Thread: MS: Illegal immigrants say they want a better future ...

Sorry if this has been posted previously:
-------------

Illegal immigrants say they want a better future for their families
3/9/2008 11:03:01 AM
Daily Journal

BY EMILY LE COZ
Daily Journal

Jose and Carla Garcia live the American dream: They have jobs, pay taxes, own a home and raise their four children in a safe neighborhood with access to good schools.

But according to most U.S. House of Representatives 1st District candidates, the Garcias are enemy No. 1.

They're illegal immigrants.

Ask anyone running for former U.S. Rep. Roger Wicker's seat what's the top issue facing north Mississippi, and almost all will reply "illegal immigration."

They say it's the most cited concern among voters in the 1st District, and it's the first job many of the candidates say they'll tackle if elected to Congress.

"I'm hearing more about illegal immigration than anything else," said Democratic contender and state Rep. Steve Holland. "All of us are."

A long way from Mexico
But this is north Mississippi, where the closest point to Mexico lies more than 800 miles to the south and the closest point to Canada more than 750 to the north.

But distance doesn't matter, said Republican candidate and Southaven Mayor Greg Davis: "Illegal immigration is definitely as big a problem in Mississippi as it is in Texas or California."

He should know. DeSoto County, where Southaven sits, experienced one of the state's biggest waves of both legal and illegal immigrants in the 1990s with a gain of 579 percent.

Most came from Mexico, but others hail from Central and South America. Those from Asia, Canada, Africa and Europe accounted for less than a fifth of the foreign-born population.

Between 2000 and 2006, DeSoto also had the 1st District's largest influx of Hispanics, who more than doubled their numbers and now account for one-third of the district's total Spanish-speaking population, according to the U.S. Census.

The district as a whole is home to some 15,400 legal Latinos - and, according to several sources, probably two or three times as many illegals.

"I think there are more undocumented people here than documented," said Elquin Gonzalez, the Hispanic pastoral coordinator of St. James Catholic Church in Tupelo. "The documented people are maybe no more than 2 or 3 percent."

Difficult to figure out
Although actual numbers of illegal immigrants are hard to discern, the state Auditor's Office estimates some 49,000 undocumented aliens living in Mississippi - many of them in the 1st District because of its wealth of jobs.

They are people like the Carla and Jose, who moved to Tupelo six years ago so their children could learn English and have better opportunities.

The Garcias, whose names have been changed to protect their identities, entered America legally with tourist visas but work here illegally because their papers don't authorize them to hold jobs.

Both college-educated and religious, Jose and Carla said they feel guilty about their illegal status and never would have come had they known how hard it would be to find honest work.

But family members who already had crossed the border told them it was easy to enter the country as a tourist and apply for a work visa later.

That might have been the case before Sept. 11, 2001, but not afterward. Carla and Jose tried every legal avenue to find work but repeatedly failed. They were about to return home when a relative in Mexico became gravely ill and the family's financial hopes fell on the Garcias' shoulders.

Carla, who had majored in French and English, took a job as a waitress before finally building a reputation as a good housekeeper among upper-class Tupelo families. She now cleans floors and windows for a living.

Jose, who has a degree in civil engineering, first worked construction before buying false identification papers to get a job with a manufacturing company.

He shook his head when talking about the oft-cited complaint that illegal immigrants don't pay taxes while at the same time siphon free services from the government.

"Everybody pays taxes. If you're working on the factory payroll, you pay taxes," he said. "But if you have fake papers, you can't claim your taxes back. I pay state, federal, Medicaid, Social Security, but I get nothing back."

Paying for insurance
He also pays into the company's health insurance plan so as not to raise suspicions. But the family doesn't use it. They pay everything out of pocket and are still reimbursing more than $15,000 in medical bills from the births of their last two children. The two oldest ones were born in Mexico.

Jose also works a second job using a real identification number from the IRS so he can pay taxes legally and establish proof of residency in case he's one day able to get a work visa.

Many undocumented workers do the same thing, thanks to the IRS's nine-digit Individual Tax Identification Number, issued to people without Social Security numbers who need to file taxes in the United States.

According to the federal government, ITIN filers were taxed nearly $50 billion between the program's debut in 1996 and 2003 - an average of $6.5 billion annually.

