Posted on 08/12/2004 7:36:00 AM PDT by the_devils_advocate_666
NEWPORT NEWS, Va. (KRT) -- There are no free meals in America.
Not for illegal immigrants -- nobodies with a dream, searching for a job.
And there are no free meals along the way to America either.
Not for Fernando, a 30-year-old illegal immigrant from Honduras, who spent a year running, hiding and learning to blend in with his environment as he passed through small towns in Mexico on his way to the United States and eventually Newport News, Va.
Along the way, Fernando, who has only a ninth-grade education, lived by working for his meals each day. He traveled Mexico's roads, hills, deserts and mountain ranges as many illegal immigrants do on their way to the United States, any way possible.
He traveled using buses, the back of a truck or, most of all, his feet.
Fernando's trek to the United States took him nearly 1,600 miles from Yoro, Honduras, through Mexico to the U.S. border in Texas. The one-year trip that eventually ended just over the U.S. border in McAllen, Texas, is one Fernando doesn't care to remember.
On some days, if he was lucky, he'd have work and a meal in his belly. On those days, he could pay for a bus ride to the next town in Mexico, avoiding the stream of illegal immigrants trying to make it to the U.S. border on foot.
But with only about 2,000 special immigration agents in the U.S. patrolling 2,000 miles of border, undocumented Hispanics often find their way across, said Russ Bergeron, a former chief press officer for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, now serving under the new U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
''We only track people by where they come in,'' Bergeron said. ''After that, they could have gone anywhere.'' Still, Fernando learned to dodge immigration officials in his path and steer clear of local bandits while braving Mexico's dangerous terrain and harsh temperatures.
''I didn't have any money to pay a coyote,'' Fernando said through a translator, referring to the hired guides who bring illegal immigrants through the desert to a spot along the U.S. border. ''So I worked and walked. I dumped commercial trash for businesses to get something to eat.
''Usually, I made enough to pay for one meal a day. Sometimes, my payment was a meal. Sometimes, I had nothing to eat for days because I had no work, so I just walked. I lived and slept on the streets in Mexico.''
He wants to forget the days -- sometimes days stacked upon days -- when no one wanted to give him work and he couldn't get food. On those days, he could only walk, his feet aching, his legs in pain. He winces and shakes his head when he talks of the cold n ights he spent on the streets of Mexico, curled in a dark corner with nothing to cover him but the shirt on his back.
But most of all, Fernando hates thinking about how he was treated, at times beaten and discriminated against.
''Mexicans look at you really bad if you're not from Mexico. And they can tell if you're Hispanic but not from Mexico. The accent is much different. I tried to learn the accent, but people knew I was not Mexican.
''There's a lot of bad men in Mexico, bandits. One of those men gave me a black eye. He beat me.''
Fernando longed for home and his family. He said he wished he could turn around and go back to Honduras. On the first day of his one-year journey, after spending four hours in a boat crossing from Honduras to Belize, Fernando was caught by immigration agents. A friend paid $150 to get him out of jail, and he was on his way to America again.
The opportunity to earn higher wages, in American dollars, kept him going. Even as a nameless Hispanic, a nobody, he could earn more in the United States, working illegally and on the run, than he ever could in his own country.
Each time he was on a bus that was stopped by immigration officials, he wondered what his fate would be.
''One time, I convinced a young woman with three children to say that I was her husband,'' Fernando said. ''If she hadn't done that for me, I would have been caught.''
But eventually, he did get caught.
Once Fernando reached Reynosa, Mexico, the last leg of his trip to America and located only five miles south of McAllen, Texas, where he planned to cross in to the United States, he stopped and carefully began to plan his entry in to the United States.
To do that, Fernando spent time in Reynosa, working and thinking and waiting for the right time to make his run.
The right time came after his younger brother, who was working in Houston, connected him with a coyote who would take him to Houston.
The two had decided to make their run at night, crossing onion fields. But just as they and 22 others touched U.S. soil in McAllen, Texas, immigration officers wearing night vision gear surrounded them.
Fernando said he crouched down and lay still, so as not to be noticed by his hunters. His hands and face pressed into the dirt, and the strong odor of onions filled his nostrils. All the while, his mind raced toward the moment when he would feel the nudge of a boot in his side and hear a voice telling him to get up.
''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.''
And that's the point. They're cheating. And cheating at the people's rules, because we don't live under a monarch. And the assumption is that the people's rules exist because the people's representatives all agreed that such rules would be good for the society as a whole.
If contractors don't like the game, they can always go to the legislature and lobby to change the rules. But until then, they're ordinary criminals, undermining the rule of law. And that alone should be cause to jail them and take them out of the game, because they refuse to play by the rules. Something that every conservative should agree with.
You see. That's why our co-president Vicente Fox demands that we here in the U.S. give human rights (housing, education, health care, jobs. . . .) to his citizens living here. He knows how mean some people can be.
BTW, left out is the Pew Hispanic Center's recent study that suggested that almost 30 percent of the 1.3 million jobs created over the past year went to "recent" immigrants.
Actually the contractors and other employers have their own game. The laws set down by the people don't apply to them. They simply don't care. They should be taken out of circulation and sentenced to jail. They should also have to pay restitution to the workers and of course the back taxes and fines.
