Posted on 01/27/2007 2:20:17 AM PST by dennisw
Margarita sighs and glances around the home she’ll soon be leaving.
There’s the tiny Christmas tree, still perched by the window. Over there are the toys her kids should have put away before going to bed. On the kitchen counter, bamboo shoots and dishes wait to be washed. She doesn’t want to move away from this jumbled place, but she knows she has to.
Because this is now the law: Anyone like Margarita who lives in state-funded housing must show identification to their landlord and sign a paper that says they’ve come legally to the country. Like scores of immigrants in Telluride and across Colorado, Margarita crossed illegally and has no papers. So when her lease at the Village Court Apartments expires next month, she and her family are out.
“We’re moving to Norwood,” Margarita said in Spanish. “It’s going to be a drastic change, but we don’t have any other alternative. I don’t have the slightest hope of staying.”
So it goes at apartment complexes in Mountain Village and Telluride, where illegal immigrants — many from Mexico and Central America — live in subsidized or government-built homes or receive state aid to help pay the rent.
Now, as leases come due, these renters are rushing to file paperwork seeking a visa or green card.
They’re hoping someone with legal papers can move in and thus renew the lease. They’re living in church basements until they can find a viable spot to live.
Or, they’re simply packing up and moving to Ridgway, Montrose or beyond, where rents are cheaper and the private landlords don’t have to check IDs like bar bouncers.
Managers at Telluride Apartments and Shandoka Apartments said they didn’t know how many families would be touched by the reach of these new laws, which went into effect Aug. 1. They said they could not say whether families were leaving because they had no papers, or because they just wanted a new home.
But Shirley Greve, executive director of the San Miguel Regional Housing Authority, said immigrants may not feel the law’s brunt until the spring, when many leases come up for renewal.
Before leaving office, Gov. Bill Owens signed a package of laws aimed at denying illegal immigrants state aid and contracts. Owens had said that 50,000 illegal immigrants were receiving state aid, and the new laws require anyone seeking aid to provide a valid driver’s license, state ID card or other proof of legal residence.
Anyone hoping to buy or rent a deed-restricted property — another type of government-funded affordable housing — must also show identification.
A flood of people have applied for Colorado ID cards since the laws were signed six months ago, but state officials said they have no statistics on the number of people who have lost aid or have changed houses due to the law.
Still, one business owner in Telluride said the new laws have choked off his business. Sam Leyva and his family recently shuttered their Mexican grocery store on main street, saying that Hispanic families had been leaving Telluride apartments because they had no immigration papers.
“We asked what was going on, and we heard a lot of people were moving to Montrose,” Leyva said.
Take Esperanza Rivera and Eden Mireles, transplants from Telluride to Placerville.
A live-in maid, Rivera moved with an American family from California to Telluride but quit in August after her senora began screaming and insulting Rivera. Rivera left the house, but had nowhere to go. Some landlords asked for identification, others for three months’ rent in advance.
“I couldn’t find an apartment because I don’t have papers,” she said. “I have a tourist visa, but I’m illegal because I’m working.”
Rivera found refuge in a church basement, where she met Mireles, a 21-year-old in the same situation. Mireles said he’d been living with his sister in the 134-apartment Shandoka complex, but when she couldn’t furnish ID, they both lost the apartment.
With help from some friends, Mireles and Rivera said they found a cheap apartment in Placerville, privately owned, where the landlord only asked one question: When do you want to come?
“Hoy dia,” Rivera said she told the landlord. Today.
Others are still in the lurch.
A grandmother from Mexico living at the Village Court apartments said that if she can’t stay in her $920 two-bedroom, she’ll leave the area altogether. She won’t return to Mexico or Arizona, where she lived before. California, maybe, but she worries that the grandson she raises will turn bad around gangs and big cities.
She has filed paperwork to get U.S. residence, but the lease expires on Feb. 28, and the government does not move swiftly.
“I work today to eat tomorrow,” said the woman, who did not want to be identified, saying she worried about the consequences for her children. “I don’t have a car. How am I going to move? I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
Daniel Molina, an undocumented Mexican immigrant, said he’ll move even farther when his lease at Shandoka expires May 4. Molina said his fake green card is worthless to extend his lease, since landlords and governments are verifying document numbers against federal databases.
“Some are going to change apartments and move to Montrose,” he said of the 15 companeros who crossed with him a year ago. “But if I go to Montrose, I have to get a ride or a car, and pay every day. The work is in Telluride.”
So Molina said he has decided. This spring, he’s returning to Mexico.
Advanced Search
ADVERTISEMENTS
RSS FEEDS Click here to find out about our RSS feeds and what they are ADVERTISEMENTS
Better get out the violins (sob sob sob)
If they want to immigrate to the USA they should do it legally.
"There’s the tiny Christmas tree, still perched by the window. Over there are the toys her kids should have put away before going to bed. On the kitchen counter, bamboo shoots and dishes wait to be washed. She doesn’t want to move away from this jumbled place, but she knows she has to"
two dry tear ducts reporting in sir
Pat Healy shouldn't write up reports while watching Little House on the Praire
Sometimes the jokes just write themselves. "His FAKE green card is worthless." I can't find it in myself to feel sorry for this guy. If this article was a movie, I'd love to see it on Mystery Science Theater 3000.
cry me a river
“Some are going to change apartments and move to Montrose,” he said of the 15 companeros who crossed with him a year ago. “But if I go to Montrose, I have to get a ride or a car, and pay every day. The work is in Telluride.”
So Molina said he has decided. This spring, he’s returning to Mexico.
Good! Wonder how many more got the message?
If this law was in every state, and extended to registering in schools and going to hospitals, they'd all be returning.
It's really not hard to solve the illegal immigration problem - policians just have to want to.
Oh, the humanity! The thieving intruders can't steal taxpayer money as efficiently. Go home. If you don't like it there, fix it. You want to come here, wait for an invitation.
These people have no shame. To be a criminal, then whine about being "forced" to prove you're legitimately in the country you invaded is too much to ask? To expect others to PAY for your keep, as a CRIMINAL, is somehow a duty of society?
Aiding and abetting criminal activity is a CRIME, and yet, our own government is doing it in so many places and profiteering, literally, by making money using the low-paid illegals. How is this different in principle from running sweat shops back in the 20's and 30's?
So long as the government can violate the law, and courts protect the illegals, society is the one who is penalized, where the criminal illegals are used and manipulated for business purposes, and as long as those businesses are big donors to the politicians, they will have impunity for their law-breaking.
I mean, the entry programs have existed for years and millions have availed themselves of the programs and it's so unlikely that they would be turned away because 'everyone knows that there are many job positions open because Americans don't want to do those jobs'. /sarcasm
< /intolerant rant >
It's not hard at all.
I'm all for "subsidized housing" for illegals only if and when they are working on our new impenetrable border fence
Sounds good to me too.
An incredibly cynical article!
They should be in work camps along the southern border building a fence.
See, you don't need to round up 20 million illegals, you just need to take away the incentives they had to break the law in the first place.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.