So’adores Indocumentados

Milwaukee's Undocumented Immigrants Seek the American Dream

According to Census estimates, up to half a million people risk their lives each year to cross into the U.S. illegally, following a dream. An estimated 9.3 million undocumented immigrants currently reside in the U.S., with 50 to 75 thousand in Wisconsin alone, according to the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan economic and social policy research organization. Many end up a million dreams away from where they began: some bequest their dream to their children; some follow the dream until it is realized; others return home.

Often immigrants enter the country with little but themselves and their hope. They come to work and build a new life. Much of their success depends on their legal situation. Petitioning for permanent residency offers some interim benefits (provided the case is accepted), like the right to work legally, but exposes the immigrating person to the risk of denial and deportation. Undocumented immigrants risk deportation every day, and have no legal rights; but if they don't meet the criteria for filing a petition, they must live within the underground network that supports America's vast population of "illegal aliens."

For the lucky, sponsors.

To petition, a person must show either that he has an immediate family member legally residing in the U.S. who can act as sponsor, petitioning on his behalf, or that he has a valid claim for asylum, most often for persecution based on race, ethnicity or political beliefs.

If an applicants' petition is accepted, he is granted temporary residency while his case is open. He can apply for a Social Security Number (SSN) once he has been given work authorization by Immigration. Then — in an undetermined amount of time, which could be years, or even decades — the awaited letter comes from the USCIS for the interview that will decide his fate. If he wins, the prize is a green card and the opportunity to apply for citizenship. If he loses, he may appeal, but has to start all over again. Each year, thousands more applications for residency are received than quotas allow granting.

If no sponsor is available, the prospect of attaining resident status is even dimmer.

"Many people think that if you have a good immigration attorney, things can be fixed. But for those without status there is very little that can be done," says attorney Thomas Hochstatter of Hochstatter, McCarthy and Rivas, S.C.

For the rest, vulnerability.

And for people without a case, life is precarious. The undocumented poor are not eligible for Title 19, the basic health care provided to low income families. For example, if an undocumented woman gets pregnant, she is not entitled to prenatal care, even though her baby will be born a U.S. citizen. And only a minimum of health care can be provided by funds such as the General Assistance Medical Program (GAMP), which provides healthcare to low income families and does not ask for proof of citizenship.

"I went on a home visit because a lady had a premature birth, and there were six children living in this little shack behind a house," a Spanish medical interpreter in Milwaukee told Vital Source. "None of them had shoes or clothes. The mom didn't even have shoes. All the kids wore, even the older ones, were Pampers (diapers), because that is what GAMP gives out. It was like being in a Third World country."

Undocumented immigrants also cannot work legally or receive benefits. This leaves them vulnerable to exploitation by employers, landlords and the black market that has grown up to offer "services" such as falsified identities and the retrieval of family members still on the other side of the border. If they do find work, there are no minimum wage requirements, or even a guarantee that they will get paid at all.

Still, every year sees a greater number of immigrants, and especially Hispanics and Latinos, moving to Milwaukee and the U.S. than the year before. Because this issue is so sensitive, and to

protect the anonymity of those interviewed, all names in used this article have been changed.

For the daring, false identities.

It is possible to buy a fake Social Security card, which can be used to obtain "legal" employment, and many companies look the other way while undocumented people work and pay taxes with a false identity. These numbers are also often used to register for school or college.

But in this limbo world, strange things can happen. The interpreter tells one story. "This undocumented man I interpreted for received a letter from the army, drafting him to go to Iraq. I had to tell him what it said. The craziest part is that he never used his real name on any documents in the U.S. He had a fake name and Social. He couldn't believe they knew his name, let alone drafted him to go to war."

Some Hispanic-American citizens rent the use of their SSN's to undocumented immigrants. They charge the user a fee and also keep the money from their tax return. These scams offer no safety net. The only way to be safe is to have valid means to petition the USCIS for legal status.

Jorge, a Central American man who walked and hitchhiked to Milwaukee from Texas in the late 80's, was using the Social Security number (SSN) of a deceased man. The problem, which actually turned out to be the solution, was that someone else had the same number, and Immigration officials found out. Both Jorge and the other person received letters requesting that the rightful owner of the SSN come and claim it. Jorge went, the other person did not. The (then) INS gave Jorge the number because he was the only one who showed up.

Marcos & Susana: a dream unfinished.