These third world countries burn me up most of all. We wouldn't have so much of a problem if these places had a little pride and a democratic system of government. According to the story, Fernando made 2 dollars a day cutting trees. I don't know what their economy is like, but it's probably structured like Mexico's. The rich have everything and control all the resources. They would love nothing better for the peasants to leave their own homeland and risk death to seek a better life. Their government's hands are covered in blood.
It has been said here that we should withdraw foreign aid for such countries, and I agree. I'd also like to see an accounting as to where the money actually goes. Obviously it's not trickling down to the average person.
What a mess.
They are Consultants?
LOL, I heard dat!
Disgusting isn't he? Mr. Fox is the leader of Mexico. As such, he is responsible for his people's well being. However, Mr. Fox is obviously so incompetent, that he has to rely on another country to do his job. He and his government are corrupt and immoral. BTW, left out is the Pew Hispanic Center's recent study that suggested that almost 30 percent of the 1.3 million jobs created over the past year went to "recent" immigrants.
Doesn't surprise me in the least. What kind of jobs are they, and what do they pay? Service industry...minimum wage, probably.
And you have to remember that in those countries, the rich are the rich because they were the ones with the guns, and were willing to take things at gunpoint. Gun possession in Mexico is still a crime - but not if you happen to be a big landowner, with your own private army. I knew families like that who sent their children to school in the U.S. We always thought it a little strange that their Christmas gift list included automatic weapons to take home to Dad (really). But Daddy had a use for them...making sure the peons didn't get out of line.
The root cause of Mexican corruption is a culture which admires such people: it's not considered a bad thing in the end. Sure, people know it's wrong, but they consider the corrupt to be "strong" men, men who have "power". In other words, men who have no morals and respect no laws, and don't hesitate to use force to take things. Our culture has developed another word for them: criminals.
Evelyn Waugh wrote about this in his 1938 book Robbery Under Law. Here's a quote:
"Mexican popular heroes are drawn in another shape – squat, swarthy, passionate, intolerant, vain men who when cornered shoot their way to freedom and take to the mountains, who will steal and promise and give lavishly, sell anything and repudiate the bargain, murder their friends and buy off their enemies, nurse a grudge and forget a kindness, sometimes grossly sacrilegious, sometimes heroically pious, Aztec and Castillian inextricably confounded."
America, the home of the depraved and the land of "freebies"! I do not feel sorry for any of them. We are being taken over! These poor helpless people showing so much courage, can use it in their own cultures. We can't take in any more. Send illegals home now.
"Cry me a frickin' river!"... build a bridge, and GET OVER IT.
THESE PEOPLE ARE ILLEGAL ALIENS. LET'S SEND THEM HOME.
According to Bush the lettuce isn't gettig picked. Dishes aren't getting wash and tables aren't getting bussed. Motel rooms aren't getting cleaned and beds aren't getting made. Lawns need to be mowed and leaves need to be blown. Whoa!!
Why are my two dumb senators (Republican by the way) calling for guest worker programs? Go figure.
Actually, it is waived OUT-OF-STATE tuition fees.
I sure hpe he was booted back to Hondouras.
So... he is not only a criminal here, he was a criminal in mexico as well. What a deal.
Okay, then why are we on such good terms with these people? What's going on that we don't know about?
No one's supposed to get a free ride in the USA.
You roll up your sleeves and build your own ride.
Well, I ain't on good terms with that country!! As far as I'm concerned, we're in a state of war with them! A lot of BP types will tell you the same thing, and even guys like Luis Valdez of Teatro Campesino will admit it: "we may not be able to overcome you, but we will overwhelm you".
The cheap labor law breakers and those cowed by the ethnic terroristas may think it's all worth appeasing the aggressor. But in the end, they'll find out that isn't true.
So we're supposed to feel sorry for this guy? Why didn't he stay in Honduras and make his country better? Form a co-op, for instance. There are plenty of liberal types like TerAYsa Heinz/Kerry, who fund third world co-op efforts in everything from farming to manufacturing. Oh, but he doesn't have a high school education. He'd have to write to TerAYsa for a grant or loan. It's all Bush's fault. Sigh.
He was coming here to rip us off.
It would be nice to think that this man longed for America so much that he risked all to get here. Others might say the lure of quick money meant more to him than staying home in Honduras. Hispanic culture doesn't include the protestant work ethic. They think we're crazy to work as hard as we do. This view is shared by Europe, too. That and language differences mean that millions and millions of Hispanics will have trouble assimilating. America is fast becoming a patchwork quilt, not a melting pot, and the loyalties of many lie below the border, not here. We can't absorb this many illegal aliens all at once. It's nuts.
"Mexicans look at you really bad if you're not from Mexico."
What? Mexicans don't like strangers in their country? Kinda hypocritical of them Mexicans. Non Mexicans are not welcomed in Mexico, but Americans had better not complain when illegal aliens are sucking us dry!
Okay, say every illegal alien is a hard working good guy who just wants to live a better life. What happens to Honduras or Costa Rica or Mexico when millions leave? Other than siphoning off potential revolutionaries, this is hardly a positive development. Why don't these countries wake up and realize they're losing most of their work force? Do they really like being third world countries with little to recommend them but drugs and corruption? There must be a few patriots down there, people who really care about their heritage and what eventually becomes of their countries. Well, maybe not.
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