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Background helps recruiter Becerra identify with Lex newcomers
By MALENA WARD, Hub Regional Correspondent
06/17/2006
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LEXINGTON — If you are new to Lexington, Alma Becerra wants to meet you.


Becerra is a migrant recruiter for Lexington Public Schools and always is on the lookout for the town’s newcomers.


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Anyone, regardless of race or nationality, who comes to Lexington to work in agriculture, which includes meatpacking, qualifies as a migrant worker. In the migrants’ first three years in Lexington, the school qualifies to receive federal funding for them.


Becerra said the term migrant, which sounds like immigrant, often confuses people. Some people she approaches react by saying, “I’m not a migrant. I’m American,” she said.


Becerra said Lexington has the most migrant workers of any Nebraska city.


Becerra herself was once a migrant worker. She and her husband, Manuel, worked fields in California, carrying on the farm laborer tradition established by her father and grandfather.


The quest for resident status and legal permission to work and reside within the United States combined with fate brought this agricultural heritage to Becerra.


Her father, Francisco Porraz, followed recruiters looking for field laborers, or braceros, to work in the United States. He left his wife and young daughter behind in Mexico to live with his mother.


Becerra said leaving them with her grandmother was her father’s way of guaranteeing their security.


Francisco’s own father, Lucio Porraz, had left his family to work within the United States, but he never returned and his family lost contact with him.


Later, Francisco and his brother found their father in the U.S., where he had remarried. Lucio Porraz offered his stepdaughters to marry his Mexican sons for residency purposes only. Becerra’s father divorced his American wife after receiving his residency card and began the paperwork for Becerra and her mother to move to the U.S.


Anxious to be reunited with his family, Francisco Porraz decided to pay a “coyote” to guide his wife, daughter and a brother across the border.


“I was young, but we still crossed the river,” she said.


During a 1987 amnesty period, Becerra’s green card converted to permanent residency, but she is the only member of her family that hasn’t yet become a U.S. citizen. It is a goal for the day when she can afford it.


Becerra said she is sympathetic to those who take risks to come to the United States. She said there is a misconception regarding the intentions of Hispanic families that come to Lexington.


In a family straight from Mexico, the parents are usually willing to do anything for the school if they understood what is asked of them.


Becerra and her husband were attracted to Lexington by an IBP job notice in a California unemployment office in 1995, when he was between seasonal jobs.


Becerra also worked at the meatpacking plant for a year before becoming a para-educator in the school system.


For six years, she has worked as the Lexington Schools migrant coordinator and community liaison.


She finds migrant workers and signs them up for English classes and fills out other paperwork so Lexington can receive federal reimbursement.


The position grants her the opportunity to meet and gain the trust of many people as she refers them to services they may need.


She once was awakened in the middle of the night by a man who told her his wife was in labor in her driveway. Becerra gave directions to the hospital but they wanted her to accompany them and translate. She tried to explain that the hospital had translators, but the man insisted that she be with them because they trusted her to tell them everything said, not just what a doctor said to translate.


Becerra stayed with the couple the entire night.


“I like this job. I’d be depressed without it,” Becerra said, adding that she does miss being close to family members in California. Becerra hasn’t been to Mexico in 20 years, and her children have never been there.


“The busier I am, the less I miss my family,” she said as she explained she also choreographs waltzes for Quinceanera celebrations and teaches weekly folklore dance lessons.

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