Posted on 08/12/2004 7:36:00 AM PDT by the_devils_advocate_666
Fernando, who has only a ninth-grade education ??
Hell! That's better educated than 99% of public school teachers with degrees who are educated below the 8th grade level!
Make him the head of the NEA!
What a bald-faced lie.
Tough sh..!! THe point is he along with millions of others are breaking the laws of the United States. His lack of education has nothing to do with it and the sob story doesn't help him or anyone else. It makes all of us who pay the bills, and his especially, angry that this goes on and we pick up the tab. It has changed America for the worse. Our borders, language and culture has changed because of guys like this one. I object.
...
''I felt like I was going to die,'' Fernando said. ''All that effort. All that suffering. And then the feeling that you're going to be returned to your country empty handed.''
The good guys win at the end. Bye, bye bad guy.
Does food stamps, free schooling, and free emergency room visits count as free meals? How about waived tuition at California colleges?
Note to self: Never read an article that starts out with a lie.
Give him credit for one thing. America meant more to this guy then it does to your average ABB limousine leftist.
That's just the first part of Hernando's story. Get out your crying towels, boys and girls, as we learn just how hard we make their lives once they're here - NRT:
Days later, Fernando was in Houston, framing houses for $5 an hour, working 12-hour days.
Although his employer was Hispanic, Fernando said his boss was hard. There were no water breaks, and Fernando said the harsh treatment made him long for home and family.
"We were told to work faster so that we could finish more houses," Fernando said. "And no matter how many hours we worked, we were only paid for a 40-hour week."
Fernando's employment ended in a shoving match with his boss over not being paid for his overtime. Unemployed, Fernando was on the road again, and headed to North Carolina where he heard jobs paid well and work was plentiful.
He found a job there as a cucumber picker. He picked cucumbers for one day before leaving because of the filthy living conditions. He found a construction job in Raleigh. Later, he went on to Virginia for more construction work.
Since arriving here 10 months ago, he's worked in both commercial and residential building, he's lived in four places and had at least six roommates. The longest period of time Fernando has held any one job is five months. But Fernando said all the hunger, the cold and the lonely nights on the streets in Mexico - the entire brutal journey to the United States - was worth every step.
For many like Fernando who make it to the United States, once a steady stream of income begins, about $400 is set aside in a small box, usually kept by their bedside, to be used to send their body back to their native country in case they die here.
The next step: Send money home. Here, Fernando works daily and sends money home weekly to his family.
"If I had $10,000 to $12,000, I could go home and never come back. I miss my family so much," Fernando said, breaking down and beginning to sob.
State officials estimate that more than 200,000 illegal immigrants like Fernando are working in Virginia, mostly in construction trades. No estimates exist on the number of illegal immigrants who might be working on the Peninsula or throughout Hampton Roads.
But the Rev. Felix Nieves - pastor of Iglesia Cristiana Camino a la Luz, a Spanish-speaking Pentecostal Church in Hampton - says there are thousands like Fernando living on the Peninsula.
"Many who come here are low-income, with no credit, and it's impossible for them to find a place to live," Nieves said. "The places they find, I wouldn't let my dog live in, and they pay lots of money to live there. They get taken advantage of all the time."
Nieves said living conditions were the same for illegal immigrants, no matter where they went. When he was in North Carolina, Fernando said, workers stayed in a small, dirty room that was "so bad."
"And the place that served the meals was dirty. They gave us dirty food, and we paid $40 a week for our meals," he said.
Nieves said many illegal immigrants didn't stay in one place for long. For Fernando, the moves from place to place were a result of landlords learning that he was an illegal immigrant, and they try to take advantage of that, he said. In one case, he said, he was forced out of an elderly woman's home after the woman, the landlord, learned that he was an illegal immigrant and tried to get him to pay additional monthly bills. He refused.
In another case, two illegal roommates who lived with Fernando in a run-down mid-Peninsula motel room - with dirty walls and floors - became nervous after talking with the Daily Press and being photographed. When the two men had run out of work in North Carolina, Fernando found them jobs here. As both men were getting settled in Newport News, the Daily Press interviewed them in the motel room. A few weeks after the interview, Fernando was told to move out.
