The Observer approaches illegal immigration
Beatriz Gurdiel

From the past Sunday, and during three days, The Charlotte Observer it has published a series of news articles that show the great risks to which thousands of immigrants face every day to cross illegally towards the United States. Their reporters, Liz Chandler and Dánica Boundary, have also wanted to reflect why the Carolinas has become one of the wished destinies more.
In the edition of Sunday, Rick Thames, publisher of The Charlotte Observer, explained its readers who the objective of these articles was to try to give answers to the subject of immigration. “We have never needed a clear point of view as much as now”, it says. “The leaders of our nation are divided envelope how to respond”.
For our readers
The articles published in the Observer, as well as the news articles that during this week the television channel WCNC has emitted, are part of the vital history of many of our readers, who arrived at Charlotte through the same passage.
For this reason, the News has decided to publish in its pages those same news articles, but in Spanish.
Our intention is that each and every one of the immigrants of the region can see their reflected history. That they can read what the charloteanos already has read, that can be created and give an opinion on the image that has occurred of them.
It has been spoken much already in the street and mass media on these articles. They have created debate, they have made think, they have shown the other face, and that is good.

This series of articles comprises of the commitment of The Charlotte Observer to write during this year on illegal immigration.
If it wishes to give his opinion us on this series of articles, or knows some problem that believes that the people of Charlotte must know, please, Boundary to the 704-358-5065 póngase in contact with the Dánica reporters (dcoto@charlotteobserver.com) or with Ordo'6nez Franc to the 704-358-6180 (fordonez@charlotteobserver.com).
In www.charlotte.com. it will be able to find this one and other additional news articles in Spanish. Like in www.wcnc.com

Thanks
The Charlotte Observer

For the immigrants, the hope
of a work it justifies the risk
Liz Chandler and Dánica Boundary, The Charlotte Observer
Translation: Beatriz Gurdiel

ALTAR, Mexico. - It is January principles, the first week of the migratory season, and people of all parts of Mexico arrive up to here in bus preparing itself for her trip towards the north.
The border of Arizona is to 60 miles.
Further on there is a desert stroll, with injured land, border serpents of bell, patrols and bandits.
Although they are intrepid, three young men and intrepid, whose destiny is Carolina of the South, they arrive at Altar to plan its illegal crossing to the United States.
They have left its works and to its family in the industrial city of Puebla, to 1,200 miles to the south-east, where they worked in a textile factory in which they say received $1 per hour. With that pay, Efrín Guzmán affirms that never it could buy a house to him to his family of four, who now lives in a rented single room.
“We must cross. You cannot make… money here”, says Guzmán, of 23 years. “Although they deport one, two to us or three times, we will continue crossing”.
They chose the Carolinas by its reputation: many works, good pays and little scrutiny on the part of the employers and of the government.
Nevertheless, these three men do not have nor idea than they are going to happen.
They are beginner. They rest in carpeted bunks of plated, in a pension that smells of dirty bodies. In three days they will leave the “House of Lupita” with coyote that will guide 28 emigrants until the Earth of the opportunities.
The runner of Altar is one of the points of journeyed illegal crossing more. More than 2,000 emigrants they are ventured on a daily basis towards the desert.
The haltings in the border of California and Texas have turned aside the migratory current towards this land, threatening but less watched.
Around 1,000 emigrants they have died in the desert of Arizona from the year 2000 by dehydration, wounds, diseases or collisions with the authorities, smugglers or thieves.
Nevertheless, the number of deaths is drained before the hundreds of thousands that yes are able to cross.
At the outset they were based near house, in the border states of the USA. Now they construct new communities there where there are works.
Carolina of the North has one of the Latin communities of greater growth, impelled by undocumented immigrants who arrive to pick up our harvests, to construct our houses and to take care of our gardens. The increase in the number of immigrants has brought with himself an increase of tension: an immigrant who handled drunkard killed a professor; Latin gangs are themselves surrounded in shootings; and the state schools and the departments of health fight to accommodate to these new carolinos.
