Thread: Illegal immigrant family copes amid pressures (Sob story)

http://www.gazette.com/display.php?id=1319104&secid=1

July 09, 2006

Illegal immigrant family copes amid pressures

By PERRY SWANSON - THE GAZETTE

Just like the rest of the country, the Pikes Peak region rolled out a welcome mat for illegal immigrants during the past several years.

Hotels, restaurants and construction companies offered jobs. Schools offered education to their children. Landlords offered cheap rent. Police offered protection from violence. Law enforcement authorities did little to discourage the migration.

The illegal immigrants came by the thousands.

Some political activists consider them dangerous alien invaders or noble contributors to the economy and culture.

It’s hard to say what typical illegal immigrants in the Pikes Peak region are like, but the Sanchez family might come as close as any.

Eduardo and Raquel Sanchez, ages 50 and 40, live in a four-plex in Colorado Springs. They have two daughters, 22-year-old Kateri and 19-year-old Karen.

Kateri Sanchez has a son, 2-year-old Eduardo.

Eduardo and Raquel Sanchez have picked up some English, but both are much more comfortable speaking Spanish. Both are sensitive to suggestions that illegal immigrants are a drag on American society. They scrupulously keep records of medical bills, paychecks and other transactions to make the point.

“We pay taxes, but we don’t have rights,” Eduardo Sanchez said in Spanish during a recent interview with The Gazette. Raquel Sanchez produced her husband’s latest pay stub, showing he paid federal and state taxes, Social Security and other withholdings on an $11-an-hour job with a construction company.




The company fired him last month because he lacked a valid Social Security number, he said. He has since searched from Colorado Springs to Pueblo for a job but found nothing.

In many ways, the Sanchez family story mirrors that of many illegal immigrants nationally.

The family first arrived in the United States six years ago. They were part of a mass migration of about 850,000 illegal immigrants per year since 2000, according to the Pew Hispanic Center.

The family came from Mexico, like an estimated 56 percent of the illegal immigrants who were here in 2005.

They did not sneak across the border. They entered with tourist visas. The family stayed after the visas expired, like about 40 percent of illegal immigrants nationally, according to the Institute for the study of International Migration at Georgetown University.

The makeup of the Sanchez family is similar to that of many illegal immigrants’ families. Unlike his mother and grandparents, 2-year-old Eduardo is a U.S. citizen. The nation’s 6.6 million illegal immigrant families include about 3.1 million children who are citizens because they were born in this country.

The Sanchez family is seeking to obtain legal residency with the help of one of Raquel’s sisters, who is a citizen. It’s a long process — immigration authorities are only now handling applications for siblingsponsored legal residency that were filed in August 1993.

In the meantime, family life carries on. Kateri Sanchez has learned a good deal of English through school and interactions with native speakers. Now, she effortlessly translates the language for her parents, but several years ago she was one of only a few Spanish speakers in her high school. She wants to be a teacher for immigrant children but said she can’t get into college because she lacks proper identification.

“I know how hard it is, because when I was in school I didn’t have friends because I was so shy,” she said. “Everybody was trying to speak Spanish with me, but they would only say ‘I want a beer,’ ‘Yo quiero una cerveza.’”

Raquel Sanchez contributes to the family income by selling jewelry from a catalog, but her days are mostly spent looking after her grandson and Karen, her 19-year-old daughter. Karen suffers from seizures and a malformed blood vessel in her brain. The condition causes brain damage that results in difficulty with concepts such as language and numbers. The family has a calendar tacked to a wall in the kitchen, where they record details about each episode.

“With every seizure, she is less and less,” Raquel Sanchez said.

Karen’s condition was a big part of the motivation to come to the United States. In Mexico, schools and other institutions are not equipped to help her.

Raquel Sanchez suffers from her own medical problems, including cancer. She showed bills for treatment adding up to thousands of dollars and records of her payments against the debts. Progress is slow there, too, as some of her payments were $10 or $30. But she said she doesn’t want charity.

