Posted on 06/19/2006 12:10:36 PM PDT by SJackson
Meet the Monroys, two illegal immigrants from Mexico.
He prepares condiments for $8.25 an hour and cleans offices on the side. She chops vegetables for $8. Together they bring home $30,000 a year.
That’s not enough for their family of seven in Overland Park. To get by, they need a little taxpayer help.
Medicaid assistance for the baby’s delivery and for her doctor visits.
Free breakfast and lunch at school for the other children, 6, 11, 16 and 17.
Free milk, juice and cereal for the baby.
The Monroys’ situation — working hard but falling back on the social safety net — is common among the millions of illegal Hispanic immigrants living in the U.S. And it exemplifies the contradiction that such illegal immigration poses.
We embrace the lower prices immigrants help preserve. But the bargain comes with a cost — taxpayer support for medical care, education and sometimes grocery bills.
Emotions are strong on both sides.
Immigration supporters say people who use false Social Security numbers pay millions of dollars into Social Security and Medicare they can never claim, so they’re helping more than hurting the national budget. They say immigrants often don’t even apply for government benefits, even if they’re eligible, because they’re afraid of being deported.
On the other side are those who accuse America’s 11 million to 12 million illegal immigrants of draining the budgets of schools, hospitals and social welfare programs, such as food stamps. They say immigrant women bear children here to gain limited access to welfare and an eventual path to legal residency.
Both sides’ arguments are overly simplified.
Consider one real-life family, the Monroys.
In a series of interviews over six weeks, they revealed many details of their lives: How they came here, how hard they work to make a living, and how taxpayer-funded services at schools, hospitals and social service agencies help them make ends meet. Because they fear immigration authorities, The Star is using the father’s maternal last name, not his paternal last name, which the family uses in the U.S.
Moving from Mexico
The Monroys — he is 40, she 37 — enjoyed a happy, relatively comfortable life in Mexico City. He was a graphic designer and printer who often did work for the government and the postal service. She had a human resources job.
They and their two children lived in a nice house, ate well and boasted plenty of money for entertainment. They even had a housekeeper.
Then about five years ago, the economy skidded. Business fell off for Monroy, so he sold his company. He started selling cell phones with a friend, but that business failed.
His sister, who was living illegally in Kansas City, offered him money, either to start another business or come to work here, too. He chose America. He thought he’d be here about eight months, make some money and return home.
In November 2002, he flew to Ciudad Juarez, over the border from El Paso, Texas. He took a bus to meet a coyote, or human smuggler, and then simply walked across the border. Border Patrol agents caught him.
They took him back to Mexico. He tried again the next day and made it.
In Kansas City, he moved in with his sister, spent $200 for fake documents and began stocking supermarket shelves.
He liked the money and the city, but he missed his family. He met Mexican men who had lived here for five, 10 years without their family, sending money for children they never saw. He didn’t want that life.
When his wife and their two children, then 3 and 8, visited on tourist visas, they never went home. His two older children, from a previous marriage, continued to live in Mexico City with their mother.
His wife found work in a grocery produce section. He took other manual jobs: painting houses, construction. It was a comedown from his work in Mexico, where he relied on brainpower, not brawn.
“The first time I came home covered in paint, my wife cried and the kids didn’t recognize me,” he said in Spanish as he sat in their two-bedroom apartment.
He and his wife enrolled their son, 11, and daughter, 6, in public schools.
In early 2005, Señora Monroy became pregnant.
Neither of them could afford health insurance, and illegal immigrants can’t get Medicaid coverage, except for hospital visits for life-threatening conditions.
But taxpayer-funded county health departments offer poor women prenatal checkups, regardless of their immigration status. So Señora Monroy got monthly checkups at the Johnson County Health Department. Similarly, Medicaid covers some of the hospital charges when a poor, illegal immigrant gives birth. The thinking: It’s better for the birth to be in a safe environment to prevent complications that could prove an even larger drain on Medicaid.
Señora Monroy paid $69 a month for five months before she gave birth in September. Medicaid covered the rest of the birth charges at the University of Kansas Hospital.
Each day in Kansas and Missouri, 16 poor immigrant women (legal immigrants here less than five years, plus undocumented immigrants) give birth with Medicaid assistance.
The Monroys’ baby is a U.S. citizen because she was born here, so Medicaid covers all her medical care.
If the family remains poor, she’ll get free or low-cost well-child checkups at the county health department until she turns 21.
The family also gets about $30 a month in milk, juice and cereal for the baby through the federal Women, Infants and Children program. The baby’s citizenship also makes her eligible for federal food stamps. The rest of the Monroys aren’t eligible; undocumented immigrants can’t receive food stamps or welfare.
