Posted on 07/12/2009 1:05:09 PM PDT by Excuse_My_Bellicosity
CONCEPCION CHIQUIRICHAPA, Guatemala - Leaving Guatemala 12 years ago was the hardest thing Carlos Sanchez had ever done.
Until he decided to come back.
Sanchez still remembers the day he left home: saying goodbye to his parents; leaving his friends; that last tear-stained glimpse of his sweet mountain village in western Guatemala as the bus carried him over the ridge to an uncertain life in "the north." Painful, anxious times.
But not as hard as the return trip. When Sanchez, 36, arrived back in Central America recently, after living a third of his life as an illegal immigrant in suburban Washington, he stepped off the flight from Dulles International Airport into a cultural no man's land. He had been an outlaw migrant in one country; now he was a native-born stranger in the other.
For years, Sanchez had worked all the overtime hours he could handle as a supervisor for a granite counter contractor in Springfield. Last year, overtime slipped to part time and then almost no time. After months of looking for work, he started looking at airfares.
An expatriate's longing for his native land is often searing. But Sanchez, like thousands of Latino immigrants forced back across the border in recent months by the sinking economy, is learning sooner than he wanted to that going home again can be even more complicated.
Almost at once upon his return, he was felled by a bout of the turistas. His Arlington County-born toddler, Marvin, also took sick, and Sanchez nearly panicked at the difficulty in finding a doctor. His wife, Gladys, was no longer comfortable in the traditional garments of Mayan women, finding them heavy and stiff compared with the Old Navy blouses and jeans she bought at Potomac Mills.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
Takoma Park isn’t even part of the US anymore, is it? I left that area 23 years ago and haven’t regretted it once.
Plenty of illegals have sent so much money home that they are set up for life when they go back.......
That’s the truth!
So they scammed all kinds of free health care in hospital emergency rooms. Rather than pay their medical expenses they sent it home
FROM THE ARTICLE
Sanchez, though, had been sending home extra money — about $50,000 over six years — to build a cement-block house next to his parents’ home. In three rooms and a bath next to the yard where his mother grinds corn and cooks over an open fire, he works to overcome the lingering cultural vertigo. “Sometimes I don’t know just where I am,” he said.
HeHe. That's funny!
It seems like only yesterday
I sailed from out of Cork.
A wanderer from old Erin’s isle,
I landed in New York.
There wasn’t a soul to greet me there,
A stranger on your shore,
But Irish luck was with me here,
And riches came galore.
And now that I’m going back again
To dear old Erin’s isle,
My friends will meet me on the pier
And greet me with a smile.
Their faces, sure, I’ve almost forgot,
I’ve been so long away,
But me mother will introduce them all
And this to me will say
Shake hands with your Uncle Mike, me boy,
And here’s your sister, Kate.
And sure there’s the girl you used to swing
Down by the garden gate.
Shake hands with all your neighbours,
And kiss the colleens all
You’re as welcome as the flowers in May
To dear old Donnegal.
They’ll line the roads for miles and miles
They’ll come from near and far.
And they’ll give a party when I go home,
With Irish jauntin’ cars.
The spirits’ll flow and we’ll be gay,
We’ll fill your hearts with joy.
And the piper will play an Irish reel
To greet the Yankee boy.
We’ll dance and sing the whole night long,
Such fun as never was seen.
The lads’ll be decked in corduroy,
The colleens wearin’ green.
There’ll be thousands there that I never saw,
I’ve been so long away,
But me mother will introduce them all
And this to me will say:
Shake hands with your Uncle Mike, me boy,
And here’s your sister, Kate.
And sure there’s the girl you used to swing
Down by the garden gate.
Shake hands with all your neighbours,
And kiss the colleens all
You’re as welcome as the flowers in May
To dear old Donnegal.
Meet Branigan, Fannigan, Milligan, Gilligan,
Duffy, McCuffy, Malachy, Mahone,
Rafferty, Lafferty, Donnelly, Connelly,
Dooley, O’Hooley, Muldowney, Malone,
Madigan, Cadigan, Lanihan, Flanihan,
Fagan, O’Hagan, O’Hoolihan, Flynn,
Shanihan, Manihan, Fogarty, Hogarty,
Kelly, O’Kelly, McGuinness, McGuinn.
Shake hands with your Uncle Mike, me boy,
And here’s your sister, Kate.
And sure there’s the girl you used to swing
Down by the garden gate.
Shake hands with all your neighbours,
And kiss the colleens all
You’re as welcome as the flowers in May
To dear old Donnegal.
Was gonna say. Rickety bus ride out. Fancy plane ride back. Guess after the months of just part-time work, job-hunting, and supporting a family, he still had money to burn flying everyone out of DC. How heartless and unfair our country is.
he stepped off the flight from Dulles International Airport
___________________________________________
How did this illegal alien get on the plane without proper ID ???
I like that song.
To quote 007: Do I like like I give a damn?
Has MSNBC described how they came to have the name of Carlos Sanchez? Were they referred to him by La Raza? Or the local branch of the DNC? Or perhaps one or another of any number of illegal immigrant invasion advocacy groups? Did a member of the MSNBC news team actually interview Sanchez? Or are they simply reporting on material supplied to them by some group or another. Did MSNBC come up with the idea of reporting this story and then go out and find Sanchez? Or was MSNBC approached by La Raza, or some other group, with the material for this story whole cloth? Did Steve Hendrix actually research this story? Or, did he simply write up the story from material provided him? Or did he simply put his name on a story already written? Do we know that any of it is even true?