Marcos is from Guanajuato and Susana from Jalisco. It was in Milwaukee, of all places, that they found each other and fell in love. From Mexico, across America's vast land, they each came separately, but with the same story: a 12-hour midnight trek through the mountains from Tijuana to San Diego with "un coyote borracho," which, translated literally, means a drunken coyote. Coyote is the Spanish term for the man who smuggles people across the border. It was like this: "We would walk for a couple hours, then we'd see Immigration and we would lay until they left, then walk again, then hide again," Marcos says in Spanish.

Susana arrived with her sister-in-law, the coyote promising to return to Mexico to bring her brother-in-law. He did so, but instead of reuniting the family as planned, the coyote kidnapped him and demanded more money as ransom. The brother-in-law and about ten other people were tied up in the back of a truck. The families were given a deadline to give more money, or else. Susana's whole family scrounged together the money, and her brother-in-law was released.

Their lives in Mexico were barren, and work was scarce. Susana says she had little to eat, and although she often contemplates going back, admits "at least we're not starving here."

But they are illegal.

"The reason we are doing so bad is because we are illegal," Marcos says.

Marcos worked in one of Milwaukee's tanneries for twelve years and supported his wife and two children quite well. But they could not open a bank account, so everything they saved was in cash. Then one day Susana received a letter saying that they had been receiving money from the government, which they deny, and the next day he was fired. For undocumented immigrants, all it takes is a phone call to immigration authorities by a jealous or angry acquaintance to destroy everything they have built up.

"I think it was Susana's sister-in-law," says Marcos.

Now Marcos is unemployed. In 2001, he was offered a job in Mexico that seemed like a dream; back home, working in the land where he knew he belonged. With their two U.S.-born children, aged four and eight years-old, they went back to Mexico. They flew from Chicago to Guadalajara.

"But the job was a lie and nothing more," Marcos says, shaking his head. Instead, he got a job in a chemical factory, but it paid badly. They stayed there for about three years and had a third child. "What it comes down to is, you can buy more food with a job in the U.S.," says Marcos; so they made the journey across the border once again.

Their children came back with Susana's sister, who is documented, with falsified documents for the baby. Since babies cannot answer questions, smuggling them is easier. There are stories of children being drugged so they are sleeping when they cross the border, for that reason. Marcos and Susana, this time, took a different route than when they first crossed the border.

"We paid more," Marcos says. "If you pay more, it is a more comfortable trip."

They came back through Arizona and stayed in hotels on the way. "They were normal hotels," he explains. "Not everyone is illegally trying to go through the border."

The coyote, this time, was not a drunk, and had dug a hole under the two-plus story high wall separating Mexico from the U.S. They were supposed to hide on the Mexican side until told to go, and then crawl through the hole. But when they arrived, the passage had been covered up.

If you cannot go under, you might as well go over.

"They put ladders, one on top of each other, up the wall," relates Susana. "I never thought I would make it."

But she did, and they are safe. Back in Milwaukee, they live in a duplex with their three American children (there is a new toddler in the family now) and one who's still undocumented. They are trying to build a case for citizenship through the sponsorship of Susana's mother but, especially with post-9/11 naturalization policies, this will take years, if it happens at all.

Marcos speaks with poignant sincerity about his concern for his family. As the interview concludes, he sinks back in the sofa and puts his hands by his sides, as if to show he has said and done all he can: "At least here they will have better food to eat. The schools are better too. We have a computer. The money just buys more."

Maria: a dream bequeathed.

After dusting along in a bumpy bus for a week in the July heat of 1978, through the borders of three countries (from El Salvador to Tijuana) most of the people knew each other, or at least recognized the ten others with whom they shared this decisive moment. It was now up to the skill of the Border Patrol to decide whether the journey, so far, would be a waste, or just the first step. Just out of sight of officials, the bus stopped, and the coyote took charge.

"You can go. Oh yes, they let you go. But no..." She holds up her index finger swaying it back and forth."You can't come back."

"The little one. Come here!" he barked, opening the back door of the pickup truck. "You. The little one. Get over here!"

Maria, a 48 year-old Salvadorian on her second time crossing the border, hurried — hands blocking the sun from her eyes — toward the front of the group where the coyote opened the door of the pickup. He lifted up the back seat revealing a space, where the cushions and springs used to be, just big enough for little Maria to fit.

"Little one. Get in there." The coyote barked. She climbed in, lay on her back, and crossed her arms over her chest. He put the seat down over her, and she lay as still as possible in the confining blackness.

"I don't know what they did to that seat, but I fit," Maria says, speaking in Spanish from her South Side apartment. Horror stories she had heard about coyotes raced through her head: rape, kidnapping, slavery, murder. But an hour later they were in San Diego and he stopped and let her into the passenger seat. She was relieved. He drove her all the way to Los Angeles. She had found a nice coyote, by pure luck. From there she took a plane to Chicago, then Milwaukee.

