Thread: Waukegan:Facing Deport. but Clinging to Life in U.S. {sob}

Fedupinwaukegan: Still living here in Waukegan, near the airport. Thanks for the welcome. I see your name on the TOWN forum.

After they were married in 2004, she realized that under immigration law it would be difficult for him to become legal, even though she is a citizen. Because he had crossed the border illegally, seeking legal status would require him to return to Guatemala for years of separation, with no guarantee of success. She abandoned plans to move back to Waukegan. She and her husband feel safer in Chicago, with its large Hispanic population.

Of course "she and her husband feel safer in Chicago, with its large Hispanic population" because they can continue their ILLEGAL PRESENCE just by mingling in with the crowd AND THEY CAN CONTINUE TO THUMB THEIR NOSES AT OUR LAWS.

THIS IS MADDENING!

I hope they find her husband and deport him.

Ahhh Reggie...so you know as well as I do that we've got to get busy. 287g was a great start.

Here is a good post on topix about this article. Don't let this happen in your city like it did ours.

http://www.topix.net/forum/us/TLUC458F50LNELE66/p7

I live in the Waukegan IL area as well. This article was very slanted. As the other poster Waukeganite said, any economic stimulus generated by the large illegal Latino population is more than offset by the extra services these folks suck up and the overall decline in the quality of life. Schools are overcrowded and performing poorly, despite hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on bilingual curricula. The local emergency room is jam-packed, so much so that the hospital is being sued by the daughter of a patient who had a fatal heart attack after spending hours in the waiting room -- her mother wasn't properly triaged due to the hordes of uninsured Latinos using the ER as a free clinic. A lot of the housing stock looks worn and shabby, because multiple families are crowded into single-family homes and subjecting them to extra wear and tear, and any spare cash is being sent to Mexico, instead of being put into sprucing up the dwellings.

Waukegan used to be a thriving, blue-collar town. Many residents enjoyed solid, long-term employment with the industries that lined the lakefront. When the industries left, Waukegan fell on hard times, and the city is still trying to recover. I think that, originally, the influx of illegal Latino immigrants was tacitly condoned by the city; Waukegan had experienced a lot of "white flight" with the decline of industry, and people naïvely thought the immigrants would breathe new economic life into the community. And indeed, there are some successful Hispanic businesses in town who cater to Latinos AND whites. But the trickle of immigrants turned into a steady stream, which turned into a flood. Many of the recent newcomers have no education or trade skills, and there's been a visible criminal element, i.e., Latino gangs.

I know Mayor Hyde personally; he's been trying very hard to get businesses and developers to invest in Waukegan, to gentrify at least the downtown area, so that it can once again draw in people from the region (Waukegan is the county seat, and the eighth-largest city in Illinois). My parents live about 15 miles away, and they won't even consider coming to Waukegan for dining or entertainment: "Too dangerous," they say. Their attitude is shared by many others, and so long as Waukegan continues to look and feel like a Mexican barrio, economic turnaround will be slow in coming, and people will be too scared or turned off to set foot in town.

Following the law, abiding by the law, and supporting the law is "work" that illegal aliens just won't do.

"hiding in plain sight"...how oxymoronic can the NY Times get? An asinine phrase within another asinine sob story from an asinine fishwrap news rag.

Wow, looks like this article will let folks around the country know that Waukegan is NOT the place to come if you are an illegal alien. I saw it on line for the Houston Chronicle, The Seattle Times, on the Midwest Coalition for Human Rights site, and the Herald Tribune out of Florida. The very same article by Julia Preston.

Thanks Julia!! I swear that I have seen so many more homes go up for sale this week since the article has come out.

For sale in Waukegan...

Arizona:
The 'terrified' and 'hiding' are driving around en mass with Mexican license plates, many with expired tags. Huge crowds march with a Mexican flag yelling.
Lots of people are scared but I could argue who.