Thread: Being legal isn't enough for immigrant...

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Being legal isn't enough for immigrant
Mary Schmich

May 27, 2007

Four hundred dollars seemed like a fortune to Humberto Rodriguez back in the days when he was just another illegal immigrant.

At 13, he sneaked across the border at Tijuana with his brother, made it up to L.A., bought a pair of black Adidas shoes and headed to his uncle's in Chicago.

At home in hilly, warm Guerrero he had dropped out of school at 11 to help his parents with the cows and corn and chickens. Up in the flat, cold city he spent two hours most days in GED class, two in English class and eight at work.

His first job in Chicago was washing dishes at a yacht club for less than minimum wage. He went on to cook at a California Pizza Kitchen and then at Joe's Crab Shack in Schaumburg, where he graduated to kitchen manager.

At 26, he bought a cleaning company.

At 32, he opened his first restaurant, with his brother, a South Side place they called La Quebrada, after the jagged cliffs in Acapulco where daring young men leap for fun toward the rocks and waves.

At 36, he opened his second La Quebrada, in Elgin, in a building he bought for $1.3 million.

On Friday, at the age of 37, he was sitting in his third La Quebrada, in what used to be a Polish sausage joint on North Avenue. Last November, he cleaned the grease from the walls, cleared the gangs from the parking lot, painted the outdoor walls mango, and started serving his mother's recipes to Chicago's West Side.

Four hundred dollars isn't a fortune anymore. Not to him.

"But $400 is one week of work for a lot of people," he said, sitting at a table in a short-sleeved shirt, with a cell phone on his belt. "That's if you're making $10 an hour. A lot of people are making $6.50."

Four hundred dollars is also what it costs to apply for citizenship, something Rodriguez hadn't done until recently.

He became legal in 1986, under a widespread amnesty for undocumented immigrants, and for 20 years legal seemed good enough. He could get a driver's license, buy a business, feel safe.

What he hasn't had is a full voice in the immigration debate, a lack of power that lately strikes him as perilous. Like millions of other people who are here legally, he depends on and cares about people who aren't.

So he decided, finally, to apply. He got help from the New Americans Initiative, a program aimed at getting legal immigrants to become citizens. It's run jointly by the state and the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights.

Rodriguez was the 20,000th person the program had helped file for citizenship since it started in 2005. In honor of that landmark, the organizers decided to give him a little award—the amount of the application fee.

It was a nice gesture. They thought it might make good p.r. He made it better.

"I didn't need the $400," he said. "I told them to find someone else."

They found Sung Joon Yoo, a 78-year-old Korean.

By getting Rodriguez's story out, the program's organizers hope more immigrants will be inspired to apply for citizenship, and to do it before the fee rises, as proposed, to $675.

Rodriguez, meanwhile, already knows who he'd like to vote for for president, and he knows why.

The why is that he believes that most illegal immigrants aren't different from him, and that being allowed to get legal is what allowed his success.

He picked up a La Quebrada menu. On the cover was a picture of a boy diving from those jagged cliffs into the deadly waves.

"That's what people in Mexico do," he said, "because they can't find work."
Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune

If you read between the lines it is questionable whether he was actually eligible for the green card he got hrough he 1986 amnesty. Someone in his position should also be judged based on how much he invested to increase income and create jobs in Guerero.

In fact there is instead a high degree of possibility that he has encouraged other illegals to come here. Under those circumstances he would not be commendable at all.

He didn't give a rat's ass about becoming a citizen until he woke up one day and decided it would make him a few more bucks if he applied for citizenship. If these worthless basta**s were ever called upon to defend America they would scurry south for Mexico so fast they would only be a blur on the landscape.