God forbid anybody like that should enter our country. |
Posted on 12/26/2004 4:24:56 PM PST by Excuse_My_Bellicosity
SAN DIONISIO, Mexico - In this rural village, there is no industry, no paved roads, not even signs to tell visitors where it begins and ends.
There are big houses, though, that wouldn't look out of place in West Valley City. Electricity, too, and indoor plumbing. And cell phones, even in the humblest of adobe-and-brick homes.
But for Isidora Zaragosa, 62, all that progress cannot fill the void left by the young, sun-kissed men and women, including her children, who abandoned San Dionisio long ago. Like thousands of other Mexicans, most of them immigrated to the United States - particularly to Utah - leaving behind the broken hearts of their mothers, their children, their husbands and wives.
Those good men and women left, Zaragosa said, not because they wanted to but because they had to.
They couldn't earn enough money shucking corn and hauling alfalfa in this village of 1,600 to pay for their children's school uniforms, for immunizations, for meat to accompany the scant servings of nopal and maguey cactus the townspeople typically eat.
Now, the lucky ones in San Dionisio eat well, in lighted, warmer rooms, all courtesy of the money that family members earn by cleaning hotel rooms, washing dishes in restaurants, building highways, university halls and even Mormon temples in a place called Utah.
"Everyone here knows about Salt Lake City," said Aniseto Pérez Hern!ndez, a San Dionisio town council delegate.
"If there's five people in California from San Dionisio, I'd be surprised. Everyone [who migrates to the United States] goes to Utah."
Worldwide, some 80 million people, like the residents of San Dionisio, work abroad to support their families. Economists call the cross-border monetary transfers they make "remittances." On a global level, remittances are expected to reach the $150 billion mark by the end of the year.
What San Dionisio's residents are doing isn't unusual.
But because they base the bulk of their economic growth on money they receive from a single source - Utah jobs - their story is anything but ordinary. "Always been heartbreaking": Sitting on the edge of her bed, Isidora Zaragosa recalled all those nights she spent in this room crying and praying to God to please protect her children. One by one, her five sons and two of her five daughters told her they were going to a far away place that at first she couldn't even pronounce: "Yoo-tah."
She'd heard the name before. It had been mentioned by the families of those who had children "on the other side."
Whenever someone left San Dionisio that meant they were heading to Salt Lake City, nowhere else.
"I couldn't stop them," Zaragosa said.
She'd endured a similar loss decades ago, when her husband Inés headed north on a guest worker program to the United States for braceros, the thousands of Mexican laborers who toiled in agriculture or on the railroads while American men fought in World War II.
But when her children left, the void was far deeper.
"It's always been heartbreaking to watch them go," she said.
She knew, however, that she was no different than many of the families of this highland village 62 miles north of Mexico City.
For years, no one knows how long, men and women had been leaving, but always remembering to send a few dollars home to help their parents buy corn for tortillas - and maybe a few farm animals.
Today, the money flowing southward buys far more than tortillas, and San Dionisio bears the mark of a modern city 1,500 miles away.
An old woman walks down the street wearing a purple Utah Jazz cap. A mother shows off a photo of her daughter posing next to a Mormon pioneer handcart and points to a wall laden with coffee mugs of Salt Lake City hotels where her children have worked. Cars and trucks with "Ski Utah" license plates are parked in garages around town.
Zaragosa's son, Francisco, 41, speaks of building parts of Bangerter Highway and the LDS temple in Bountiful in the early 1990s.
The money he saved from those jobs was enough to buy about 8 1/2 acres next to his mother's property. That's where he's building his dream home, although it's nothing fancy like his brother's two-story house, a replica of the Utah homes they helped build.
The town would have survived without remittances, Francisco said.
"We would still be here, but we wouldn't look like this," he said, gesturing at the four- and five-bedroom homes along the skyline.
Back when Francisco was a boy, he watched families struggle to build even rudimentary adobe homes. Some men like his father went to labor in the United States through a guest worker program. Like all braceros, his father Inés was encouraged to put money into a savings program sponsored by banks in the United States and Mexico.
But when the war ended and the workers were no longer needed, the U.S. government sent the men home. When they tried to retrieve their savings, the money had disappeared.
Network of friends: That was San Dionisio's first brush with immigration and remittances, said Alfonso Hern!ndez, who at 95 is the town's oldest resident and de facto historian.
Today's tales of remittances to Mexico are much different and more complex.
Those who work in the United States have little trust in banks or the government, and they send remittances directly to families through Western Union or small money-transfer services. Their work and money pads Mexico's towns and cities with almost $10 billion and contributes to an estimated $450 billion that immigrants inject into the U.S. economy, according to the Inter-American Development Bank.
Unlike the braceros of the 1940s and 60s, however, today's itinerant workers are not escorted through the country, documented, hosed down and assigned a job.