If they all were citizens, they could collect food stamps, child-care assistance and help with energy bills, based on their income and the size of their family.
About a fourth of all Hispanic immigrants in Kansas City have a family member who receives WIC or food stamps, according to a survey by the social service agency El Centro Inc. In Johnson County, more than four in 10 immigrants surveyed said a family member collects WIC or food stamp assistance.
But the Monroys haven’t applied for food stamps, saying they don’t need them.
They also haven’t tried to get welfare checks for the baby, even though she might be eligible. That’s common across the country, as poor immigrants are less likely than their poor U.S.-born counterparts to receive public assistance.
Only one in five children under age 6 of poor immigrants receives food stamps, compared with two in five of children born to low-income American parents. Similarly, only 7 percent of children of immigrants receive welfare; 17 percent of poor children with U.S.-born parents do.
Life grows complicated
Monroy’s life, however, was not complete because his two older children were still in Mexico. He enjoyed how safe Kansas City was and wanted all his children living somewhere peaceful and secure. He hired a smuggler for $3,000.
They crossed at Ciudad Juarez in October and were crammed into a two-bedroom El Paso safe house with 30 other illegal immigrants. Sara, 17, feared being around the many men there. And food was scarce.
After 10 days in the safe house, Sara and her 16-year-old brother piled into a small pickup with 13 others. Ten, including her brother, lay on their backs in the camper-covered bed. The rest sat in the cab, with Sara next to the coyote.
They drove 20 hours with only two quick stops.
The family enjoyed a happy reunion.
Mom, dad and baby sleep in one room, the four other children in the other. Girls on one bed, boys on the other.
Within weeks, Sara and her brother started high school. U.S. schools are critical to Monroy’s decision to have his whole family here. The schools here are as good or better than some of the most expensive private schools in Mexico, he said. “There is a culture of learning, a culture of reading, here.”
If schools barred undocumented children, the family probably would return to Mexico, he said.
The children eat free lunches and breakfasts at school, saving the family about $160 a month in groceries.
Sara hopes to learn English and become a bilingual teacher, either in Mexico or in the U.S. Her brother hopes to go to college and jokes that he’d like to be a doctor — doctors make lots of money. For now, he’s getting his own fake Social Security card soon and will apply for a restaurant job. Sara will probably do the same this summer. If they work part-time, even for minimum wage, that will help.
The parents bring home about $2,320 a month, after paying federal and state taxes, and in the father’s case, Kansas City earnings tax.
The basic bills — rent, car payments, utilities, car insurance and gas — total $1,330. They spend $30 a month for a satellite dish so they can watch Mexican programs.
That leaves $960, or about $240 a week, for everything else — food, clothing, entertainment and household needs — for seven persons. One evening in late May, the Monroys sat at the dining room table. They had just returned from work. One car wasn’t working and they didn’t have money to fix it.
He drove her to work at 5 a.m., came home to get ready and then drove himself to work.
After his shift, he went to pick her up, getting there two hours after her shift had ended.
Back home, they looked over their medical bills.
They owed Children’s Mercy Hospital $372 for the 16-year-old son’s emergency room visit for an infected foot. The hospital gave them a voucher for free medicine.
They owed Truman Medical Center about $200 for a recent emergency room visit to treat Monroy’s bronchitis. He was trying to set up a payment plan. He missed one day of work. (“I don’t go to work, I don’t get paid,” he said, exhausted, after he’d returned from the emergency room that night.)
Señora Monroy owes the University of Kansas Hospital nearly $800 for earlier visits. The Monroys have agreed to pay $56 a month. How would they afford that?
Señora Monroy shook her head. “It is hard, but I need pay,” she said in English.
Some weeks, there’s only $20 for food. What do they do then?
“Soup and beans,” she said, wiping away tears.
“God provides,” her husband said.
Their 6-year-old daughter wandered over for him to help tie her new tennis shoes.
“Target. Clearance. Four dollars,” Monroy said in English, holding up the bright pink “Bratz” shoes.
“Yeah,” the 11-year-old piped up, in English. “We call my dad ‘the clearance-hunter.’”
Are they ever happy, given their financial challenges, fear of discovery and deportation?
“When my kids speak English,” Señora Monroy said in English.
“When we’re all together,” her husband said in Spanish. “Things are hard. But I have confidence things will get better.”
...................................
Alberta was raised in the countryside of Veracruz, Mexico, where water was fetched from a well, laundry was done over a washboard and tortillas were made by hand.