The immigrants know that they are infringing the law of the USA. Also they know that a demand exists because they work hard and they do not complain.
For Guzmán, the payment of $7 or $8 the hour is sufficient so that it is worth the trouble to leave him his family, to risk his life and to live in the shades.
In his dreams, it arrives at Charleston and it works like carpenter or fixing gardens. Offer to house sufficient money like buying a house and educating, to even allow, to its small girl and her son.
But Guzmán is still very far from Charleston, and the things are not going to leave as it glides.
Altar offers provisions, blessing
Guzmán and its friendly have come to Altar in search of guide. In the place of the town there are middle-aged men who can lead them until the border and guide them by the desert. Altar exists to equip and to prepare to the emigrants for a way by the desert that lasts between two and four days.
Several positions located to the sides of the streets sell dark clothes, knapsacks, canneded meat and water. Dozens of vehicles make row while the conductors compete by empacar their vehicles for the race towards the border. In one hour, more than 30 light trucks they leave Altar, each taking 25 people.
In January the population of Altar, that goes up to around the 15,000 inhabitants, duplicate while the emigrants prepare themselves to return to the United States after to have spent Christmas in family. The desert also welcomes in beginner like Guzmán.
Groups of men cross the city from a side to another one loading gallons of water and knapsacks provisions. In the positions of tacos and restaurants, they eat everything what they can.
There is no police in the streets. The Mexican authorities do not deliver any attack significant to stop the exodus, beyond which another roundup to those who abuses the emigrants or deals with drugs.
The most visible authority of the country is an agency of protection to the emigrant who distributes guides alert who them of the serpents, the border cacti and agents with pistols.
In Mexico, where a 40% of the population are poor, the emigration is seen like a right, not like a crime, says the ex- mayor of Altar, Francisco Garci'a.
“People are looking for a form to live with more dignity”, says. “The emigration has been born from the necessity. It has also been born from the incapacity of our government to satisfy the needs with people”.
Until the Catholic church it blesses to the emigrants in the place, during a special misa that is celebrated Tuesdays.
In front of the church there is a truck of the Mexican Red Cross. At the end of the street, in the shelter of Altar, there is a garden that shows to him the emigrants what cacti give water.
A monthly registry of the refuge revealed that Carolina of the North is the third destiny for the emigrants, behind Texas and California.
Founded on 1775, Altar prospered thanks to the production of harvest and the cattle, until in the middle of 1990 the weight collapse. Then the town began to welcome emigrants and soon it began to add rooms. In 1998 Altar it had two hotels. Now it has near 14 and 100 pensions, according to account reverendo the Prisciliano Peraza, a catholic shepherd who has lived the transformation on the town.
“The day that the emigration pauses”, says, “Altar will become a ghost town”.
A price that there is to pay
In the House of Lupita, Guzmán and its friendly pay 30 pesos per night, about $3.
The pension accommodates to 60 people in cement rooms, surrounded by a cement patio with latrines, showers and a communal washbasin. In the door of alongside there is a store of food and a kitchen that produces tortillas in a transporting tape in series.
Guzmán is going to pay coyote $700 so that it guides to him in the border. It is more than Guzmán it wins in three months of work.
Some coyotes receive $2.000 or more by a trip until Altar, guided crossing of the border and transports until a city in the United States. They do not acquire the money of a single time, nor in advance, thus is something moves to give to them to the safe and sound emigrants.
The American authorities call to this business “human traffic to him”. Sometimes coyotes abuses the emigrants they use and them to deal with drugs, according to say the guards of the border. “A smuggler always is going to you to lie. If you fall, a smuggler is going to leave to you back so that you die”, says the agent of the Border Patrol of the USA, Are King.
The business, says, he has become more competitive and violent since it has become more lucrative.
