Alvarado family has gained legal U.S. residency, one hasn't
Sorry, I cannot feel sorry for them. Did the father overystay his visa so that he was also illegal? How did he get a green card and then citizenship? And a $3800/mo mortgage???? How many of us can afford that?
Alvarado family has gained legal U.S. residency, but one has not
By JESSIE MANGALIMAN / San José Mercury News
(Published Wednesday, April 11th, 2007 04:15PM)
SAN JOSÉ -- On Sofía Alvarado's 46th birthday, she stood beaming at the stove in her South San José home, mashing and stirring a clay pot of pinto beans. The rare afternoon was a mother's coveted gift: all five of her adult children and four grandchildren relaxing at home together at the same time.
Her eldest daughter kicks a ball out front with her young daughter.
A son watches over a grandchild while another son sleeps off his graveyard shift. Another daughter coos over an infant. The youngest daughter arrives from school.
This is a celebration, but one with a painful center: Alvarado's eldest, daughter Aime Alvarado, 26, a beloved and integral family member, is also an undocumented immigrant. All the others are U.S. citizens or permanent residents; Aime Alvarado's own 4-year-old daughter, Evelyn, is a United States citizen by birth.
"I have everything," Sofía Alvarado says, slowly stirring the bubbling beans, "but I don't have everything. I want my family together." She repeats: "Together."
While last year's tumultuous national debate over immigration reform focused largely on individual illegal immigrants, little was said about the impact of legislation on millions of "mixed-status" households like the Alvarados.
The myriad compositions of these households underscore how legal and illegal immigration are intimately linked. Congress ultimately ducked the problem last session.
And no wonder: How do you break apart, with legislation, families composed of U.S. citizens, permanent residents with "green cards," temporary residents with pending card applications, and illegal immigrants? And what is the emotional toll on families under the threat that a loved one might suddenly be deported?
Last May 1, when millions took to the streets nationwide in support of immigration reform, the Alvarados joined San José's throng of 125,000. On Labor Day, the family marched again on crowded streets to support a legislative path to citizenship for some illegal immigrants.
In the middle of that throng, pushing her daughter in a stroller, beneath banners that proclaimed "Human Rights for Immigrants," Aime Alvarado said, "I need my papers. There are many people like me with kids. Keep our families together."
The common perception of undocumented immigrants is that of the solo male, said Jeffrey S. Passel, demographer with the Pew Hispanic Center in Washington, D.C.
But census surveys from 2005 show the contrary.
"The stereotypical situation is a family," Passel said of the nearly 2.7 million "mixed status" families like the Alvarados in the United States. In those homes are almost 2 million children who are like Aime Alvarado's daughter, Evelyn -- U.S. citizens.
Deportation of an estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants, as called for by some opponents of illegal immigration, would affect millions more -- family members linked in mixed-status households.
The Alvarado family, for example, breaks down like this: a legal mother with an undocumented daughter; an undocumented daughter with an American-born daughter; a U.S. citizen father with an undocumented daughter and siblings with an illegal sister. Everyone in the family said the threat hanging over Aime Alvarado is a silent torture on a household bound together by culture, financial necessity, and emotional and familial ties.
Even opponents of amnesty for current illegal immigrants acknowledge the dilemma.
"That they have children here," said Steven Camarota, director of research for the Center for Immigration Studies, "creates all sorts of consequences for schools, social service networks."
On the other hand, he said, "You never start the debate with amnesty."
The solution favored by Camarota, one now being advocated by both Republican and Democratic legislators, is a multi-pronged approach: tough enforcement of immigration laws, an employee verification system, deportation of undocumented immigrants who face standing deportation orders, more border agents and limits on legal immigration.
Like many critics, Camarota argues that legal immigration feeds undocumented immigration. That problem is most evident in mixed-status households.
"You can break these social networks with strict enforcement, and by bringing down the legal immigration numbers," said Camarota. "You have to do both."
In recent months, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has made sweeps for undocumented immigrants around the country, including in San Jose. Many immigrant families are facing deportation.
"There may be families that could potentially be separated," said Virginia Kice, spokeswoman for ICE. "They have a right to go before an immigration judge," who determines whether someone is deported.
"But ultimately, it's ICE's responsibility to enforce the law."
The American story of the Alvarado family begins in 1985 in industrial Toluca, a town just west of México City. Diego Alvarado was 29, supporting his wife and three kids as a taxi driver.
Aime Alvarado remembers those years as content. She had university plans -- to study accounting or preschool education.
Then the North beckoned with better paying jobs. Diego Alvarado crossed from Tijuana on a Mexican passport and a temporary visitor's visa. Winding up in Long Beach, he worked many jobs, from window washer to painter.
Months grew into years of torturous separation from his wife and kids. He could only return home from time to time, but because he was earning good money and was sending it back to his family, he endured.
The Alvarados still treasure their trove of love letters and family correspondence from that difficult time.
One letter from 12-year old Montserrat -- they called her Montse then -- written in 1999, a year before she came to the United States, still brings tears to her parents' eyes.
"Dadato, remember the old times when no one could separate us even if they tried? Now it hurts but I know that very soon, we will be together again," Montse wrote. "I just want you to know that I'm going to feel strange after being separated from you for 13 years. Now we are going to be closer than ever. I love you."
Then in 1986, Congress granted legal amnesty to nearly 3 million illegal immigrants. Diego Alvarado received a green card in 1992, moved to San Jose in 1994 and became a citizen in 1997. Soon he applied to bring his family.
His wife and the four youngest children -- Ruth, Diego Jr., Sergio, and Montserrat, got legal status based on Diego's U.S. citizenship.