Seven years ago she scraped together $1,200 to pay a coyote to smuggle her into the U.S. She was pregnant. She has had a second child since arriving in Kansas City. She lives with a common-law husband, whom she met here and who works at a body shop near the small and crumbling home they rent in northeast Kansas City.
Ask 30-year-old Alberta — an immigrant here illegally and the mother of two U.S. citizens — what she expects for her family in five years, and she looks at you blankly. Who knows?
For some other questions, she shapes better answers.
When you came here, you planned on returning. Will you ever go back?
I don’t think so. If we return, it will be the same life. They don’t provide any help for the poor in Mexico.
How do your worries about being deported alter your lifestyle?
We don’t do a lot of public things. There’s a park near our house that we don’t go to because we’ve heard the immigration people go there sometimes. At the grocery store near our home, we only go at night because sometimes immigration goes there. When there are police around, I try to stay very cool and avoid talking, since I don’t speak English.
At various temporary jobs cleaning houses or offices or packing boxes in a warehouse, you make about $7 an hour. What do you think you would earn if you were here legally?
I probably wouldn’t make much more because I can only take jobs that don’t require English. But I could get more work. Now when they ask for papers, I have to go look somewhere else.
Would your life change if proposals to allow guest workers into the country — and meaning you would first have to return to Mexico — became law?
It might make things easier, but I might not go back because it was so hard to get here in the first place.
Other proposals would make it a felony to cross the border illegally. What would you do if that became law?
I don’t think that would happen. There are too many people. What would they do with all of us?
I may have done something bad, but it’s not like killing a person.
I’d probably live in the shadows, like I do now. If they were picking up everyone, then we might get picked up, too. We might have to talk about leaving.
Are you happy here?
(She pauses. Laughs uncomfortably.) Everything at home (in Mexico) is very hard. And there are no jobs. Here, it’s hard in a different way. We have to hide. But it’s still better.
Parasites.
Who pays? Answer is not always clear-Immigrants add benefits and burdens
Elsewhere in the article it says she has been here seven years.
Someday, our benevolent government will eliminate any need for private charities.
Deport'em all. If the ones "with documents" (i.e. the "anchor babies") want to come back after they've grown up--fine).
ping
Gosh, I'm appalled that we are forcing people to continue having kids they cannot support! We need to stop that right now!
susie
Hasn't had time to get around to it?
Wow, just imagine how much money the Coyotes are making.
That must be how "US Taxpayer" is translated into Spanish.....
Speaking it is hard if you don't practice. Most understand English very well. Our Hispanic pastor moved here 1 1/2 years ago and he can understand it very well but he has trouble speaking it.
Face it, cheap maids are very popular.
WHY DO THEY HAVE 5 CHILDREN IF THEY CAN'T AFFORD TO SUPPORT THEM? And he's actually got 7, since he's got 2 back in Mexico from a prior marriage.
This has GOT to stop. The ridiculousness of allowing known illegals to cash in on American generosity makes us vulnerable to the massive burden of millions of illegals. Like this man, even if they come with skills, they cannot use them in the marketplace because their lack of proper documentation would be apparent in more sophisticated work settings. So we end up with more and more people living in poverty. UGH!
They couldn't afford to pay for the birth of their child (US Taxpayer's paid for it!) but they could afford a $3,000 SMUGGLER & $200 for FAKE DOCUMENTS (ruining someone's life!) to get the rest of the family to the US ILLEGALLY?!!!
Hey don;t expect them to give up that Satellite system !!!! That would be cruel and unusual punishment.....
our gubmint steals it from us to give to them.
I'd like my odds better if they did have to steal it directly from me.
They took him back to Mexico. He tried again the next day and made it.
In Kansas City, he moved in with his sister, spent $200 for fake documents and began stocking supermarket shelves.
The $200 spent on the phony I.D.s was smart, but the master stroke was when she popped out the anchor babies on US soil. The gravy train then left the station; let the freeloading begin!
Back home, they looked over their medical bills.
They owed Children’s Mercy Hospital $372 for the 16-year-old son’s emergency room visit for an infected foot. The hospital gave them a voucher for free medicine.
They owed Truman Medical Center about $200 for a recent emergency room visit to treat Monroy’s bronchitis. He was trying to set up a payment plan. He missed one day of work. (“I don’t go to work, I don’t get paid,” he said, exhausted, after he’d returned from the emergency room that night.)
Señora Monroy owes the University of Kansas Hospital nearly $800 for earlier visits. The Monroys have agreed to pay $56 a month.
That part of the article is BS! Illegal immigrants do NOT get charged for emergency visits. The hospitals run on social security numbers. Illegal immigrants get put in as 000-00-0000, that is auto cue for illegal immigrant and the govt steps in.
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