The appearance in Altar of Ford Wolf demonstrates the profitable thing that it is, says Peraza father. The light truck costs $22.000 in Mexico, a virtually unattainable price for a worker whose average pay is of $2 the hour.
Nevertheless, in Altar you see many of them. “Altar”, says the father, “has become a cradle of wolves”.
Danger in the desert
After three days in Altar, Guzmán and its friendly go away. Mounted in a light truck they lead during two hours by a dusty way. Next to them it travels a woman, of 27 years, and her children, of three and six. They are friendly of the family of Guzmán. She hopes to be able to work like maid in Tucson. She is not very safe from where it is Tucson, but his guide says to him that she is to a day of way. It is not certain.
In an interview four days later, thus he is as they narrated his passage to us:
The 13 arrived at the border of January, at the small Mexican town of Sásabe. When falling the night his guide reunites to 28 emigrants and they are entered in Arizona.
Dresses with heavy shelters, Guzmán and its friendly take to the children surrounded in blankets. Soon they will remain back.
Several men dressed black and in knitted cap approach them, says Guzmán. Two of them have pistols. They request money to them and jewels, search carefully in the pockets of the emigrants. The pequeñita, Paola Morning call, of 6 years, has desire to cry, remembers, but it holds them.
The thieves flee with $1.000 and take hold half of their food and its water. The emigrants hurry and they meet with the group. They walk by the desert during two days. By the day they sleep under the trees and in madrigueras done in the sand.
In his second morning listens to a helicopter. It is the Border Patrol of the USA. They remain ice creams.
Guzmán wants to run but an advice remembers who heard in Altar days back. “They do not run”, had said a Mexican official whose work is to send of return the bodies of those who die in the desert. If the agents are caused, she said, “aim to kill”.
The agents put to the group of Guzmán in several trucks and they send 50 miles to the east, until a a center of halting in Walnuts, Arizona. To they take them to the men to a cell, the women and the children to another one.
They take the tracks and photographies from each one of the adults. They track the archives of the computer in search of an arrest order or criminal records. If they find something they retain, them and they present/display positions. If no they put, them in buses they escort and them from return to Mexico.
With 2,400 agents, the border station of Tucson covers 261 miles, from New Mexico to Yuma.
The border of the cities of Naco, Nogales and Douglas is blocked by walls that the emigrants cross, climb underneath or happen digging walls. The rest is delimited by a metallic fence, or without fence.
Of one or the other form
The 17 of January, one week after Guzmán and its friendly arrived for the first time at Altar, are again in the House of Lupita.
Now they are veteran.
They crossed and they were given back to Mexico of a kick, have requested given money to return to Altar.
The woman friend of Guzmán and her children is in a back room, seated in the ground of the pension.
It seems scared. She is not going to return to try it. She wants to go away to house. Guzmán and its friendly discuss their next movement. His coyote, anxious to acquire its final tariff will guide, them again.
That behind schedule they attend the misa of emigrants. Guzmán persigna when entering the church.
A bishop of Fertile valleys gives to the Sagrada Communion at the same time as an assistant distributes soap, grazes of teeth and curites.
That Guzmán night plays letters in House of Lupita.
Still it dreams about making money in Charleston. To the dawn it has decided that it will cross again. One gets wet the face and the hair with a hose of the garden. “Tomorrow”, it says. “Perhaps tomorrow”.

The political discord begins in the border
Liz Chandler and Dánica Boundary, The Charlotte Observer
Translation: Beatriz Gurdiel

The undocumented immigrants in search of work find a nation divided about their presence

What you look for in America?
33 immigrants who hope in a desert shutdown that somebody approaches to them until the border give their answers.
“We want to do the work that they cannot or they do not want to do”, Lopez says to Oscar, of 22 years.
“We want that they are not racist”, Luis Piñeda says, of 17. “We tried to secure a better life for ours”, shouts another man.