In Mississippi, illegal immigrants contribute nearly $3.4 million annually in income taxes and nearly $41 million in sales taxes, according to a two-year-old report by the state Auditor's Office.

Most of north Mississippi's undocumented immigrants work in manufacturing, agriculture, the restaurant and service industry, and in the black market doing jobs like construction, landscaping, housing cleaning and yard work, said Carley Lovorn, executive director of El Centro, Tupelo's Spanish-language resource center.

Despite the contributions, illegal immigrants end up costing Mississippi taxpayers about $59 million annually in K-12 education, heath care and law enforcement costs, the Auditor's Office reported. They also send an estimated $10 million back home instead of spending it in Mississippi.

The difference is a $25-million-a-year drain on the state's resources, the Auditor's Office found.

Beefing up the border
That's why candidates like Republican Glenn McCullough Jr. want to beef up the federal Immigration and Naturalization Service, fence the border and implement technology to halt the flow of undocumented people.

"We have 12 to 20 million illegal immigrants (in the country), so the situation didn't happen overnight and the solution won't happen overnight, but we need to start addressing it seriously," McCullough said. "It will take a period of years to solve, but these people are at our public agencies that your tax dollars are paying for."

Immigrants claim they're just doing what anybody would do in their situation - they're seeking a better life for themselves and their families.

Salvador Perez grew up poor in Guadalajara, Mexico. His mother died in childbirth when he was 1, leaving behind her husband and several children. After only two years of education, Salvador quit school to work in the fields and earn money for his family.

Desperate measures
At 16, he paid a man $300 to smuggle him across the border, stuffed in the trunk of a car with four other people.

"We almost suffocated," he said in broken English.

Salvador survived the journey; others are not so lucky. In 2005 alone, 472 people died crossing the border, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. And rape and theft are common.

Today, a smuggler typically charges about $3,000 to cross, Salvador said.

"I just don't think people realize what some immigrants have been through to get here," Lovorn added.

Salvador worked odd jobs in California until winning amnesty in 1986 when President Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act.

After that, he attended adult school and found legal employment. He moved to Tupelo six years ago with his wife, Maria, whom he met in 1997 while visiting family in Mexico. Salvador now works at Pierce Cabinets; his wife stays home to raise their four children.

Although she came legally, Maria said she understands why so many risk their lives to face an uncertain future in America. Any life here, she said, is better than there.

"In Mexico, I worked seven days a week from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. in a mini-market and earned only 120 pesos a week," the equivalent of about $11, she said. "Clothes over there are more expensive, and milk is the same price as here."

Maria, too, quit school after only a few years, joining the work force to help support her parents and seven siblings.

She wishes more Americans would put themselves in her shoes: "If they were in the same situation, maybe they can understand why we come to this country. To live in a country where they don't speak the language, it is hard for us. It is hard to come and work for our families."

As for a solution, the congressional candidates talk about fences and fines, border control and deportation. But the immigrants themselves, and those who advocate for them, use words like understanding and compassion, fairness and future.

"We are not criminals," Maria Perez said. "We have come to work. We want to work. We just want better opportunities."

http://www.djournal.com/pages/story.asp ... 1&div=News

The statistics are that 15% of immigrnt income is spent on remittances and the beneficiaries spend 90% on of it on direct consumption. The items that they consume are basic: food, shelter, maintainance and clothing. If they want a better life then the immigrants should be making sure that their funds are invested in farm improvement and factory shells rather than just spent. Their families in Mexico should be producing their own food and clothes or buying those items from sources as close to them as possible.

Everybody pays taxes. If you're working on the factory payroll, you pay taxes," he said. "But if you have fake papers, you can't claim your taxes back. I pay state, federal, Medicaid, Social Security, but I get nothing back."

You pay taxes using fradulent or stolen social security Number, and then complain because you cannot get a tax refund back.

What non-sense. That would be like saying if I stole my neighbors car and then sold that car, I should be entitled to keep the proceeds from the sale of such car even though I never had any right to be in possession of that car. Oh, and the most important part. If you question me on this your a racist, xenaphobe, and what else, oh I like this one, a nativist.

Does that sound familiar?