Thread: A better life?

For many Latinos, this area is the land of opportunity

By CATHY DYSON
The Free Lance-Star

THE DARK-HAIRED woman from Nicaragua perfectly illustrates the reason so many Spanish-speakers come to America.

Her face lights up when she retells the stories she’s heard since childhood. Her relatives raved about the life people could make for themselves in the land of opportunity.

“We grew up wanting to come to the United States because it’s here where you have all your dreams,” said Patricia, who didn’t want her last name used. “People respect the law here. It’s a wonderful system.”

Ironically, the 40-year-old is breaking the law she admires so much. She came here with a tourist visa four years ago, but it expired.

Patricia would prefer to be here legally, but says through an interpreter that life in the Fredericksburg area is worth the risks.

There are plenty of jobs, both her children have become bilingual, and her daughter was a student of the month this year.

The mother smiled at the memory.

She’s thrilled to be in a country where immigrant children get the same chances as everyone else—and their parents can work in restaurant kitchens and shop in second-hand stores, as she does.

She knows most Americans can’t fathom her happiness. But then, they didn’t dream of the day they could buy American-made jeans and perfume, like she did.

“We’re seeing the opportunity, what we’ve dreamed of our whole lives,” she added. “It’s not perfect, but you have a treasure, and you don’t even know it.”

If Americans don’t recognize their homeland as a treasure, people south of the border do.

Across the nation, immigrants from Spanish-speaking countries are coming to the United States in record numbers.

Almost 8 million immigrants settled in America between 2000 and 2005, more than in any other five-year period in history, according to the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington.

In the Fredericksburg area, the Hispanic population has more than doubled in six years, according to estimates.

The U.S. Census Bureau recorded 9,186 Hispanics in the city and surrounding counties in 2000. The estimate for 2006 is about 22,000 people.

Some believe that estimate is low.

William Botts III, executive director of Rappahannock Legal Services in Fredericksburg, asked area localities for money to hire a bilingual lawyer last year. He showed a chart suggesting the Hispanic population had tripled in six years.

Botts based his estimate on the increase of Spanish-speaking students. He believes it mirrors the number of Hispanics seen daily “if you’re not living in a cave,” he said.

Exact numbers are hard to gauge because estimates are based on growth since the 2000 Census—and many local officials believe Hispanics were undercounted then.

“When anyone who appears to be from the government knocks on their door, they don’t answer,” said Christine Pacheco–Koveleski, the bilingual lawyer hired last fall, who now has almost 100 cases. “They come from countries where there’s not a lot of respect for the law, or even an existence of law.”

‘Money is better’ here

Hispanics come to the Fredericksburg area for the same reason others move here from Northern states or Northern Virginia.

Cheaper housing. Safer neighborhoods. More jobs.

“It’s the booming economy,” said Leni Gonzalez, a Hispanic outreach coordinator for the Department of Motor Vehicles. “The area is attractive to everyone.”

Gonzalez crisscrosses the state, explaining what documents the state requires for licenses and registration. She speaks regularly at community events, such as the Latina Fiesta last month in Fredericksburg. It was hosted by Evergreen Church, across from the Fredericksburg Fairgrounds.

One Hispanic man, who has lived in Fredericksburg for four years, was glad to see a local party celebrating his culture.

Raul Rodriguez and two of his friends listened to a mariachi band and a sermon, delivered in both Spanish and English, about God being bigger than their problems.

They ate free tacos, spicy chicken fingers and rice pudding.

The Hispanic men work for the same manufacturing company in Spotsylvania and have families in the same region of Mexico. They came to Fredericksburg because relatives here told them there was plenty of work.

“Money is better,” said Rodriguez, through an interpreter. “You can do things here you could never do in Mexico, like go to McDonald’s.”

The men each make about $12 an hour. In Mexico, they were lucky to earn $10 or $12 a day—if they could find work.

“You can work for one day here and make as much as you can in six days in Mexico,” Rodriguez said.

If jobs are a major lure, then the Fredericksburg region has them.

Since 1990, every type of industry has grown faster here than in Northern Virginia or the state, according to the Fredericksburg Regional Alliance.

Almost 103,000 houses were built within 30 miles of Fredericksburg in the last 15 years, the alliance reported in June.

Chances are, much of the labor involved with those new homes—from laying foundations to cleaning bathrooms or from hanging drywall to planting shrubbery—was done by brown-skinned hands.

