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Family secret

Girl discovers parents are undocumented

BY LESLIE CASIMIR
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

The Mendez family - their identities hidden in darkened photo - came from Dominican Republic as tourists about a decade ago.

Luzagar Mendez never discussed the family's secret with his three youngest children.

But this spring, his 10-year-old daughter, Lucero, pieced it all together as she watched her normally shy mom take to the streets with tens of thousands of undocumented immigrants on May 1.

"When we were at the march, I realized my parents are undocumented," said the fifth-grader, who was born and raised in Bushwick. "I don't know what to say now or who I can tell."

Across New York, many children like Lucero got a rude awakening: Members of their families are undocumented - and they had no idea.

In Lucero's case, her father; mother, Mariluz, and oldest brother, Noe, are all living here without proper papers. They came from the Dominican Republic as tourists about a decade ago - and never left.

Since figuring out the truth, Lucero has been filled with worry. She wonders whether U.S. lawmakers will pass a bill that would help or whether they are going to send her parents away, she said.

Millions of households with mixed legal statuses - like the Mendez family - lead complicated lives marked by some members making money on the books and others off, only some being able to travel, and by some children having access to government benefits while others under the same roof don't.

For example, Noe Mendez, 20, couldn't afford to continue his schooling at LaGuardia College without financial aid. He lasted one semester, dropped out and started selling pots and pans and helping his father, who sells homemade empanadas on the sidewalks of Bushwick. But he still hopes to become an aerospace engineer.

When he gets sick, Noe Mendez, said his father makes him a remedy of boiled oregano and garlic.

The U.S.-born kids - Estrella, 9; Abel, 7, and Lucero - have Medicaid and Child Health Plus.

"If I had health insurance, I would get sick more often," Noe Mendez quipped.

Luzagar Mendez, 48, an out-of-work geologist in the Dominican Republic, said he didn't tell his younger children the truth about the immigration status of half of the family because he didn't want to worry them.

"We don't talk about this ever," said Luzagar Mendez, who has been writing a semi-autobiographical book about his family's immigration plight. The Daily News agreed to use the fictitious first names he uses in his book, but Mendez is their real last name.

"This life is not normal," he added.

Children usually figure out their parents' immigration status later in life - when they need a passport or their parent's Social Security number, according to Carola Suárez-Orozco, co-director of Immigration Studies at New York University.

Kids usually know only that their parents are from another country and for some "vague reason" they can't go back to visit their grandparents, explained Ana Maria Archila, director of the Latin American Integration Center.

With the immigration proposals now stalled in Congress, Luzagar Mendez's wife, a former university professor of geography who now sells Mary Kay and Avon products, said sometimes she entertains thoughts of taking the whole family back to the Dominican Republic.

"Sometimes I think that maybe in my country, things can be different," said Mariluz Mendez. "Here we are all stuck."

Originally published on July 23, 2006