Posted on 01/22/2006 3:23:33 AM PST by Tyche
Alarm is spreading through South Florida's CentralAmerican communities as U.S. officials weigh ordering hundreds of thousands of temporary residents out of the country.
Juana García gave up seeing her children grow up so they would not go hungry.
García's youngest of four children was 3 when she left Honduras 21 years ago and headed north looking for work. The others were 7, 8 and 11. She never saw three of the children again -- the oldest, a son, came to live with her for some time -- because, as an undocumented immigrant, she couldn't travel. But she never forgot her children, sending $350 every month so that relatives could buy them food and clothes.
''I came here because of them, so they would survive,'' García said in an interview Wednesday night.
García, 52, is one of more than 300,000 anxious Central Americans who fear the Bush administration soon will order them to leave the country.
Alarm has spread through South Florida communities of Hondurans, Nicaraguans and Salvadorans, and across the nation over the possibility that the administration is considering ending a program called Temporary Protected Status. TPS allows people like García to live and work with renewable permits.
South Florida's three Cuban-American Republicans in the House, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Lincoln and Mario Díaz-Balart, plan to write a joint letter to President Bush and Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff asking them not to kill TPS. The joint letter will be announced Monday at a news conference at the office of Rep. Lincoln Díaz-Balart in Miami.
TPS for illegal Hondurans, Nicaraguans and Salvadorans began after natural disasters struck Central America -- a hurricane in Honduras and Nicaragua in 1998, and earthquakes in El Salvador in 2001.
The programs enable illegal migrants who were in the United States when the disasters hit to remain here legally while their countries recover.
TPS work and residence permits were never intended to be permanent -- but they have become virtual entitlements because they are routinely renewed every 18 months.
As the mood of the country turns more and more against illegal immigration, some administration officials have begun lobbying for an end to TPS.
Some South Florida Central-American migrant leaders are now hoping TPS can be folded into President Bush's proposed guest worker program if Congress approves it later this year. Bush's program would grant temporary work permits to millions of illegal workers for perhaps up to six years.
''That's what we are working on,'' said José Lagos, president of Honduran Unity, a Little Havana-based immigrant rights organization that also represents Nicaraguans and Salvadorans. Lagos compared Bush's guest worker proposal to a ``giant TPS program.''
Lagos' tiny office, at 1421 SW Eighth St., has been swamped by hundreds of anxious Central Americans seeking information after a front-page article in The Miami Herald on Tuesday noted that the TPS program may be eliminated.
People who stop by Lagos' office are asked to sign a letter urging President Bush to continue the program. It expires for Hondurans and Nicaraguans in July and for Salvadorans in September. The letter also seeks legalization for all immigrants and resumption of a now-expired immigration amnesty for illegal migrants sponsored by an American citizen spouse or a U.S. employer.
Lagos is also organizing a Mass Feb. 3 at the Church of Saint John Bosco, 1301 W Flagler St., to pray for TPS renewal. The date marks the Day of the Virgin of Suyapa, an annual religious festival for Hondurans' patron saint.
Half a dozen Hondurans and Nicaraguans who dropped by Lagos' office to sign the letter to Bush on Wednesday evening agreed to tell their stories to The Miami Herald.
One of them was García, who was 31 when she made the fateful decision to find a better life in the United States.
''I had four young children and no one but me to take care of them,'' she said. ``If I had stayed in Honduras, they would not have had a real chance to make it.''
García made her way to the Mexico-Texas border. One night in 1984 she and a group of other illegal migrants crossed the Rio Grande near Laredo, Texas.
Once across, García worked in a series of odd jobs in Texas, cleaning homes or working in small Latin American cafeterias.
Eventually she saved enough money for a plane trip to Miami. Currently she works at a Hialeah factory that packs food condiments.
García's fears were echoed by other Central Americans with TPS.
Paula Durán, from Nicaragua, said she is resigned to returning home if TPS ends.
''What can I do?'' she wondered. ``It would be fate. I would have to go back, even though I have built a new life here, and life is so much more difficult there.''
Durán, 47, arrived in June 1998 from Managua. She cleans homes and regularly sends money to her two sons back home -- Esel Jocsán, 17, and Milton Uriel, 13.
''I don't know what I'm going to do if TPS ends,'' she said. ``I may have to go and live in the streets.''