“They do the work no one else will do,” said Cynthia Lucero–Chavez, an administrator with Stafford County schools. “You’re not going to have them come unless there’s work.”

Lucero–Chavez and her husband, Darryl, a retired Marine, grew up in Los Angeles in English-speaking households.

They trace their Hispanic roots to Spain and Chile, but consider themselves American, first and foremost.

Their two children learned Spanish in school.

Lucero–Chavez has seen the community grow and change during her seven years in Stafford. When the construction boom wanes, she predicts Hispanics will move on and “make new waves” elsewhere, as they’ve done across the nation.

“They’re this roaming population that nobody wants but everybody needs,” she said.

‘No citizenship for illegals’

Mark Ellis of Spotsylvania doesn’t agree that illegal immigrants are wanted—or needed.

He’s among a vocal group of Americans who believe illegal immigrants are law-breaking invaders who take as much from schools and public services as they give in cheap labor.

Ellis builds houses for a local construction company and concedes it would be tough to finish homes without the Mexican crews he works with daily.

But he doesn’t credit them for being ambitious. He says Americans have gotten lazy.

Ellis traces his roots back to Quakers who “were here before there was a country called America.”

Several times this spring, as Congress considered giving guest-worker privileges to those who broke the law by coming here, Ellis took his opinions to the street.

On one 80-degree Saturday in May, he stood in a grassy strip near BJ’s Wholesale Club on State Route 3 in Spotsylvania.

He held a hand-painted wooden sign that read, “No Amnesty, No Citizenship for Illegals.”

Some drivers gave him a thumbs-up; others offered different gestures.

Ellis wasn’t fazed.

“It’s not incumbent upon my country to provide employment for them,” he said. “They are foreign to our language, foreign to our culture, they are foreign to democracy, and they are foreign to the United States.”

Investing in the future

No one needs to remind Irma Zepeda she’s in a foreign country. She and her husband, Fransisco, have lived in America for 17 years, but still feel more connected to Mexico.

Fransisco Zepeda digs up trees at a local nursery. His face and hands are weathered from years of hard work.

Irma Zepeda rarely leaves their small rental home in Colonial Beach, not even to step out on the front porch.

Both speak little English. Their TV stays tuned to Spanish soap operas, news reports or cartoons.

The Zepedas are here legally. Their five children are citizens because they were born here.

Like other Mexicans, the Zepedas thought things would be better in America, but their life is a constant struggle.

Fransisco Zepeda supports his family of seven on $9 an hour. That’s about $1,560 a month, before taxes.

Their rental home costs $600 a month. Assorted bills, such as a credit card, insurance, electricity phone and cable, account for at least $500 a month.

Anything left—and there usually isn’t much—is invested into their charming, ranch-style home in Mexico.

The Zepedas long for the day they’ll return. Their property has a veritable orchard of apple trees, mangoes and avocados.

“All you have to buy is a little bit of vegetables,” Irma Zepeda said. “There’s always everything.”

Except work.

The Zepedas came to America so their children could get an education and become bilingual workers. When the family returns to Mexico, the father prays that his three sons and two daughters will get jobs in the tourism industry. Their home is 2½ hours from Guadalajara.

So for now, the Zepedas endure. The four oldest children occupy the two bedrooms, while the parents and 4-year-old Carina sleep in the living room on a mattress.

It’s propped against the wall during the day, near the plastic yard chairs the family uses for furniture.

There’s a moldy smell in the carpet after the plumbing went amok in the spring and flooded the house. The kitchen stove doesn’t work, so meals are cooked on an electric skillet or sandwich maker.

“As a Mexican, if you’re not suffering from one thing, it’s another,” the mother said.

Neither parent regrets coming to America. Both say they’d make the same choices again, because they’re investing in their children’s future.

“It’s not good for us, as individuals,” Irma Zepeda said, “but it will be good for them.”

To reach CATHY DYSON: 540/374-5425 cdyson@freelancestar.com
http://fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/P...ay1/index_html

She and her husband, Fransisco, have lived in America for 17 years, but still feel more connected to Mexico.

So much for assimilation and they're legal, but still plan on going back someday. I'm sure they were amnested in '86. So, what all this proves is that anyone coming here illegally will NEVER assimilate. Only law-abiders have the moral integrity to become an American.

It's also ironic after all these years they have made no progress economically.

“As a Mexican, if you’re not suffering from one thing, it’s another,” the mother said

A culture to hang onto for sure.