A cattle truck approaches resounding, the immigrants rise in the part of back and they are shown through the tables. While the truck starts towards the desert, a man says in Spanish: “To throw desire to him”.
The strategy of the United States to stop this flow of undocumented people does not seem to respond to the real needs.
It is reflected in the practices of the Border Patrol and in the conflicting actions of the mess orderlies who face this wave of immigrants daily. It is possible to be seen national level; in this country they live and they work near 11 million undocumented people (including 390,000 only in Carolina of the North); and it is possible to be seen through the faces of those people whose determination to arrive at the United States takes to them to risk it everything.
They begin the trip in the border, with its identification hidden between the clothes. Thus, if they die in the desert, their families will be able to know it.
Hoping in the American part there is one narrow one and scattered earth strip after which there is all a divided nation.
The Valley of Arivaca is placed in the desert between Altar, Mexico, and Tucson, Arizona, an important runner for those who wants to cross. Every day they appear fresh tracks in the footpaths of the desert. The mess orderlies are defeats their fences and gather bottles of water, conserve tins, clothes and bags of plastic.
The persecutions also are frequent.
A helicopter that follows a group of immigrants flies raudo by the valley. The cars patrol run by hills or wait for emptinesses to the agents who go into in the desert with dogs and arms.
The 14 of January the Border Patrol surrounds to two dozens of immigrants desperdigados between the trees. Helped by a neighbor, the trucks surround to people. The agents order to them that they kneel down.
While they register his knapsacks, a man of a called organization of aid the Samaritan ones arrives and shouts in Spanish: “There is somebody patient” “Somebody needs water”.
An agent asks to him to the Samaritan one that she stops. When this one insists, the agent threatens to him arresting to him.
Soon, “the foreigners”, as the agents call to them, are loaded in drived light trucks and to a halting center, to 50 miles towards the east.
The majority will be sent from return to Mexico, unless the police archives demonstrate that they are looked for by some crime.
The majority will return to try to enter the United States. “Tomorrow I will return to see they in the middle of”, says an agent, while it escorts to a group of immigrants from return to Mexico.
The Border Patrol concentrates in the urban zones, where it is easier immigrants to disappear them. But the statistics demonstrate that the unique thing that they make those casts is to turn aside the flow of immigrants to zones more desolate, like Arivaca.
With the present lack of space in the jails and the courts, the United States uses a halting-liberation program, a revolving door for the immigrants.
The Border Patrol has not informed into how many of the 1,2 million realized arrests the past year they corresponded already to arrested people in other occasions. But the fact is that some immigrants are stopped up to 20 times before the agents present/display positions, says the agent Are King. When this happens, the undocumented people run the risk of going to prison if they are arrested again.
“This cannot be stopped only with the law”, says King agent. This it is a debate that has divided to the Congress and to the own party of the president. The doubt is in if different forms are due to construct more border barriers and to more hard repress the employers, or to find to accommodate the increasing flow of immigrants.
President Bush has proposed a program of temporary workers that would allow the undocumented people to work legally. The Senate will begin to debate this plan in March.
In the border, the general prosecutor of Arizona, Paul Charlton, says that Washington needs a practical solution that it includes the application of the law and the accomodation of immigrants: “We needed a law that allows them to come”.
Not wished welcomes or?
The residents of Arivaca reflect the conflicting points of view of the United States. Some protect their homes with electrified fences, others leave the doors open so that the immigrants can enter and drink water.
Some are spies for the Border Patrol. Others criticize the investigations of the border, alleging that they destroy to the desert and the human spirit. “I am going to help whatever it is hungry, thirst or is ill”, says Byrd Baylor, of 80 years, a famous infantile author whose home lodges carvings the names of emigrants who happen that way.
It allows to encamp to the groups of aid in his 35 earth acres. It is worried because it thinks that the new proposal to construct higher fences and to install lights would drive away to the wild life.
