Local Newspaper Encouraging Illegal Immigration
This is an article that was released on July 14, 2006 by the Fox Lake Journal, Fox Lake, IL. It is an article that blatantly encourages crossing our borders illegally. Encourages using coyotes to smuggle children across our borders, and also encourages giving social services aka welfare to illegal aliens. I could not believe my eyes when I read this in our local newspaper, I am hoping to get this news article out to the public so that those who do not support the illegal activities represented in this article can have the opportunity to e-mail our Major, Major Cindy Erwin, at Erwinc@foxlake.org. Also the journalist who wrote this Matt Pera, at mpera@nwnewsgroup.com.
Journey to the American Dream’
Local Family’s success mirrors immigrant’s goals
By MATT PERA
mpera@nwnewsgroup.com
Getting eight hours of sleep in El Salvador during the early 1980s was not an easy thing to accomplish.
In fact, some nights, it was impossible. The country was in the midst of a brutal civil war and violence was prone to erupt in a small town just as easily as in a crowded city plaza at any time. Juan Rivera, 33, recalled bombs and explosions that kept him awake at his grandparents’ farmhouse in El Salvador. “I didn’t really have that much of a kid’s life,” he said.
All the while, his parents were in Chicago, working to save enough money to move Juan and his three siblings from their home country
in 1982, after four years, they sent for Juan, then 10, and his younger brother.
The pair flew with an older cousin to Tijuana, a Mexican city that borders San Diego. Once in Tijuana, they met with a man who had been hired by Juan’s parents to transport their sons into the U.S.
The man drove the brothers to Los Angeles, where they caught a flight to San Francisco. They then boarded another flight that took them to O’Hare. Chicago has been home ever since.
At the time, excitement dominated Juan’s emotions. He was being reunited with his parents and he had escaped El Salvador
“What was going on at the time was great for us because we were coming out finally” he said of the journey into the U.S. “It wasn’t that bad [but] it wasn’t the easiest.”
While Juan and his brother, and later his two sisters, as well as his parents, all entered the country illegally every member of the family is now a legal U.S. citizen.
Juan now owns a landscaping business with his father and brother that serves the North Shore. He is married and has three young children.
He and his wife, Wendy purchased a house in Fox Lake last summer and are living something very close to what many immigrants strive for when they come to the U.S. legally or not - the “American Dream.”
Strength through adversity
Wendy’s description of how she arrived in Chicago in the early ‘80s, bears similarities to her husband’s story.
She spent the early part of her childhood in Acapulco. Mexico and her father moved to Chicago when she was 5 years old.
Her mother joined him two years later, then returned to Acapulco the following year to bring Wendy and her brother into the U.S.
They flew from Acapulco to Tijuana, then from San Diego to Chicago, where her parents had an apartment in the Humboldt Park neighborhood.
Her parents worked factory jobs that required long hours and paid minimum wage, Wendy 33, said. In 1985, they discovered they could file for their income tax returns, which brought in a backlog of money that had accumulated over several years.
The unexpected funds prompted the family to move back to Acapulco. But the return was short-lived.
“It’s not the same once you’re used to living here.” she said. “The things that we have in the United States. [which] we consider bare necessities, [in Mexico] they’re luxuries”
When the family returned to Chicago for good in 1986, Wendy recalled that they faced more adversity than they had during their initial stay They had no apartment, and had to sleep on the floor at a relatives home.
Her parents woke up at 3 am. to get in line at temporary employment agencies in the city and she and her brother had to contend daily with gang violence.
Those struggles left Wendy and her brother unhappy But, she added, her parents were convinced that the opportunities afforded them in the US. were worth the struggle.
“1 never liked it,” Wendy said. ‘When we were younger, we used to say ‘We don’t want to be here.’ But it was what my parents decided. It was just extremely difficult for them to give up on what they thought we needed.”
Their situation gradually improved. Wendy and her brother both went on to college and her parents, both U.S. citizens now, moved out of Humboldt Park to a safer neighborhood in Chicago.
Her father maintains employment at a local factory but her mother is no longer required to work.
While Wendy has not yet gained full U.S. citizenship, she is a legal resident. She graduated from North Park University with a degree in human development and currently works as a case manager at Mano a Mano, a social service agency in Round Lake Park that helps Hispanic immigrants who have recently arrived in the US.
Her brother earned a master’s degree in education from Northern Illinois University and now teaches middle school in Cicero.
‘Part of our identity’
As Wendy sits in her office at Mano a Mano, her three sons, ages 5, 2 and 1, smile wide from framed photos on her desk.
All three boys speak mainly English, but Wendy and Juan both said they would see to it that their children were bilingual so as not to lose that aspect of their heritage.
‘Our motivation right now is to talk to them in Spanish.” Juan said. “I know a lot of kids’ parents talk to them in English and they forget the need to also talk in Spanish.” Wendy added that the boys received plenty of informal English lessons every day from books, movies, television and their cousins.
She said she and Juan were conscious of ensuring their children become fluent in Spanish.
One reason she said it was necessary for them to know that language was so they could fully interact with their grandparents, who speak English but prefer Spanish.
“I believe that it’s part of our identity” Wendy said. “We’re all bilingual. It’s a great asset and would like to pass that on to my children.”
For both her and Juan, the boys represent the first generation from either of their families to be born in the U.S. as automatic citizens.
They live comfortably in a single-family home in the suburbs, their security produced by the hard work of both their parents and their grandparents.
They will not have to listen to bombs explode outside their windows, or miss their mother and father as they work in some distant country, or travel with strangers across sonic unfamiliar border to be reunited with their parents after long years of separation.
Wendy said it had been a long, difficult journey but added that she and her husband were close to accomplishing the goals set by their parents when they arrived in the US.
“We’re almost there. She said. “We’re not completely there and it’s been hard, it’s been really hard. Nothing has been given to us, we’ve had to fight.
Wendy Guerrero
On life in Mexico
