http://www.lowellsun.com/ci_3280589

Immigrant family in Lowell fears years of making a life in U.S. will end in deportation
By EVAN LEHMANN, Sun Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- It started on that bare apartment floor. They slept there, the family of four. Launched a new life from that Lowell floor. Found America there.

The Brazilian children, then 5 and 9, had an old mattress six months later, rising up from that foreign floor. Progress. Two years after that, the parents spent wages earned cleaning homes and delivering pizzas to lift themselves onto a mattress.

Now, five years after they found that floor, they own a house in Lowell. The children have attended public school. The parents, in their early 40s, still deliver pizzas and clean homes for more money than they ever earned in Brazil. They pay taxes, have a credit card and speak some English.

But they're illegal.

Their tourist visa required them to leave after six months -- a mark that came and went more than four years ago.

Their house is on foreign soil. They hope the “pizza place� doesn't ask him for a driver's license or that the women for whom she cleans don't ask for residency documents.

It has happened before. Gingerly, they respond that the papers are “in process.�

The mother, who along with her husband spoke to The Sun on condition that they not be identified for fear of being deported, laughs easily. But it masks a deep uneasiness that one day she and her family could be starting again on a bare floor, this time in Brazil.

“I don't have a...� she said, pausing to ask a translator for the right word. “A foundation.�

She agreed to go by her mother's first name, Zima, for this story.

Likewise, the father adopted his father's name, Leny, for purposes of identification.

“When I was in Brazil, I had no money, but I had peace,� Zima said. “Here I have money to buy food or whatever I need, but I'm always afraid.�

Congress debating immigration

Zima's fear of deportation could subside, or multiply, early next year when Congress is expected to begin overhauling the nation's immigration policy.

The changes could transform the lives of an estimated 150,000 to 200,000 illegal immigrants living in Massachusetts. Thousands are thought to live in Lowell -- Cambodians, Colombians, Brazilians and more.

Lawmakers on both sides of the debate agree that tougher enforcement along the borders and throughout the interior is needed. And a guest-worker program -- traditionally a Democratic policy that would permit vast numbers of illegal workers in the United States to attain lawful residency for a number of years -- has gained support from President Bush and the business sector.

Some members of the president's party, though, chafe at worker programs, saying it rewards lawbreakers and encourages illegal immigration.

And other rifts exist.

Sens. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and John McCain, R-Ariz., introduced a bill that would instantly permit millions of illegal immigrant workers to apply for a six-year visa.

Using their new legal status as a springboard, workers could then apply for permanent residency -- provided by a green card.

That's the rub.

“The program that I proposed would not create an automatic path to citizenship,� Bush said in an immigration speech last week in Arizona. “It wouldn't provide for amnesty -- I oppose amnesty. Rewarding those who have broken the law would encourage others to break the law and keep pressure on our border.�

‘It's not amnesty'

Kennedy, speaking to Washington reporters Thursday, said permanent residency is an “indispensable part of immigration reform.�

It stabilizes businesses and communities, supporters say. And without permanent residency, they add, illegal workers wouldn't reveal themselves, knowing they could be forced to leave the United States after their temporary visas expire.

To become eligible for a green card under the McCain-Kennedy plan, workers would have to pay fines amounting to about $2,000 -- a penalty for their earlier disregard of immigration laws -- pay back taxes, pass tests in civics and English, and undergo a criminal background check.

“It's not amnesty,� Kennedy said of his green-card proposal. “It's not forgiveness. It is to make them pay a penalty, and they will have a longer period of time in order to be able to earn -- earn -- their legal status.�
‘Lowell good for starting new life'

Zima and Leny are ready to earn theirs.

They left their families in Ipatinga, a mountainous inland city along a river in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, after a spiraling economy took the couple's car and their family hardware store, and threatened future unemployment for their son and daughter -- a scenario their father knew well.

“He tried, tried, tried� to find work, Zima said of her husband.

Leny landed alone at Logan International Airport in 2000; he came 40 days before his wife and children, there to find a job and an apartment. He slept on the floor of a friend's Somerville place.

“Lowell is good for starting new life,� Zima said the friend told Leny.

Listening to the advice of other undocumented Brazilians in Lowell, the couple immediately applied for a credit card and obtained an Independent Taxpayer Identification Number through the Internal Revenue Service.

The nine-digit number, which they attained with a passport and a tourist visa, allows them to pay taxes and apply for bank loans without having a Social Security number.

It helped them buy their house.

But the tax number does not make them eligible for employment. They don't have driver's licenses or health insurance.

Leny earns $5 an hour and tips delivering pizzas. He also operates a commercial cleaning franchise. Zima, a college-educated high-school teacher in Brazil, earns up to $700 a week cleaning homes.

Their weekly household income is between $900 and $1,000.

It's more money than they've ever earned; their son's public education exceeds anything they could afford in Brazil.

Yet all they have could disappear. A persistent feeling haunts the family, Zima said -- they live in “a hole.�

Illegal immigration still on rise

As the Senate looks to adopt varying versions of a guest-worker program -- with and without access to a green card -- the House could act more quickly on an enforcement-first measure.

More than 80 House members, most of them Republicans, wrote a letter to Bush in October rejecting the worker program, saying enforcement of current laws must be pursued first.

Funding for immigration and customs officers has increased 44 percent since Bush took office, infusing more investigators into borderlands and the interior.

Operation Rollback, the largest worksite enforcement program ever conducted, apprehended hundreds of illegal immigrants and brought charges against employers.

“America's immigration laws apply across all of America, and we will enforce those laws throughout our land,� Bush said last week. “Better interior enforcement begins with better worksite enforcement.�

But Kennedy says illegal immigration has risen even as the funding has.

“We haven't got enough troops in the United States, and we haven't got enough barbed wire or fencing in the United States to have well-trained border guards out chasing after gardeners,� he said.

In Lowell, Zima and Leny say they cheer the president when he speaks about immigration reforms. Bush has been talking about implementing a guest-worker program since 2000 -- the year he was elected and the Brazilian family arrived in America.

But the words of politicians no longer inspire the family of four to celebrate the imminent end of their hidden life. They've heard it before, back when they were living on the floor.

“We're always hearing about this law, but it never seems to come to pass,� Leny said.