Soon he is the mess orderly Tom Kay, who is worried about the drugs that enter.
“It is necessary that a wall is constructed. Immigration will fall”, says Kay. Its dog, Ruby, offer protection to him. Her wife, Dena, take a pistol calibrates,38 hung of the waist.
She is suffered with the workers of the groups of socorrro that leave water in the desert. “They would have to go to remove brightness to its aureoles to some other site”.
The Samaritan ones also are angry. He is not unusual that is their water barrels bored by bullets.
Plutarco Elías has worked the farm of Arivaca by 20 years. Like cattle tender, taking care of a land of 600 acres, sees immigrants all along. It tells that two summers ago one was a dead man. “They are going to have to do something, either to legalize it or to stop it”, says Elías, of 47 years.
“Men, women and children Come. I am muñequitas and carts. It is very sad”.
The origin of everything is in the fall of the Mexican peso in 1994 and the American appetite by cheap manpower. Around 40% of the population of Mexico it lives in the poverty, and the average pay of a worker is of $2 the hour.
“One has put in the last ten years worse”, says Elías, “now come in herds”.
“Somebody wants to return”
The 10 of January, one hour, 31 light trucks entered a position of control near the border with the USA. When the doors were abrieron, 20 to 30 people they left to trompicones. Men, women and children teemed around an official of the Groups Beta, the Mexican agency of protection to the migrant one.
He is not here for stopping them. It and other officials gives guides of pocket with survival advice. “They wear comfortable footwear”, advises to them. “They drink water” “Rub with garlic to avoid the punctures of insects”. Also it gives tins of tuna and water bottles to them.
The border is now to only 30 miles. A signal of wagon alert of the “Extreme Temperatures”.
The Rodrigo official Sanchez time and time again repeats his to char it of three minutes, whenever a new light truck arrives. “They take his YOU GO with himself, thus, if they die, somebody will be able to identify them”, says. “If some official of the border patrol stops to them, they do not run”. “They do not separate of its children, its family or spouses”.
A greater man apreta the tiny shoulder of a boy. A mother approaches her children towards her. A young person of black hair approaches the man who is to his side. Char it is not comfortable for Sanchez.
“Sometimes I see reflected own family, especially if there are children in the group. A knot in the throat is put to me”.
The official Julio Caesar Cancino wants to construct a museum to exhibit photographies of the frightful deaths in the desert. Perhaps they reconsider then it.
After char it the immigrants return to mount in the light trucks. Before taking leave of a Cancino group he always makes a last question. “There is somebody wants to return”. We will pay by the trip, affirms. Nobody says nothing. In both years that Cancino has worked here, nobody has never accepted its supply.

For Luis, like for other undocumented immigrants, desire to visit its mother country implies another dangerous trip again crossing the border the United States.

Luis was not safe to want to risk to leave to his wife and children in Carolina of the North and to go away to visit his papas in Mexico.
He would have to return to cross illegally to the USA. He could be arrested, be shot by thieves or be left by coyote that guided to him. What it scared to him more was not to be able to return to see his family, but was not said it. It did not want to worry them. Nevertheless, his wife and her children were conscious of the danger.
All are cruzado illegally, one after another one, since it arrived at Carolina from the North ten years ago, already attemped by the existence of many works and high pays.
Luis, of 45 years, was fisherman in Mexico, gained $1 by each kilo that fished. He tells that in a good day he could get to win up to $10.
Now he lives with his wife and her two children in a trailer parked to 25 miles on Charlotte. He works in the construction; his wife in a factory. Their children majors have married and they have moved to live to other parts of the state.
Luis is a calm man of deep faith. Speech with short phrases unless envelope is speaking how God and the Virgin Maria has influenced in their life.
It says that never it has been seen in problems; a search in criminal files of Carolina of the North seems to confirm its words.
Luis and his wife are part of the increasing population of undocumented immigrants that has Carolina of the North, considered in 390.000, which it offers cheap manpower and it contributes with million to the economy.
