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Published Wednesday, May 25, 2005
WORKING ON A WAY OUT

Migrant Hopes Business Will Lift Him From Fields

By Eric Pera
The Ledger

PLANT CITY
Raul is nearly free of stooping in fields alongside his wife, Avelina, setting green seedlings, harvesting strawberries and tomatoes, pulling up spent plants. After 15 years of this drudgery and another five picking citrus, the Plant City couple finally see a way out through a part-time lawn business that Raul operates on weekends and between harvests.

He hopes to expand gradually so one day he can be his own boss and leave the fields forever.

But for now, Raul, 46, says he must stay on the farm. After all, with seven of his nine children still living at home, he has many mouths to feed.

After 20 years as a farm laborer, Raul regrets that he's never learned English.

"If I knew English they would give me citizenship," he said through an interpreter. "I would find a job that's better paid, like construction."

He's partly right. American citizenship requires an ability to speak and understand English. However, language isn't always a barrier to employment, especially in Florida, where many non-English-speaking men and women find jobs.

Maybe some day he'll find time to study. Meanwhile, Raul keeps his cell phone handy so he can reach out to several of his oldest children, who are his interpreters.

Their help is especially critical to the growth of Raul's lawn service. His business card includes phone numbers for his English-speaking children.

On a recent afternoon, Raul and his wife reflected on the past, present and future. The Ledger is not using their full names because Avelina is in this country illegally.

In 1984, the year Raul first came from Mexico to work in Florida's orange groves, he made $25 a day. If he'd had his wife by his side, their earning potential would have been slightly more than $1,000 a month.

WORK NOBODY WANTS TO DO

With inflation, Raul says their income has barely grown.

Last year, he and his wife earned a combined $27,000, their best year ever, he said.

But their family is larger and expenses are higher today than when he first immigrated.

Raul and Avelina said they prefer working for a single employer, a farmer they refer to as "the patron."

Together, they earn enough to get by. With added income from Raul's yard business, there's no need to migrate, which would be especially hard on the children, Raul said.

Their lifestyle is hampered, however, because Avelina, 38, who also doesn't speak English, never acquired legal documentation to live and work in this country.

She said she applied for residency in 1994 and is still waiting for word of her application. Last year, she finally received a federal tax number, she said.

Her husband attained permanent residency in December 1990, so he's considered a legal resident, but not a citizen.

Avelina said her illegal status is a roadblock to a better future.

She defends her status, saying that if not for her countrymen, there would be little food on American tables.

"Sometimes when we hear the news (on television) they say we take jobs away from Americans, from people who are already Americans," Avelina said. "But we don't . . . it's very hard work. Nobody would want to do it."

COURAGE AND THE CROSSING

Yet her life here is grand compared with her youth in Jalpan, Mexico, where she said poverty gave her courage to wade the Rio Grande one night in 1989 with her three oldest children.

It was the same method her husband used first in 1984, two years after the couple married. For several years he migrated between Jalpan and Immokalee in South Florida, picking oranges and other crops.

Avelina, tired of her husband's absences of a year or more at a time, first attempted crossing the Mexican/U.S. border in 1988.

Finding the river too high, "I turned back. But a year later the water came up to here," said Avelina, touching her shin. "I crossed with my three daughters."

Back then border security was lax and it was possible to travel freely across the country, Raul said. Food, water and shelter were available at Indian reservations much of the way, he said.

"There weren't many officials (guarding the desert)," Raul said. "Now there's a lot."

``IT'S THE RULE"

He and Avelina had 10 children in all; one died of heart problems at age 2.

Their two oldest, both girls, are married and live in Plant City. They and their husbands are undocumented, but that hasn't prevented some of them from finding work outside agriculture.

One daughter works in the fields with her parents, another is employed at a fast-food restaurant. Their husbands do construction and lawn work.

The seven youngest children remain at home, an aging single-wide mobile home just footsteps from work, its worn exterior brightened by pots of multihued impatiens.

Raul and his wife bought the home 15 years ago when they first came to this farm on the outskirts of Plant City. They pay nothing, other than utilities, to keep the home on their employer's land.

The arrangement has freed income that would have gone to housing, a blessing for such a large family.

Yet they are indebted to their employer, who insists they work on his farm as long as they live on his land. "They tell us if we want to live here, we have to work here," Avelina said.

"It's the rule," said Raul, resignedly.

Even if they could afford it, the home is too rickety to move.

Raul said he's tried unsuccessfully to borrow money to buy another home.

He said his credit was ruined for failure to pay medical bills associated with his child's death in 1999, bills not covered by Medicaid. Because the boy was born here, he is automatically a citizen, and eligible for government assistance.

But with the lawn business, Raul said he's now making prompt payments of $50 a month on the bills.

Raul praised his employer for providing him the chance at a better life. "He does care," he said. "He's a good man."

Eric Pera can be reached at eric.pera@theledger.com or 863-802-7528