Thread: Coming to look for America

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Coming to look for America
Margaret Poe - The Daily Iowan
Issue date: 5/12/06 Section: Metro


A gold cross swaying around her neck, the 48-year-old woman crawls across the plush beige carpet in her Cedar Rapids apartment.

"¡Así!" It was like this, she says, re-enacting the journey that changed her life.

One day in 1987, she trekked more than a mile through California sewers, her eyes focused, literally, on the light at the end of the tunnel. She ignored the corpses littering her path, the pain shooting through her body, the fear of being just one immigrant smuggler away from the U.S. Border Patrol. Inch by laborious inch, the single mother forced herself forward, each step pushing her farther away from her four children left behind in southern Mexico.

In the two decades since that fateful crossing, Reynalda Hurtado de Vargas has lived her vision of the American dream. Yet tears from that adios linger - for her four niños, whose parting sobs haunted Vargas' dreams, and for all the immigrants trapped between two countries.

The debate over immigration reform has drawn thousands of protesters and ignited editorial pages with legislative proposals in recent months, as the nation ponders the fate of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants living here. While Vargas and all but one of her children have become U.S. citizens, their American journey remains prominent in their lives.

Like many of her friends in Michoacan, Reynalda married young, having her first daughter at the age of 16. Her burgeoning family moved to Mexico City, where they lived until she offered her husband an ultimatum: Stop drinking, or file for divorce. He agreed to the latter - but only on the condition that he walk away without paying a cent.

The young mother took off, eeking away an existence selling chile-laced cups of chopped mango and jicama from her dirt-floor home. But the sales were seldom lucrative enough to give her children more than hot tortillas squirted with lime juice or a small roll and cup of tea, she says in strained English.

Mexico had nothing to offer, leaving her with no option but the well-tread path to the north.

Sitting in their immaculate apartment, where radiant images of Jesus and Mary beam down from a place of prestige on the white wall, Vargas still grapples with that decision. After leaving her 12-year-old daughter Araceli alone with her three younger siblings, she caught a bus to the border. It was very bad, she says, her voice cracking.

"I had to stay strong and pray for them," she says.

She had little free time to worry, though, working around the clock at a burrito stand in Vista, Calif. With her $120 a week salary, she bought windows and a door for their one-room home in Mexico.

After four months, the high voices and wide eyes haunting her dreams became too much to handle, Vargas says. Her return was joyous, but the money soon evaporated in the scorching Central American sun. Once again, she jumped the fence at Tijuana, raced through the wilderness, and flung her body onto the pine cone-studded forest floor, as Border Patrol helicopters hovered overhead. Once again, she found a job, and saved, saved, saved. Yet, this time was different.

After weeks in the fruit fields, her employer offered her a green card - a ticket for a higher salary, security, and the chance to bring her children to the United States. After scooping them up in Michoacan, the family raced toward the border.

Immediately, a pair of teenage "coyotes" - professional immigrant smugglers - approached the wide-eyed mother and children. For $1,200, the guides would lead her children across the fated line, their eyes fixed on the Golden Arches beckoning inside the U.S. border.

Passing into the country legally, yet alone, Vargas waited at the McDonald's. Her fear soon turned to panic, as she pleaded, "God, please bring my children."

An hour later, they appeared, commencing their American life. The children quickly picked up English, and, though they were initially disgusted by pizza - a far cry from the mole and carnitas of their homeland - they assimilated.

After moving from California to Washington, the Vargas clan eventually ended up in Iowa, after being lured there by Reynalda's second husband, Marco Antonio Vargas, who came to work at IBP, a pork producer. Their 16-year-old son Tony, who was born in Oceanside, Calif., is now in 10th grade at Cedar Rapids Prairie High School. And ever since they moved here, the congregation at St. Patrick's Church, 228 E. Court St., has been like family.

For Reynalda Hurtado de Vargas, her little part of eastern Iowa is more than she ever imagined when she darted into this country, 19 years ago. She points with pride at her children and grandchildren's photos, displayed prominently on the shelf. The elaborate silver frames glint in the last of the day's sunlight. Her dream - su sueño - has been completed, she says.

E-mail DI reporter Margaret Poe at:
margaret-poe@uiowa.edu

Another sob story of the "hard working illegals" oh boo hoo hoo my heart bleeds ---NOT.
How about the stories of hard working Americans denied jobs for supporting their families because of the influx of illegals? How about the taxes that are bleeding America dry ( THAT is where my heart bleeds ) to support these illegals. What part of ILLEGAL don't they understand?

how could they give her a 'green card' if she was illegal?

The other day my nephews 12 year old stepson was sitting at the table when we were talking about the 'situation.' He said they had a lockdown at his school not too long ago and they brought in the cops and drug sniffing dogs. He said his friend setting next to him jumped up and grabbed in his pocket and went into a panic because he didn't have his green card. He said they told him to just sit down and shut up.

I can't imagine a parent putting a child through being in a country illegally, that is emotional abuse