Posted on 01/09/2005 9:58:32 AM PST by got_moab?
Silvia Reyes follows temptation toward oceanfront property in Westerly.
On this chilly November afternoon, the view from the passenger seat of her husband's 2004 Toyota Sienna LE minivan is of shuttered motels and boarded bathhouses. Silvia turns down the volume on the Latino music playing over the radio and studies the flier she had tucked between the front seats.
"Congratulations Mr. and Mrs. Reyes," it states, "you have been chosen to receive a fabulous New England Escape package." The promotion promises free restaurant and shopping coupons. All they have to do is listen to a sales pitch.
"How many weeks do you have of vacation?" she asks her husband, Isaias. "Two? Three?"
"Two."
The Reyes (pronounced Ray-es) family cannot afford even one week at the beach.
Immigrants from Guatemala, they are riding America's current of upward mobility. But debt always threatens to pull them under.
Silvia tries to reassure her husband. "I just want to see the place," she says.
They both know she wants more. Silvia is 36 and works the night shift at a bank call center.
She left Guatemala City with her mother in 1980. They were part of a two-decade wave of migration during which Rhode Island's Hispanic population quadrupled, to more than 100,000.
Silvia had grown up on fried tortillas and del rosario prayers, but in America, her adolescent cravings were fed by Taco Bell and Madonna. Nothing she had learned at her all-girls Catholic school in Guatemala City prepared her for the new social pressures she faced in the inner-city schools of Pawtucket.
At age 17, she had a baby and a job working nights at a Central Falls braiding factory, loading yarn onto spools. Life unraveled.
(Excerpt) Read more at projo.com ...
Toyota Sienna is not an inexpensive minivan either
Well, I'm not registering for this, but I don't know many people in my small circle that can afford a brand new vehicle. It doesn't look like they're hurting too much.
Let me guess, the idiots got suckered into buying a time share vacation from a swindler?
I was involved with some rental properties a few years ago. Many hispanic immigrants prefer living by the dozen in a house where rents are not much when spread between them, which also destroys a neighborhood. They all had big expensive rigs, mostly SUV's.
You're probably right.
Wow, sounds like she was better off in Guatamela. I'll pay for the stamps for her to contact her family and friends not to come here.
I've got to stop reading stories like this. They raise my blood pressure.
Nope, her husband finally strapped on a pair and said no.
ping
can this be because illegal aliens have a hard time (next to impossible) to file for bankruptcy?
we are going to get more and more anecdote stories in support of the left.
when the left has no facts, they get into feeeeeeeelings.
It's likely her husband isn't picking lettuce buying new SUV's. Drug running and dealing can pretty quickly get you that kind of money --- you can get several new SUV's.
Often --- not all the time that's drug money. You don't look for the guy driving a beat up looking 1980 Oldsmobile to sell you cocaine ---- the flashy brand new SUV is a pretty good tip when you're looking for a dealer. A hispanic doctor here told me that many of the doctors from Mexico were driving Ford and Dodge cars because otherwise everyone thinks they're drug lords.
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