“We don’t live off the government,” she said. “We pay our own way.”

The Sanchez family illustrates many of the problems lawmakers are wrestling with both at the state level and in Washington, D.C. Some activists worry that families that have lived here for several years might be unfairly uprooted and returned to their home countries. Others say that illegal immigrant families who have established lives here are only a magnet attracting more people to come here illegally.

Efforts to reform immigration laws have stalled among federal lawmakers, and many observers expect no reforms to pass this year.

In Colorado, leaders are debating whether to try to withhold many government services from illegal immigrants. An estimated 225,000 to 275,000 illegal immigrants live in this state, and experts say Colorado is a new destination state for illegals.

The Colorado Legislature began an unusual summer session Thursday to consider new laws to combat illegal immigration.

Raquel and Eduardo Sanchez said they worry over some legal changes that have already taken effect. A law approved this year, for example, created a new division of the Colorado State Patrol to fight illegal immigration. Law officers would do better to expend resources looking for human traffickers who smuggle illegals across the border, said Raquel Sanchez. But the traffickers don’t come this far north, she said.

“It’s stupid,” she said. “Here in Colorado, it’s not the border.”

Sob stories is all writers like this know. They don't give a damn about Mr & Mrs America only poor downtroden illegal immigrants that have a bad life because of you!

perry.swanson@gazette.com <perry.swanson@gazette.com>

“We pay taxes, but we don’t have rights,” Eduardo Sanchez said in Spanish during a recent interview with The Gazette. Raquel Sanchez produced her husband’s latest pay stub, showing he paid federal and state taxes, Social Security and other withholdings on an $11-an-hour job with a construction company.

Your right.....no rights. Your here illegally.

Now....lets pretend they all pay taxes and pay into SS. We shouldn't be having a SS problem then. Especially when this government wants to send Mexico the SS payments of ILLEGALS!

They broke the law so we should send them back.

They contiously made the decision to overstay their tourist visas, have babies here to gain sympathy, take illegal jobs, commit identity fraud, collect social services ect.. They thumb their noses against our laws and so does the Bush Administraton! Enforce the laws on the books!


I have no sympathy! They broke the LAW! I can't wait until November!

Swweeeeet!!!!! They come here illegally because their country is so poor and corrupt. They take away from Americans, our jobs, our school funding and hospitals but it's not enough. They want rights! That's like saying I robbed a bank now I want to be a shareholder as well. Go figure, she's saying "it's stupid", yeah we know who is stupid.

The Sanchez family is seeking to obtain legal residency with the help of one of Raquel’s sisters, who is a citizen. It’s a long process — immigration authorities are only now handling applications for siblingsponsored legal residency that were filed in August 1993.

How can this be, they've been in this country illegally for 6 years! No illegal immigrant should be able to obtain legal residency while still living illegally in the United States.

The Sanchez family illustrates many of the problems lawmakers are wrestling with both at the state level and in Washington, D.C. Some activists worry that families that have lived here for several years might be unfairly uprooted and returned to their home countries. Others say that illegal immigrant families who have established lives here are only a magnet attracting more people to come here illegally.

Well Perry Swanson, isn't it unfair that American citizens are footing the bill for illegals to be here? Let's see you write about that.

Attrition in action my friends...

We need to hear more stories like this -they only serve to harden my resolve. This is step one for the family to say, "Oh, let's just go back home." Someone posted here that a reporter talked to someone who said he was going back. Have there been any articles put out that attest to more people going back to their homelands?

I read the articles today about Colorado and I only feel more frustration at my own state -Illinois. I have heard nothing about any actions/legislation that has been planned. We will become the sanctury state if we're not careful.

How much of the Sanchez family's remittances home went into productive assets instead of consumption? If they had built a factory shell a storage building or a barn they would be much better off. What the Mexicans in Mexico need are to have victory gardens for self sufficiency not supermarkets for money sent from the States.

Self sufficiency keeps people home dependency on purchased food brings people here.