"Everybody is afraid of getting caught and being deported, but this group was really afraid. They didn't trust anybody. They thought they were going to be arrested," Fernando said.
The three were paying $45 a week each - $135 total - for a sparsely furnished room: a television set, a couch and a chair, two end tables, a small kitchen table and a bed. The room is tucked away from the main motel building, out of public view.
Still, Fernando and his two roommates - Carlos, 49, and Juan, 25 - consider themselves lucky. In many cases where motel rooms or apartments are shared by Hispanics, the groups are often much larger - as many as 12 people in a room - because they can't afford to live any other way.
"When there's pockets of Hispanics living in an area, it's usually people from the same country or people who know each other," Juan said, through an interpreter. "They like to live together, and one person brings another."
At night, after the three return from their construction jobs in South Hampton Roads, one makes a traditional Mexican dinner and serves the two others. U.S. television blares in the background, and sometimes, they said, they learn English words from the shows. "Learning the English language is the key to obtaining more," Fernando said.
Juan and Carlos only recently left Durham, N.C., where they had been working. "There are more immigrants than there are Americans in Durham," Juan said, "but there are no jobs. There are many good jobs here."
Juan left Honduras three years ago, after a hurricane destroyed his farmland. Fernando left a 10-hour-a-day job cutting down trees in Honduras that paid $2 a day. Now, Fernando earns as much as $600 a week in Hampton Roads. Carlos walked away from a government pension in El Salvador that offered $380 a month - a good salary there but less than he can make in a week here.
But with the higher U.S. wages comes a price: solitude. The men said they have no social life here. They work, eat and sleep.
Besides work and getting groceries, the three illegal men confine themselves to their motel room, too afraid of getting caught and deported. Even the simple task of going to get a haircut causes them fear.
"We live in the shadows because we can't speak the language," Juan said. "It keeps us from doing many of the things we want to do. If I were in New York, there would be no problem because there are so many Hispanics there. Here, we stand out because there's not as many of us."
But that's slowly changing. The other day, Fernando was making the 45-minute drive to work, with no American driver's license, when a police car with two officers pulled up alongside him. "They were looking at me, so I smiled and waved," Fernando said. "They drove on."
Still, there's always the worry "that immigration will get you because they can get you anywhere," Juan said.
Roberto Gomez, a lay minister for Iglesia Cristiana Camino a la Luz, said he witnessed Hispanics running out back doors and jumping fences when he tried to get a count of Hispanics in Newport News for the 2000 U.S. Census.
"I tried my best to get them all, but there was a large number I couldn't get counted," Gomez said. "They were afraid, even when I told them I had nothing to do with immigration.
"Their biggest concern is that they will be deported. Some of these people come two or three countries away, and they have many sad stories to tell about how they got here. There is so much desperation to get to the United States, and it takes so much effort to get here."
Celso Mendoza swam a 70-foot stretch of murky water known as the Rio Grande in 1990 to find a job on a fishing vessel in the United States - a job known for paying thousands of dollars a week because of the dangerous work involved.
What he found in America was a job painting oil pipes in a Houston factory for $4.50 an hour. "Many think they can bring a broom and sweep up the money in America," Mendoza said, through a translator. "Not so. You have to know someone to get one of these fishing jobs. You have to have connections," the Newport News man said.
Although Mendoza married an U.S. citizen about four years ago and is now a citizen himself, he says life here is still difficult. After about 14 years in the United States, he still doesn't have a clear grasp of English, and he still has a hard time understanding those around him.
"When you get here, you find reality is cruel. You feel lonely and disappointed because it's not the way you thought it would be. You miss your country, your family, and the culture is very different. You have a hard time expressing yourself, and you're put down because of that."
Gomez explains: "When they come here, they leave everything except their heritage behind. They have no idea what the future holds."
But Mendoza has been lucky, first with love, then with being able to become an U.S. citizen. Now he operates his own business in Newport News, a small construction company that specializes in concrete and employs a few men. He also has a family - a support system that he didn't have as an illegal worker.
