about 640 people at ports of entry into the United States, intercepted about 20 people who were being smuggled in and rescued about eight people attempting to enter the country illegally between ports of entry, according to a U.S. report.
Since 1995, nearly 3,000 people have died trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border. On average, one person dies every day trying to cross the border, according to the Pew Hispanic Center.
Nonetheless, between 700,000 to 850,000 new, illegal immigrants enter the United States annually by all modes of entry, according to Pew.
Making Minnesota home
Last year, Minnesota was home to 75,000-100,000 illegal immigrants, nearly 2 percent of the state population, according to the Minnesota Department of Administration.
Estimates for Olmsted County aren't available, but Phil Wheeler, county planning director, says about 70 percent of newcomers to the area are foreign-born. From April 1, 2001, to July 1, 2006, of all people migrating to Olmsted County, about 1,400 were from within the United States, while 3,367 were foreign-born, he said.
Among those foreign-born arrivals is Santiago, who moved to Rochester five years ago after living and working in Texas and Ohio. Santiago joined several other family members who also call Rochester home. Some are legal, others are not.
Santiago works as a roofer at job sites across southeastern Minnesota putting in as many hours as possible when weather permits. When winter comes, he and his coworkers head South, seeking work in Texas and Florida.
"If there's not work, it's hard to send money home," he says.
Back home in central Mexico, Santiago would struggle to earn in one week what he earns here in a day, he says. "There is very little work. Sometimes the work pays very little. It is very hard to make it there."
There are more jobs in Mexico's major cities, but moving there is expensive and often the jobs don't cover the higher cost of living there.
U.S. jobs, on the other hand, generally pay far better. The real wage ratios, adjusted for international differences in prices, for Mexican-born men who had recently moved to the United States compared to the wages of similar men working in Mexico, ranged from 6-to-1 to 2-to-1 in favor of the U.S.-based workers, according to a recent government report.
The North American Free Trade Agreement, devaluation of the Mexican peso, corruption and the influx of the Mexican baby boom hitting a depressed job market have all contributed to economic problems there. But jobs aren't the only reason people come here, legally or illegally.
Some come for work, others to reunite with family. Some from countries other than Mexico are fleeing war or persecution. Presumably all dream of prosperity and a better life.
People often believe that immigrants from Mexico are the poorest of the poor and come here with no job skills, says Nathan Wolf, Mexico's consul to Minnesota. That's not true. Unskilled workers generally don't have enough money to clear the border, for one thing, he says.
More often the people who come here have some skills, but can't find work at home or want to get ahead. Plus, there's the strong pull of American success stories.
A lot of people may be poor, but they still see the television shows and Hollywood movies that show the American dream, Wolf says. "This is still seen as the land of opportunity. They come for the American dream and often what they get is the American nightmare."
Without an immediate family member to sponsor him as an immigrant, and not qualifying for any of the non-immigrant visas, Santiago saw no other choice than to enter the United States illegally.
Given the choice, he would have preferred to come legally, he says, and he hopes that laws will be changed to make that possible someday.
"It would save a lot of suffering in the desert," Santiago says. "And we could visit our families more often."
Crossing the great divide
As a teen, Santiago says, he attempted to cross the border without success at least three times. One time, he was caught and taken to a shelter in Mexico because he was a minor. There he was told he couldn't leave unless he was picked up by a parent or guardian.
"There were people there from all over Mexico. Some had been there for 10 or 15 years," he says. "I felt bad. A lot of boys were never claimed."
Santiago, however, had enough money on him to pay for a bus ticket home. Two other boys, who lived in other parts of the country did too, so together they convinced the reluctant official to let them go, he said.
"I was thinking, if they let me leave, I would go with a coyote," he says. But the official saw each of the boys to their buses to make sure they went home.
"My parents didn't know where I was for 15 days," he says. "The longest I was gone before that was one week."
Their relief didn't last long because Santiago was determined to try again.
Hauling two jugs of water and a few cans of food, Santiago struck out across the desert on a three-day walk from Piedras Negras, Mexico, to the land of opportunity.
Sleep was as scarce as shade during those three days. The year-round average high temperature in Eagle Pass, Texas, is 93 degrees, with an average low of 72 degrees. During the day when the heat was too intense, he and the group he was with would try to sleep. They'd walk at night, when it was cooler and there was less chance of being seen. They'd hope for some moonlight so they could see well enough to avoid stepping on rattlesnakes.
There was never enough water to drink.
Sometimes they'd come across a well and refill their jugs. Other times they'd pass by tempting lagoons, knowing the water wasn't safe to drink.
Santiago has completed the journey five times now. He returns to Mexico every few years to spend time with his family.
Tightened border security over the years makes each trip more dangerous. As the possibility of being caught increases, groups are pushed into rougher terrain and the price charged by the coyotes increases.
Still divided
Santiago last made the illegal border crossing about two years ago, after spending a few cherished months with his wife and daughter in Mexico.
"Since she was born, I've only seen her for a total of one year," he says of his daughter. "It's hard for me. I miss her a lot."
His wife, Rosa, and their daughter live with Rosa's mother, brother, sister-in-law and their three children. It's not a very big house, Rosa said in a phone interview, but she and her brother can split the bills because their mother doesn't work.
Rosa rides her bike to work at a shoe factory, where she earns about $50 a week.
"It's very hard," she says of earning a living in a small Mexican town. "That's why I'm working. I have to leave my daughter with my mother."
The first time her husband left to work in the United States was the most difficult, she says.
"My daughter was very young, only four months old," she said. "It was very hard for me not to be able to work with the young girl."
It was also hard knowing the danger her husband faced.
"Because he can't sleep, I can't sleep thinking of the danger," she says. "A lot of people die. I don't like it when he leaves, but here there is no work."
She too dreams of going to the United States, but not necessarily to find work.
"Only to be with him," she says. "That would be ideal for me."
Life on the other side
Even after crossing the border, Santiago's fears don't subside.
He has a Mexican driver's license, but said he worries if he gets caught driving without a Minnesota license he will be sent back to Mexico. And even though his work is dangerous and strenuous, he does it without health insurance.
About four years ago, Santiago convinced his brother-in-law, "Fabian," who was struggling to survive in Mexico, to join him in this country. Fabian worked making mud and concrete blocks to support his wife, 10-year-old daughter and 8-year-old son. Now, the two work together and share an apartment, but money is still tight.
Fabian wonders if it's all worth it.
"The economics are better, but if you're not with your family you get depressed," he says, noting that it's been two years since he's seen his children. "In Mexico, you have no money, but at least you are with your family."
He would like to return and try again to find work there, he says.
Santiago says he hopes to save enough money here to be able to go home and start a small farm.
Even if he does, he isn't sure he could stay in Mexico full-time.
"Sometimes the salary won't let you stay," he says. "When you get your check and it's only 800 pesos, or $80, you think this is what I would get in one day there." |
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