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.
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No problem, Dane will pay their rent for them . . .
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 Jane and Bob who lives in Mexican state-funded housing must show identification to their landlord and sign a paper that says they’ve come legally to the Mexico."
How low and mean-spirited can America get? Enforcing laws, I just don't believe it. No other country is that evil. I bet.
One wee step at a time?
Fat chance.
Enforcing laws threatens ILLEGAL "cheap" labor. Need a new law.
Need comprehensive immigration reform: call 'em "guest workers." There. Fixed it.
(It ain't just ILLEGAL aliens. Though the 1996 immigration and welfare reform stopped SSI for over-65 parents and relatives brought here by legal immigrants every other citizen's benefit remained available. And SSI continues for elderly relatives on it prior to August 1996, I believe, thanks to Feinstein, et al. modifications to the "reform".)
What did the Colorado western slope do before the illegals?
>take away the incentives they had to break the law in the first place.<
What a novel idea!
And not just subsidized housing in the deepest, darkest depths of LA. They're in Telluride, a ski town resort that is mainly populated by the hyper rich.
Isn't that special? The rich folks have their slave quarters in paradise paid for by us.
And you know the answer, unlike Mr. We Need Illegals to Keep the Chairlifts Running.
American kids did it. Working class kids from LA, college kids from Wisconsin taking a 1 or 2 year break from school, people just being ski bums for a few years. Some left, some stayed and became permanent resort employees, others drift in and out. Never had a problem getting people that I ever saw.
And you arrived in Arizona and Colorado exactly how?
And you arrived in Arizona and Colorado exactly how?
He got here with just the clothes on his back and the good Lord willing, he'll leave the same way.
Go back to Mexico- problem solved.
Bttt!
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