Nieves said many illegal immigrants turned to Hispanic churches like his for help when they came to an area. There are as many as 16 Hispanic churches throughout Hampton Roads, Nieves said.
During a recent service when prayer requests were taken, more than 20 people asked for prayers for relatives in other countries trying to come to Hampton Roads. But even for Nieves' church, helping is becoming harder to do: More and more new immigrants are coming to the church each week, but the resources for helping them aren't growing. During a recent Tuesday evening service, only $12.50 was put in the collection plate - from among 60 people. "Not even enough to pay the light bill," Nieves said.
The modest offerings from his congregation cause Nieves to search for financial support for his church. Nieves has begun trying to reach the Hispanic community by preaching on WRJR-AM 670 on Saturdays and Sundays. The airtime costs thousands of dollars each month, he said.
It's not the type of financing that a church full of poor Hispanics can hope to support.
"They come here, and they have nothing," Nieves said. "They come for the American dream. They come to work in construction and fishing, but when they get here, sometimes they can't find anything.
"But you have to eat. So they do what they have to do to eat. They do anything."
In some cases, Nieves said, some find a job cleaning at local restaurants. They're paid as little as $2.50 an hour, well below the law's minimum wage of $5.15. Sometimes, after performing the duties asked, some illegal Hispanic workers are chased off by restaurant staff without the promised payment.
But for Fernando, who has a steady job and paycheck every two weeks, a 10-hour day is a comfort for a man who knows the feeling of hunger in his belly.
"As long as I'm working, I know I'll have a meal," he said. "I'll have a meal and a better way of life."
Crying Towel Ping.
Well they have it a hell of a lot better than those who came before them, thanks to our tax dollars!!!
They are Consultants?
Pointing out that the set of labor laws in the United States came into existence for a reason: to set the rules of the economic game. What's unique about the United States is that it was one of the only places on earth where the participants in the game had a say in the rules. And so things like limited work weeks were passed into law. And low immigration, so that the competetive environment was muted, on the very good theory that if you'd like to have a strong "nation", and an industrial one at that, you have to have some labor security.
All of which this guy is helping to undermine, at the hands of corrupt employers cheating at the game.
Lotta "conservatives" hereabouts will say this is leftist labor rhetoric. Could be. But if their brand of "conservatism" includes a regression to industrial revolution conditions - 18 hr work days, child labor, forced labor, for example - then it's merely a reversion to monarchism, because serfdom always depended on monarchist violence. And such a situation won't last long in a democratic republic - like ours.
So choose your poison, exploitation monarchists: confiscatory taxes at the hands of angry serfs, or a reasonable set of labor laws that are respected, and strike a balance between capital and labor interests in a free society.
14 years here and he still has a major problem with the language? How does he legally marry an American citizen?
Another tear-jerker of a person who comes from a country with an over-population, no skills, etc. Complaining about how the Mexicans treated him because he was different...What did he expect?
BTW- Does ANYONE here on FR want to purchase a house framed by the skills of this person and others like him? NOT ME.
My keyboard is in no danger of shorting out from tears.
Thanks for the ping.
This is the second article that I have read lately about the plight of Hondurans crossing Mexico and the US borders. Bush must be flying the Honduran flag in the Spanish speaking ads.
So how much foreign aid is our government giving to Honduras? If these folks are that desperate, what is Honduras doing with the money we're giving them? Or do I want to know the answer?
Round them up and deport them and jail their employers!
I'm glad you brought this up. There are thousands of employers that look for illegals to hire, because they can exploit them. 5 bucks an hour for framing houses? How much would a legitimate contractor pay an American citizen or legal resident for the same work? Not only is illegal labor not getting taxed, I'm sure these contractors have 2 sets of books, but how about how the absurdly low wages affect all jobs? Everyone ends up working for less.
Employers who target illegals and exploit them, should be thrown in prison. Besides tax evasion and a host of other crimes, they are causing damage to our society.
LOL. If he only knew. He has about much chance of being picked by immigration as I have of getting a date with Ann Coulter.
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