July 9,2006
By MICHAEL ABERNETHY
Celia Macias has lived as a stranger most of her life.
At 45, she is a Mexican citizen but a legal resident of the United States and a follower of the American dream.
“It’s true, we are strangers there and strangers here, but we are at home in both,” Celia said on a night in May, one of several times over the past four months that she visited with a reporter in her Lenoir County home. “When I go home, I feel Mexican. When I come back here, I feel a part of America.”
She has lived in the United States for 20 years. Juan Hernández — who, along with Celia, attended classes at Lenoir Community College for six weeks this winter to prepare for citizenship — has been here longer, since 1984. They are neither citizens nor fully assimilated — not in the way that many Americans would like — but they are a productive part of America and, more to the point, living as much in pursuit of the American dream as anyone native to Eastern North Carolina.
The recent ascension of immigration issues to the front page, the night’s top story and the forefront of the political agenda has not much affected their lives. They are not among the 5 million to 11 million immigrants in the United States illegally. They are not dependent on the state for anything. They and their spouses work hard to provide for their families and secure their future in America. They look on with concern at anything that calls attention to the differences between immigrants and native-born Americans.
Days after a national protest — A Day Without Immigrants, when illegal immigrants called attention to their importance to the U.S. economy — Celia still shook her head over the boycotts and demonstrations.
“The government is already trying to do things for people who’ve been here a certain amount of time and, instead of helping things with getting papers arranged for Hispanics, the people who participated in (the Day Without Immigrants) hurt the cause of getting work done,” she said.
Juan feels caught in the middle of the movement for immigration reform. He knows why impoverished Hispanic workers seek prosperity in the U.S., but sees the need for regulation, for rules and law.
“In my point of view, as an American, I’ve noticed that the people who come here want to come and find work in the fields and factories,” Juan said through an interpreter. “I would give an amnesty with restrictions. Those coming here must have a very detailed criminal record check done. It must be perfectly clean.”
Juan is conscious of the growing stereotype that Hispanic immigrants come here illegally to proliferate drugs and crime. “It makes me angry, as a Hispanic who is honest and works hard,” he said.
The lives of Juan and Celia virtually define productivity.
Work to prosper
Juan is approximately 29,200 hours behind on his sleep.
He’s slept only four hours a night for nearly 20 years while working jobs in Los Angeles, Chicago and, since 2002, Kinston. He now works at Alside, building window frames from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. The relaxed schedule — his first job not working consecutive eight-hour shifts — should allow for more sleep; but Juan would rather spend time with his wife, Rosalva. When you have lived apart for 16 of your 23 years of marriage, every moment together is precious. This is the first time they have lived together in America.
Shortly after 9 p.m. on June 29 in the kitchen of Juan’s house in La Grange, the table was set and food warmed in the oven. Every workday, after Rosalva finishes her 11-hour shift at Alsco in Kinston, she and Juan share this ritual of a midnight dinner. It’s the only time the two of them have together, quiet moments in a small, dimly-lighted kitchen.
“It’s the least you can do for someone: to talk with them and be with them,” Juan said. “She was here alone in the morning, then she worked and I worked. Surely, something happened to each of us during that time.”
Juan retires at 1 a.m. He’s up again at 5 a.m.
“My ancestors were very humble, poor. They taught me the values of working hard and the importance of honesty,” Juan said. “Growing up, I was very poor, but content to work.”
Celia and her husband, José, originally came to America to work on farms. The physical labor proved difficult enough, but raising a family became a bigger challenge.
Their family quickly grew to three young girls with a son on the way. The children would wait at the edge of the fields for their parents to finish work.
“It was hard, especially for women,” Celia said. “I had to take all of my kids and they would wait for me, from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. I think all this is hard for a family.”
Feeling isolated in those years only accentuated how difficult it was to keep them all together.
But things have improved for her family. She has moved up from field work to a position as an attendant at Lenoir Memorial Hospital and José now works as a custodian at Lenoir Community College.
None of her four children, three of them grown and two with children of their own, has to work in the fields.
“Right here, it’s hard, but it’s good,” Celia said. “Now that everybody has learned how to make money, it’s better for everybody. There are more and better jobs.”
Vamos al Norte
Before coming here, José worked with the Mexican government in Frontera, Mexico, as an agricultural engineer, overseeing farm irrigation. It was a good job, he said, but America promised more.
The average wage of workers in Mexico is about $4 U.S. per day. As much as 42 percent of the rural population lives in poverty.
One night, he told Celia about a friend’s plan to go to America and work on farms here.
“Vamos al norte,” the friend had said. “Let’s go north, to America.”
He applied for a worker’s visa, allowing him to travel back and forth between America and Frontera. His first stay in the United States was in Turkey, in Duplin County. Six months later, he returned and another trip was soon in the works.
“It was really common to see husbands come and go from Mexico to the United States,” Celia said. “I was scared to leave but I wanted us to be together. And I had to think about money. We had a large family.”
Within a few months, Celia and their children were alongside José outside of Orlando, Fla.
“My first thought was, ‘there’s so much money here,’ ” Celia said. “There was so much opportunity and you could earn more here.”