It is a population immigrant who also uses services public like education and health. At the moment the immigrants are being watched with magnifying glass while the official public debate what to do with the 11 million undocumented immigrants who live in the USA, of which six million are Mexican.
The republican congresswoman of Carolina of the North, Sue Myrick - of Charlotte, he has done a call demanding stricter laws against immigration, mentioning two fatal traffic accidents that according to the police were fault of undocumented immigrants.
He was a little while somewhat precarious to venture itself in a new crossing of the border, but Luis missed to his papas. He had not seen them in five years. They live in Guerrero, a state of the coast of the Pacific located to the southwest of Mexico, and they do not plan mudar. They have already more than 70 years. Luis sends $500 every month to them, money that has used to buy a earth and some cows, even so feels in the obligation to go to visit them.
The risk was worth the trouble, said to him to the Observer while towards a count of its trip.
Luis had glided to cross more than 1,700 miles with his brown Nissan light truck, until his native town, Hillocks, and thus to leave it to his papas. In the middle of December one takes leave of his family.
A fulfilled promise
The parents of Luis are waiting for to him in the garden when he arrives at Hillocks the 18 from December. He handled during 48 hours.
In Christmas Luis he eats the sweet tamales of his mother and in New Year his pozole, a soup picosa made with pig and white maize. Made of less to its wife and her children.
He spends in Mexico a month almost. According to account, the 10 of January take to their papas to visit the Virgin of Juquila, in the state of Oaxaca. They are seven hours of trip, but he is anxious to teach to his parents the Virgin who has maintained to him safe and sound.
The first time that visited it to Luis was more ago than ten years, before its first attempt to cross the border. In exchange for a safe trip it promised to him to visit it whenever it returned to Mexico. It chose that virgin because she guards by a small and humble town like his.
Before Luis starts off again, their papas borrow $2.000 to pay coyote that he gives back to him with his family in Carolina of the North.
Luis takes hold a light truck towards Altar, a town in the state of Sonant that has become a key point for which they glide to cross the border of Arizona illegally. In the way, the conductor pauses in Acapulco and City of Mexico to gather more emigrants.
After a trip of 58 hours he arrives tomorrow at Altar in a January frost. A pair of hours later, Luis rises another light truck with ten men more, three women and a boy of eight years. One of the women is pregnant of four months.
They are seated in tiny metal banks.
Other eight also go to Carolina of the North Charlotte, Raleigh and Winston-Salem. Victor, a worker of the construction, 29 years, is returning to a work to the outskirts of Charlotte, in which he will throw between 12 and 14 hours daily.
“To no undocumented immigrant it likes to come to America”, says. “They come only by the money”, counts Victor, “the best form of life for our family”.
According to she says, he also sends money every month to Mexico, thus their two children can go to the school and his wife can buy the basic thing. Like Luis, is of return after having gone to visit his family in Guerrero. He had not seen them in eight years.
Reviviendo a memory
They are the 8:37 a.m. of the 18 of January when the light truck leaves the place of Altar. Nobody speech. The passengers avoid to watch an a others to the eyes. The vacations have finished. Glad ranchera music that it sounds in the radio seems an intrusive one.
The light truck begins to warm up itself, but all continue seized in the dark, with insulating shelters that hope maintain to them I warm up at night of the desert. They load with food and water for three days of trip.
Luis remains watching at the grass color honey and the fields of cacti.
Either he crossed the desert in his first trip, or one decade ago. He found a job in a plant processor of food near Charlotte, he says, and later he was united to a construction company.
Its wife wine shortly after that he, and to his they followed it children.
All work, with the exception of the small son of Luis, who still is in the school. It left to Mexico the past year.
To the 9:49 a.m. one glimpses the United States, a granite tip of about 7,330 feet of height. He is highest of the Baboquivari mountain range of Arizona, is considered like sagrada by the Tohono Indians Or' odham, neighbors of the zone.