Iris Alvarez, 33, from Honduras, said that if she is ''deported'' she would be going back to a country where she no longer has relatives.
''My mother and brothers are now in Canada,'' she said. ``I have nobody back there. I'd be homeless.''
True. What they're really looking for is a Walmart store. But you don't get one without the other.
I did a google search on the author of this article, Alfonso Chardy. Seems he has been quite busy in his pro-illegal immigration activism. Chardy is a La Raza leftist from Mexico City who was educated here in the U.S. under a scholarship from our State Department. This is our tax dollars at work, folks.
There must be more to that story.
It sounds as if she didn't apply for her Alien Resident Card before she married.
There are steps to take, and marrying a citizen of the U.S. doesn't buy you a bag of popcorn with immigration.
You have to apply as an alien on your own.
If people are seriously considering citizenship, the laws are out there for people to follow. If they choose to circumvent the law, it insults ALL immigrants - especially those who are doing it the right way.
IOW, an ILLEGAL ALIEN.
Last time I checked, people who are here illegally have no squatter's rights or any other claim to stay here.
"What's wrong with the governments in Latin America, that it is so generally such a great place to be from?"
Where to start? A poor person in most nations in the world, even with dedication, brains, and talent far above his peers, still has a one-in-a-million chance to drag themselves out of abject poverty because all of the institutions of society are dedicated to keeping them there. Most wealthy people in the rest of the world believe they have to prevent the poor from improving in order to maintain their position in society. It is a "hungry hungry hippos" view of economics, and is one of the reasons that communism always seems to keep a toehold there. Those Latin American governments see the US illegal immigration problem as a safety valve and source of hard currency that flows in without penalty. A lot of the influx of money ends up in the hands of the ruling class and is effectively an invisible tax.
We have always been seen (correctly) as a place where a dedicated, smart, and talented person has a fair chance to build a reasonably good (by global standards) life for themself and their family. God help us if we lose that perception - the alternative is a welfare state.
I believe that legal immigrants who learn English and who come here to be part of the American culture greatly benefit the US. We are successful on the global stage because we have been a magnet for the bright and ambitious from the rest of the world. I don't want to think about what the US would be like if OUR best and brightest went to China.
There is nothing to fear; you never had any rights to stay here; nor should we consider criminals like you as candidates for lawful immigration.
Isn't it amazing how casually we toss around the word 'right'...i.e. right to health care, right to stay in US if 'undocumented'. Citizens of the United States, by the way, are not granted 'rights' by anyone; especially the government. We are born to them through our divinely inspired Constitution...remember that anything 'granted' can be taken away.
Lots of countries are great places to be from. US of A is the place everyone wants to come to ..... how long before we too will be a great place to be from also?
I personally know many Central Americans who came here for the reasons stated in this article, and they chose to play by US rules. They worked hard, saved money, and hired immigration lawyers to help them through the process of staying here legally. There are plenty of charity organizations that assisted them on how to go about the proper process, such as the Latin American Apostolate.
Between visas they had to travel back and forth to their home countries. Yes it was difficult and inconvenient, and it took a long time, but their consciences are clear. These weren't wealthy people in their home countries, either. They just decided to do the right thing, and then worked hard to reach their goal.
There is really no excuse to remain undocumented.
U.S., GarySpFc wrote:
"Illegal aliens are NOT immigrants."
You are right. They are not. The press and open border people try to co-mingle the words as to confuse people.
It isn't working!!!!!!
Don't you know? Children just "happen". It's not the mother's fault, she just gets pregnant, magically-like. If you ever meet women with this sort of attitude, it's truly frustrating.
I'd say you covered it pretty well.
Thanks.
ping
Protect our borders and coastlines from all foreign invaders!
Support our Minutemen Patriots!
Be Ever Vigilant ~ Bump!
<< Immigrants fear losing right to stay in U.S. >>
They are criminal bloody aliens, for Goodness sakes, not "immigrants" and have no bloody "right" to be here.
Let alone any right to stay.
Piss every last one of them off to whatever turd-wurld Hell-hole and/or cesspit he crawled from.
Every last one!
And then re-apply and wait at the end off whatever line of the Law-abiding has formed in front of him.
"If you come illegally the only way you should have a clear conscience is by going home and waiting to reenter legally. Tell your friends they are not forgiven just because they got some slimy lawyer to make it all better for them."
My friends were never here illegally. They came legally on visas and obeyed US laws.
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