In 1984, thousands of miles away, Juan prepared to leave the state of Guerrero, Mexico, seeking fair exchange for labor and haven from a legal system he feels is corrupt.
“Here, they follow the law,” Juan said, reclining in a plush chair in his living room. “In Mexico, they don’t. In Mexico, if you kill someone tomorrow, if you’ve got a little money, you can go before the supreme law and explain to the judge why you killed him. You can ask, ‘How much will this death cost me?’ ” Juan said.
He set off for America in 1985, landing in the migrant fields of Labelle, Fla., determined to better his life and make enough to help support his family in Guerrero.
The 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, which granted amnesty to many legal and illegal immigrants, was the opportunity both families — and thousands of others — needed to settle here permanently.
Juan calls their neighborhood in La Grange an “American neighborhood.” His is the only Hispanic family there.
“I don’t know why, but this country has given me a lot of economic establishment,” Juan said. “This is my own house. I don’t have to depend on anyone else. I can move forward.”
The path to citizenship
Settled in and recognized in the United States as resident aliens, Celia and Juan were poised in January to take a step toward U.S. citizenship. That’s how they met — in a citizenship course sponsored by Lenoir Community College — and where a reporter met them in February.
Two nights a week for six weeks, Sarah Tyson, English language and civics specialist for LCC, helped Celia, Juan and six other students study American history and civics to prepare for the process of becoming a citizen and for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) interview each candidate must pass before taking the oath of citizenship.
They learned about the Constitution, the Founding Fathers and the principles of U.S. government, taught in English.
Names like Washington and Jefferson and words like “legislative” and “judicial” don’t exactly roll off the Spanish-speaking tongue. Tyson often had to clarify lessons in Spanish.
“When I am a citizen, it will make everything easier,” Celia said. “I will be able to vote. I will be able to petition to have my children become citizens.”
Just Tuesday, the Fourth of July, the U.S. welcomed 18,000 new citizens in ceremonies held across the country. Twenty-five were naturalized in a ceremony in Kinston, where U.S. Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C., said the new citizens “make America even greater.”
But immigrants who want to take the next step of becoming a U.S. citizen face an arduous and relatively expensive process. Simply getting into the U.S. legally as a temporary worker or visitor is expensive and time consuming and has only become more so since 9/11.
The greatest barrier, though, is simply learning English, required to pass the USCIS interview for citizenship. The lives of many immigrants revolve around coworkers, friends and family who only speak Spanish.
During LCC’s citizenship courses, students learn how to write and speak key words for the citizenship interview.
“I always tell ESL students that learning a new language is not just work, but a gift, a gift that opens up a whole new world,” said Tyson, the LCC instructor. “As students begin to learn English, they gain confidence in their new country.”
On May 7, Celia hobbled to the front door on crutches, a cast encasing her right leg. Foot surgery in April put her out of work until mid-July. Time away from work was almost a blessing in disguise. It allowed her to take English classes.
“The first (barrier) is English. It’s a big problem for us. We come here and we need to learn,” Celia said. “It was tough when the children started school here. I couldn’t help them with their homework. But then my oldest daughter, she learned English in a year and now she can speak very well.”
In little more than a month, Celia’s English had improved enough that she felt comfortable holding entire conversations and interviews without an interpreter.
She’s still embarrassed to use English in public. Her daughters — raised in all-English speaking schools — tease her when she makes mistakes. Once she is comfortable with the language, she’d like to continue her education to become a teacher or nurse through LCC. She’s already completed her GED there.
Juan doesn’t have the luxury of time.
After 20 years here, he knows just enough English to survive. He needed an interpreter to talk with a reporter. He can understand what managers tell him at work and knows key words and phrases to use at banks.
“My problem, it’s not a lack of interest for knowing English, but my work. I have no time. I’m working too hard,” he said. “I can understand the words they use at work. But if I wanted to start talking about other things, this is where I lack it. I lack English on a personal level.”
When he was negotiating payments for his home, he had to use the company’s interpreter.
“We spoke, but you have to speak through the interpreter they have,” Juan said with some regret. “It’s like speaking through a second voice. It’s not the same.”
On hold
Tyson’s course put Celia and Juan within reach of citizenship but reminded them again how demanding the process is, in both time and money.
Resident aliens pay $290 to submit citizenship applications, pay to be fingerprinted by the FBI and then travel to the USCIS office in Charlotte for interviews once they are approved. The total costs can run upward of $400. Once they’ve paid, there’s no guarantee residents will pass the interview.
That uncertainty proved too great for Juan and Celia.
This year, they have decided to hold off on filing for U.S. citizenship.
If Juan waits five more years, when he’s 50, he can take the USCIS interview to become an American citizen in Spanish. With her daughters all at least 18, an incentive for Celia to acquire citizenship — sponsoring her daughters in the naturalization process — has timed out. So has her green card. She must pay $260 this year to renew it. To her, paying another $400 just to be considered for citizenship isn’t worth the cost — or risk of not passing the test.
“I’m not in such a big hurry now,” Celia said.
The next months will pass for Celia and Juan much like the last 20 years have, regardless of how the immigration controversy plays out in America. They will be the quiet strangers among us, letting the values of hard work and family define their place here, content to carve their piece of the American dream.
Source: The Kinston Free Press
Comments