The tip guides the emigrants by the desert. If it crosses by the Indian reserve, must be to his right. If it crosses by Sásabe, must be to his left.
At the 10:20 the light truck arrives. Nobody speech. The border is to miles of distance.
Sásabe is a place to finalize plans. The emigrants do not remain long time in this town of dusty ways and houses badly made of plate and cardboard.
Many are stopped before the Virgin of Guadalupe to ignite a candle and to say their last oration. It is the employer of Mexico.
Still he is by day and Luis and the other emigrants go towards a left brick house, to average mile of the United States. A ten of people is seated in the ground of an empty room. Other ten jam the kitchen. They are watched fixedly, moving the feet, when a reporter approaches.
Luis says, “You have marcharte”.
The tension grows as the moment approaches for crossing. Secrets developings can give to garete with the trip.
Luis insists, “Now”.
He returns to his group. They will hope here to that the night falls to cross.
“Much work and nothing of rest”
The trip punishes more to them than they hoped.
In an interview, Luis and other two emigrants describe how he crossed his group:
After happening more of a day in Sásabe, they move through close in the border, after to have handled during two hours by the desert. The Border Patrol boat catches to the majority. Nevertheless, Victor, the pregnant woman and another man manage to escape.
To they take them to the rest to a center of halting in Walnuts, Arizona, 50 miles to the east.
Luis and his group return to Sásabe giving roundups. They try to happen again with coyote, but they take hold to them.
They return to Sásabe for a third attempt.
Coyote says to him to the pregnant woman and her son who leave. They are delaying to the group. Luis and leaves them behind to the rest and follows coyote.
After walking during one hour they are attacked pistol end. According to Luis, four men clear the money to them and later they wish luck them and they alert to them of the presence of border patrols.
The group walks during 14 hours until it gathers them to a light truck it takes and them until Tucson. There they take hold another light truck that takes rights to them until the area of Charlotte, in a trip that lasts two days.
At night from the 8 of February Luis it arrives at house. Her family is hoping to him. “They were all there”, it says, “He was contented. They gave a welcome hug me”.
Luis presents/displays Jose to them, of 35 years, with which he established friendship in the trip. It will remain with Luis until he saves the sufficient thing like renting his own site.
The celebration is fast.
Luis returns to his work in the construction, rarely sees his wife, because their schedules do not agree.
When he leaves the work, about the five of afternoon, to house and usually he has dinner what it is preparation to him. If he desires to him to eat outside he will conform to the buffet of some local restaurant.
We did not enjoy our lives, says his wife, who asks not to be appointed by fear to retaliation.
“The life is all work here and nothing of rest”, says. “What we won we sent it to Mexico”.
Luis and his wife live in a small and calm neighborhood with other Mexican immigrants with whom they share meals, gadgets and the care of smallest. They have created a reliable network on which they can depend like on a family.
Some have lived calm in the United States during years. They work long hours and they win more of five to ten times than they won in Mexico.
They want better lives for his children.
In the district also it has just arrived. The pregnant woman and her son of eight years, that were left in the desert, are here for the first time. After separating of the group in Sásabe, she called to his mother in City of Mexico and she asked to him that she sold the furniture that was. She used the money to pay to a man gathered who it in the desert of Arizona, after she and their single son was cruzado the border.
They handled until Phoenix. There to another it brought them light truck direct to Carolina of the North.
It has been changed to live in the trailer with an uncle his, a street beyond the one of Luis.
The woman and her son do not speak English. It will go to a American school. At the moment it does not have income and culprit feels to depend on his uncle.
In City of Mexico he cleaned grounds in a building of offices in which it and their son shared a room. He wanted something for him more, for that reason he came here in search of a better wage.
He has found not yet it.
He misses to his mother and the father of his son. A common pain for the immigrants.
“We suffered together”, says.