The same way that we have an occupant in the WH without clear identification.
He probably bought several fake id's.......so he and his wife could collect US govt benefits under several names. They were probably getting monthly SSI checks by having the kid fake ADD as well.
Probably defaulted on a subprime loan he got using stolen Social Security numbers and false immigration documents (leaving Americans to bailout the banks).
Me too.. Someone cleverer than I should write a Mexican version...
You obviously haven't visited Quatemala City have you? And by your ignorant comment it is unlikely you have ever spent much time in Central America at all. You are unfairly maligning a class of people who on the whole bust their asses more to provide for themselves and their family members just to survive than you would ever have to endure in your entire lifetime.
It is no fault of theirs that that there is no industrialized infra-structure to provide jobs such you have had the privilege of enjoying. After all, isn't it you and your like minded anti-NAFTA crowd who are so damn opposed to our country's major industries expansion in Central and South America? You can't have it both ways dude!
It is no fault of theirs that those who are not land owners have to slave from dawn to dusk in the cane fields or the banana fields or the cocoa fields or the pineapple fields all the while providing you with your precious sugar for your coffee, bananas for your breakfast and cocoa for your latte's........
And as for that three room, one bath cinder block house that you are so up in arms about this guy building on the enormous monies he was able to send back to his home, I can tell you from experience what that probably entails.
One combined dining/living room area, two bedrooms and the bathroom. Quite likely behind the wall at the back of the dining area is the small cooking area..............Unfortunately the article didn't mention how many folks will be living in that new, enormous, (maybe 1,600 sq. ft. at the absolute most) house..........
I could tell you about my Brother-in-law’s family in Honduras, how their sugar cane plantation yields on the average of $18,000 per year, and how his now deceased brother and sister-in-law lived in the same house dimensions along with 8 other family members. And when Mario, Ray and Miriam came to San Pedro from Tegucigalpa, it then got kinda crowded.
And I could also tell you how that money provided an annual subsistence for all and also helped send Miriam to college to become an Attorney, Mario and Ray to medical school and Rosie’s son to a private American speaking school and her three daughters to university.
And I would also tell you that Mario was able to establish a very successful medical practice netting him approx. $12,000 per year salary prior to his untimely death 4 years ago leaving a wife and two beautiful daughters who are now residing in the house. Ray too was able to begin a successful medical practice until he too died 4 years ago leaving behind a wife and a daughter. Malpractice insurance? Life Insurance? Medical Insurance…….LOL! What’s that?……..
So don’t even begin to give me your crap of how the people in Guatamala or any other Central American country are lazy and deserving of what they have………..There is no Workers Comp for the field worker who loses a finger or a hand or gets bitten by a poisonous snake, there is no extended wage for a worker who gets injured and loses a week, two weeks or maybe even 6 months due to injury on the job. There also isn’t any medical insurance to cover their injuries, they’re on their own!
And for what it’s worth my friend, it hasn’t been until the last fewl years that residents of Honduras were even given access to automobile insurance……….That’s another story I’d love to tell you about my BIL’s purchase of a new truck for his brother Pepe’ in Honduras that was stolen within a month of ownership………..
And I'm not even going to get into how difficult it was for Rosie to obtain a passport to just visit the U.S. which was finally approved after 10 years of trying. Or the doctor Mario who wasn't able to obtain one at all until my BIL provided him with a credit card account that allowed him to purchase medical supplies for his practice then basically assure that he would return to Honduras after his visit......
I am on the front line when it comes to opposition to illegal aliens coming to my country but when it comes to individuals such as Mr. Sanchez as opposed to the rest of the dead beats that you claim he and his kind are taking jobs from, well, I'll side with Mr. Sanchez any time............
As for you, you need a reality check my friend. Instead of condemning the peoples of the third world who have little control over their futures, maybe you should volunteer with your local church and do some missionary work down there to see what life is really like for them...........
I didn’t even bother to boot up my “give a damn” ;-)
Any parking lot in L.A.
fake license and SS card 2 for $300.00
Fundamentally, economic progress depends upon having enough honesty and good will in the culture to allow trust. Without trust in your fellow citizen it is **impossible** to make the contracts and enforce the contracts needed to build a local business, a local community, and finally a nation. Without honest good will, trust becomes impossible. The end result is brutal tribalism and loyalty only to a clan or gang.
So...Yes, fundamentally, their plight is their own. If they are failing to make progress, and if they elect corrupt people to lead them, the first place to look is inside their own souls.
Conservatives understand this principle of honest good will. It is why we are so distressed to see the cultural and moral dry rot growing around us. We know that in time, if it continues, the U.S. will be a banana republic as well. We will be ruled by warlords.
That the U.S. has the standard of living that is does is not a **privilege** that was granted to us by some fairy godmother.
We **earned** it, and we **worked** for it.
We start by being a basically **HONEST** people. A people that are honest enough and moral enough that our neighbors can trust to make contracts and loans. We trust that our courts and police will be honest in the enforcement of those contracts.
Scratch a country that is poor and disarray and you will soon find a dishonest and immoral heart beating in its chest.
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