The minor children became legal residents almost immediately.
But timing, age and luck were not on Aime Alvarado's side. She was 21 when she entered the United States in 2001, too old for legal status under her father. She also missed by two days a family reunification provision from December 2001 that would have allowed her to circumvent the age barrier.
There remains one glimmer of hope.
The law allows U.S. citizen parents to petition for adult children.
Diego Alvarado has applied for Aime. But in the perpetually backlogged immigration system, adult children rank lowest among family members who can receive "preference" for a visa to immigrate. She must wait six years to begin the process of legalization.
Just home from her part-time job serving food at a local cafeteria, Aime sighed, "What am I going to do?"
In the Alvarado household, a modest four-bedroom, one-story home in a South San José neighborhood populated by Mexican and Central American immigrants, everyone contributes to pay the $3,800 monthly mortgage. Six adults and two children live there on an estimated total annual income of about $100,000.
Money is tight. For at least one month last summer, the phone was temporarily disconnected for non-payment.
The family's collective income covers only necessities. Sofia Alvarado's simple birthday party meal was beans, rice, corn tortillas, a little grilled beef and Diego's homemade chili and cilantro sauce.
Everyone works, often doing overtime. Diego works two jobs: driving disabled people and seniors to appointments during the week, and driving an auto parts truck on weekends. Sofia works as a night maid at the Santana Row hotel.
Aime Alvarado doesn't have a driver's license, so every morning sister Montserrat Alvarado, 19, drives Aime to work and Evelyn to day care.
Care of the two grandchildren is a family affair.
Because Aime Alvarado arrives home earliest, she babysits her 2 1/2-year-old nephew when his father goes to work at night.
"You're dealing with people with families. If you don't take that into account when you're creating policy, you're ignoring one of the basic realities of the population you're dealing with," said Hans Johnson at the Public Policy Institute of California. "In this debate, we didn't have the balance of reality with ideology."
For most American families, it would be easy to expect 26-year-old Aime Alvarado, a single mom, to leave the family nest and start a life of her own.
"I want to go to school so I can have a better job, so I can give my daughter a better life, so I can help my parents more," she said.
"But I can't. I don't have papers."
During the years the family was separated from the father, Aime Alvarado became a second mother to her siblings. When they were still in school in Toluca, she helped her mother take care of her siblings.
She was, and remains today, their confidant.
"We're pretty close," Montserrat Alvarado said, cuddling close to her sister on the sofa late one night, waiting for their mother to return from work. Waiting up to welcome her mother is a nightly ritual for Aime.
She is also the one who makes the weekly grocery list -- and the one who knows how to make rice the "right" way. On Sofia Alvarado's birthday, Aime stopped her dad from preparing the rice in a stainless steel pan.
The family's rice, Aime said firmly, is like the mother's beans and must be lovingly cooked only in a clay pot. She deftly smashed a clove of garlic and threw it into hot oil, preparing what they all call "Aime's Rice."
Contemplating her future, Aime Alvarado swings from hope to despair. One moment she is crying, imagining that she may be forced to leave. At other times she is certain that returning to Toluca would be the better choice.
As Congress takes another stab at immigration reform, U.S. Rep. Zoë Lofgren, new chair of the House subcommittee on immigration, said part of the debate will be about families.
"Does it make sense to separate families?" said Lofgren, D-Calif. "Does it serve U.S. interest?"
If Aime Alvarado were to be deported -- she can be deported despite an immigration petition filed on her behalf -- she would not be able to return to the United States for at least 10 years. If her daughter, Evelyn, were to stay behind with the grandparents, it would be a childhood without a mother.
If Evelyn joined her mom in México, the family says the loss would be unbearable.
"I don't want to think about that," Sofia Alvarado said. "Aime's situation makes us feel powerless."
Every member of the Alvarado family has reflected with much sadness about the years of separation, and their toll. It took Diego Alvarado 15 years to bring his first two children to San José, and two more to reunite his entire family. Thinking about the possibility of another separation, he said, is paralyzing.
One afternoon last summer, his son Sergio, 21 and a U.S. citizen, lamented that to many Americans, adult children living with their parents seem anomalous, but to families like his, it's not mere tradition.
"We came here to get closer," he said. "But this country gets between us."
© 2006 The Fresno Bee
http://www.vidaenelvalle.com/news/engli ... 6733c.html
Re: Alvarado family has gained legal U.S. residency, one has
"We came here to get closer," he said. "But this country gets between us."
I have a great solution for you. Take your butts back home and put your family together there. What do we owe you?
I am sick of these stories. All butterflies and white fluffy clouds with little children in blue jeans writing songs about America and how much they love her and raising money for charity at lemonaide stands....BLECH!
That might be the image this reporter wants you to have.
I have a different one.
One of two beautiful American girls who had colleges to go to and boyfriends to marry and lives to live.....smashed to death at an innersection.
Or how about Kent Boone. Father of five. Married. On his way to work so that his children can have THEIR American dream. Slaughtered on the street by a 4 time drunk driving convicted, once narcotic convicted, alias using, drug supplying illegal Mexican. Wonder if Mrs. Boone will ever have her family all together again? Maybe at the cemetary.
How about the Director of "A Christmas Story" He and his son were wiped off the face of the earth never again to produce another classic to warm our hearts by an illegal who was drunk.
I am sick of this. Everytime they throw a sob story at me, I plan to counter with a horror story. Keep your freaking lettuce. I would rather have my American brothers and sisters!
You can't make me feel quilty. So you better try another aproach!