The past 29 years she has lived here, cleaning houses. The first time she came was on American Airlines with a tourist visa, which she overstayed. After working for three years, her mother got sick and she had to return. Because she had overstayed her visa previously she was not granted another, which is how she ended up under the coyote's seat.

"Leaving (the country undocumented) is easy," she says, making a sweeping motion with her hands. "You can go. Oh yes, they let you go. But no..." She holds up her index finger swaying it back and forth.

"You can't come back."

Maria has spent half of her life in the U.S. and, despite her youthful sense of humor at 74, is getting tired of cleaning houses. She worked for eight years to save money to pay a coyote to bring her children, then 18 and 22. Now her siblings, children, grandchildren and, just recently, Maria herself, have become U.S. citizens. But she will not stay.

"I will go back to El Salvador in a few years," she says. "I am happy I came to the U.S., though."

Maria makes just enough money to live in her small apartment with her sisters, but not enough for retirement. After working for over a quarter of a century in the U.S., she estimates that she could live in Milwaukee, without a pension, about two or three years on her savings.

"In El Salvador I might be able to live the rest of my life," she says. This is the situation in which many immigrants end up.

Maria is not a complainer. She is content with how it worked out, and happy her children have a better life.

"For me it will be better in El Salvador too," she smiles.

"Better weather. This weather is bad for old people."

She starts laughing and rubs her arm. "Better to get a tan, too." She winks.

Roberto: a dream (nearly) come true.

Roberto is an undocumented yuppie. He drinks Glenfiddich on the rocks and brunches at Trocadero. For sushi, Ko-no-hana on Brady. He uses chopsticks.

"I've worked for two of the most 'desired to work for' companies in Milwaukee," says Roberto, with unaccented articulation, from his artsy loft apartment on the Upper Eastside. He sits on his red leather couch dressed impeccably, sporting stone-washed Diesel jeans and Kenneth Cole shoes.

"I've been illegal for 20 years," he says, with a big smile. "We snuck in." His American fiancée's eyes perk up. It is news to her.

"Didn't you take the plane?" she asks.

"No. I came over with my aunt and two little cousins, and we posed as a Mexican family."

"In high school he used to say he was Puerto Rican, so no one would know," his fiancée confides after the interview.

"It didn't work," says Roberto, looking down. "We all went to jail." They stayed there "less than a week," until they were bailed out by his family in Miami.

It is interesting to note that when the family admitted to U.S. immigration officials that they were Nicaraguan, they were pitied. During this time, there was a civil war in Nicaragua between the Sandinistas, the elected socialist government, and the "contras," or insurgents. The Reagan Administration aided the contras, and an influx of Nicaraguans fled to America. Because of this political wrangle, Roberto and his family were granted refugee status, which allowed them to stay and build a legal case for citizenship.

Roberto started school in Miami still living with his aunt, but for high school moved to Milwaukee and lived with a different aunt. He dropped out his first year, but Roberto did not stay on a self-destructive path.

He was motivated to get back on track by what he felt was the fundamental difference between himself and his peers: "at any point in time I could get deported."

Although he had a case, and was better off than many other undocumented immigrants, he was also different from them; growing up in the U.S., he was as American as the take-everything-for-granted attitude that predisposed him to drop out of high school. He knew he probably could not survive in Nicaragua. He was not educated in Spanish and admits himself that he "feels very little connection" to the country of Nicaragua.

He laboriously earned his GED from a technical college while working second-shift at a factory. Soon he became the head of the department.

"This (receiving his GED) is when I got scared," he says. He faced a dead-end. Undocumented immigrants are ineligible for any type of financial aid, grants or scholarships for college. Plus, he had attorney fees to pay every month.

He started saving. Then he got a better job and took as many classes as he could afford. He also threw out many letters offering him scholarships.

"I was on the University's Dean's list three times and I graduated Magna Cum Laude," says Roberto, with some pride.

His last years of college were paid for by a family friend who recognized his hard work. Without this man, it would have taken many years longer.

In a year, he will marry and finally get "the gorilla off my back." But the process is still slow and stressful, as Roberto, an unrelenting realist, points out: "My marriage, really, doesn't guarantee me legal status. I still have to go through the process, and it's still subjective... it doesn't guarantee me anything. If I go into the interview and the man doesn't like my shoes, I could be deported."

Come on, Roberto, they're going to like your shoes. VS

Alexander Ragir is an East side native and U of Miami graduate. At the moment he is living and working in England and Spain.