Though some San Dionisians are legal U.S. residents or naturalized citizens, those who cannot obtain legal documents to work abroad seek the services of a pollero or coyote to smuggle them into the United States and eventually Utah.
Once they reach Salt Lake City, a network of friends helps them find jobs. In many cases, the townsfolk say, Utah employers place a call to San Dionisio, seek out former or new workers and offer them jobs, even though they know some don't have the documents needed to work.
Those San Dionisians who haven't been north are tempted to make the trip because they see first-hand what awaits the families of those residents who do leave.
There haven't been any San Dionisian deaths along the border yet, "thanks to the grace of God," Zaragosa said.
But the human stakes are growing as an increasing number of women, including Zaragosa's daughter-in-law, leave their children behind to join the U.S. work force.
This trend upsets old-timers - like Socorro Avila Morales, who worries that San Dionisians will forget that family togetherness is more important than money.
"It's just not correct [behavior]," she said.
"The poor children. It's not their fault and it affects them."
Nieves Pérez, a shy 15-year-old girl from San Dionisio, lived for several years without her parents along with six other siblings in the care of her grandmother.
She said it's nice to get presents from abroad. But it's painful to hear the distant voice of a mother and father on the telephone, and in her case, the cries of an American-born sibling she had never met.
But, she said, her parents are good people who just want to give her and her eight siblings "a good life."
When asked if the good life is worth living apart as a family, she shrugged and softly replied, "Who knows?"
That ambivalence is rarely seen in the adults of San Dionisio, who commute to Salt Lake City every few years and make plans about what they will do in the future with the money from abroad.
Isidora Zaragosa says she doesn't want to guess what San Dionisio will look like in five or 10 years if remittances keep coming at their current pace.
They already have changed the landscape, the architecture and even the people.
The young folks these days talk about finishing secondary school and immediately heading north, she said.
For Zaragosa, the only thing that matters is to have her sons and daughters and grandchildren nearby. Remittances may play a part in that, she believes, because eventually her sons will come home to live in the houses they have built.
"Some day, they're going to feel old, they're going to feel alone, and they're going to want to return home," Zaragosa said.
Her son Francisco tries to lighten her sentiments with a story:
On Valentine's Day, which in Mexico signifies friendship more than romantic love, the people decorate the town with the flags of the United States and Mexico, he said.
It is a symbol of the well-deserved appreciation San Dionisio owes its northern neighbor.
"We are very grateful to the United States," Francisco said.
"Without the U.S., we wouldn't have anything here. It's good to feel proud and to be grateful to say, 'Because of that country, I was able to do something here.' I hope this will help my children someday to focus on trying to get ahead, to see what we have done and to follow our example."
Related FR thread....Illegals Cost us $10 Billion a Year;Amnesty Would Nearly Triple Cost
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1199631/posts
$150 BILLION!
Staggering amount that they don't have to contribute to SS or pay taxes on. This is a DISGRACE!!
Your welcome, anytime. My family and I have no problem supporting you and yours.
Amazing that so many Americans are willing to pay these workers. Illegal workers. $150 Billion. I'd say the People have spoken on this issue.
God forbid anybody like that should enter our country. |
illegals watch BUMP
You're not supporting illegal aliens. They are subsidizing your standard of living.
Worry more about shiftless, lazy welfare chiselers who are 100% American. That's who is sucking up your tax money.
-ccm
Actually most of them DO pay taxes. They use fraudulent Social Security numbers, or the SS number of a relative, and pay taxes like anyone else. Employer withholding makes certain of this.
They are paying for your grandma's nursing home bills right now, and have no hope of ever claiming a penny back themselves.
The bigger problem by far is in health care, where illegal aliens are an intolerable burden on the public purse.
-ccm
I pay taxes, they get freebies from my taxes. They send their money to Mexico. They take from me and give me nothing. Therefore, I am supporting them.
After that glowing review of illegals, you've changed my mind completely.
Yawn. Just another anti-American La Raza talking point from bayourod.
They give you goods and services which are now greatly cheaper than they would have been, absent a giant pool of immigrant labor.
The article referred to global remittances of $150 billion. That includes Turks sending money back home from Germany, Chinese sending money back home from Malaysia, Indians sending money home from South Africa, etc.
No kidding. I wonder what our GDP growth rate would be without immigration holding down the cost of labor.
Their taxpayer freebies cost more than what the cheap goods could make up for. Perhaps you use their services, I don't.
Well, illegal immigrants work extensively in the construction trades, as indicated in the article. Perhaps on occasion you have entered buildings, or driven upon roads.
Yes, I knew you'd give that example.
A good example of some of those jobs that Americans don't want to do? I'd rather have an American do the job of building my roads and buildings, not an illegal.
Good point, the US contribution is probably only $149 billion.
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Here are guys who will walk 1200 miles to get to a place where they can make some money, and when they do they send it home to their mothers, wives, and children.