Thread: Editorial: A familial immigration pattern at every turn

Editorial: A familial immigration pattern at every turn

Daniel González -
Dec. 11, 2010 06:42 PM
The Arizona Republic

The stories are the same. Only the details are different.

Paola Lencina was telling me about her life as an illegal immigrant in Berlin when that thought popped into my head.

It was a blustery afternoon in Europe, where I was on assignment. Lencina had just finished her shift wiping tables, cleaning floors and serving food at a little restaurant. I met her outside the restaurant as she was pulling on her coat in the drizzling rain.

She suggested we walk to a cafe for the interview. I got the feeling she didn't want the restaurant owners knowing she was talking to a journalist, because they were paying her under the table. She seemed uncomfortable at first. But, once inside the cafe and a few sips into her cappuccino, Lencina began to open up.

She told me that she was 35 years old and that she was from a small city in Argentina called Rafaela. She had an office job at an insurance company there, but she was making hardly any money and her life seemed to be going nowhere.

"I asked myself, 'In 10 years, where will I be?' "

The answer didn't please her.

"Fatter and grumpier," she said.

So, she sold her things and set out for better economic opportunities in another country. After stops in Costa Rica, Turkey and the Netherlands, Lencina ended up in Germany. She entered each country legally as a tourist and then looked for work illegally in the underground economy.

And that is when it struck me, a longtime immigration reporter at The Arizona Republic, how similar her story sounded to the countless illegal immigrants I have interviewed in Arizona who left their own countries seeking a better life in the United States. Only the details were different.

Similar motivations
During the two weeks I spent interviewing immigrants in Berlin, Rome and southern Spain, I heard the same basic plot line repeated over and over: Life was so hard in my own country, I left to try to make a better living in another country, even if it meant doing it illegally.

Even the risks migrants were willing to take to get to Europe reminded me of the risks Mexicans and other migrants from Latin America take crossing the Arizona desert to get into the United States. In Europe, I met migrants from Sudan, Eritrea, Morocco, Senegal, Nigeria, Guinea and other poor countries in Africa.

Most had risked their lives to reach Spain or Italy by crossing the ocean in leaky boats often crammed with scores of other migrants.

In the parking lot of the Ostiense train station on the FR1 line of the Rome Metro, I met a woman from Ukraine who cared for elderly Italians. She described how she nearly froze to death being smuggled into Italy while hiding behind boxes of cheese for 14 hours inside a refrigerated truck.

In Rome, I also came across some teenage boys from Afghanistan hanging out in a pay-phone center near the white marble Pyramid of Caius Cestius. The boys told me how they had just snuck into Italy a few days earlier, hiding underneath freight trucks on ferries coming across the Adriatic Sea from Greece.

Similar reactions
I also found many similarities in the way Europeans are reacting to the influx of illegal immigrants. Some Europeans voiced sympathy for them, others outright disdain.

In Rome, while riding in a taxi to the airport, a Black immigrant from Africa walked up to the driver and tried to sell her tissues. The reaction by the cabdriver, Cinzia Perroni, who told me later she was an aspiring opera singer, reminded me of the comments I have heard so often about illegal immigrants from Mexico.

"I am not a racist. I don't care if they are Orange, Yellow or Black," Perroni said. "They shouldn't be here."

On the other hand, Jorge Ollero Perán, a young Spanish government worker, told me how upsetting it was for him to see news reports on TV of illegal immigrants from Africa who had drowned in the Strait of Gibraltar trying to reach Spain. In 2007, when the crossings were at their peak, Perán decided to swim across the strait to draw attention to the migrants' plight.

He told me how he trained for months to complete the 12-mile swim from the port city of Tarifa on the southern tip of Spain to Perejil Island off Morocco. He reminded me of the immigrant advocates I have met in Arizona who try to draw attention to the plight of the hundreds of migrants who have died crossing the Arizona desert.

Similar crackdowns
I spent several hours one morning interviewing members of the Guardia Civil, Spain's federal police force, stationed in Algeciras, a major seaport near the southern tip of Spain.

I was struck by the great similarity between their work and the work of the Border Patrol agents I have spent time with in southern Arizona. The Spanish agents showed me a surveillance room that closely resembled a room I have visited at the Border Patrol's station in Nogales.

In Nogales, agents sit in chairs monitoring television screens hooked up to infrared cameras mounted along the U.S.-Mexican border looking for illegal immigrants or drug smugglers trying to enter the U.S.

In Algeciras, the Guardia Civil officers were doing virtually the same thing, sitting in front of television monitors looking for illegal immigrants and drug smugglers trying to get into Spain.

Only the details were different. Instead of the desert, the Spanish officers were patrolling the sea. And the country on the other side of the border was Morocco, not Mexico.

Senior reporter Daniel González has covered immigration issues for The Arizona Republic since 2003. He has interviewed hundreds of immigrants, legal and illegal. He also has written extensively about the government's efforts to secure the southern border, crack down on illegal immigration and reform immigration laws.

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepubli ... z17vO0HUxX

In Rome, while riding in a taxi to the airport, a Black immigrant from Africa walked up to the driver and tried to sell her tissues. The reaction by the cabdriver, Cinzia Perroni, who told me later she was an aspiring opera singer, reminded me of the comments I have heard so often about illegal immigrants from Mexico.

"I am not a racist. I don't care if they are Orange, Yellow or Black," Perroni said. "They shouldn't be here."

Ditto!