Facing Deportation but Clinging to Life in U.S.

Shop owners in Waukegan, Ill., say that the crackdown on illegal immigrants has kept their mostly Hispanic customers away

WAUKEGAN, Ill. — She is a homeowner, a taxpayer, a friendly neighbor and an American citizen. Yet because she is married to an illegal immigrant, these days she feels like a fugitive.

Whenever her Mexican husband ventures out of the house, “it makes me sick to my stomach,” said the woman, who insisted on being identified only by a first name and last initial, Miriam M.

“I’m like, ‘Oh, my God, he took too long,’ ” she said. “I’ll start calling. I go into panic.”

Over the last year, thousands of illegal immigrants and their families who live here have retreated from community life in Waukegan, a microcosm of a growing underground of illegal immigrants across the country who are clinging to homes and jobs despite the pressure of tougher federal and local enforcement.

From Illinois to Georgia to Arizona, these families are hiding in plain sight, to avoid being detected by immigration agents and deported. They do their shopping in towns distant from home, avoid parties and do not take vacations. They stay away from ethnic stores, forgo doctor’s visits and meetings at their children’s schools, and postpone girls’ normally lavish quinceañeras, or 15th birthday parties.

They avoid the police, even hesitating to report crimes.

“When we leave in the morning we know we are going to work,” said Elena G., a 47-year-old illegal Mexican immigrant and Waukegan resident of eight years who works in a factory near here. “ But we don’t know if we will be coming home.”

Last year, federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested more than 35,000 illegal immigrants, including unauthorized workers and immigration fugitives, more than double the number in 2006. They sent 276,912 immigrants back to their home countries, a record number.

Since about three-quarters of an estimated 11.3 million illegal immigrants nationwide are from Latin America, and many have spouses, children or other relatives who are legal immigrants and citizens, the sense of alarm has spread broadly among Hispanics.

A survey by the Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan research group in Washington, found in December that 53 percent of Hispanics in the United States worry that they or a loved one could be deported.

Stores catering to Hispanic immigrants in places like Atlanta and Cincinnati have closed because of the drop in customers. Michael L. Barrera, president of the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, said anecdotal reports had indicated that small storefront businesses had been the hardest hit by a sharp decline in spending by immigrants.

“The raids have really spooked them in a big way,” said Douglas S. Massey, a Princeton demographer who has studied Mexican immigrants for three decades.

Based on his own surveys and recent reports from other scholars doing field research in the Southwest and in North Carolina and other states, Professor Massey said the “palpable sense of fear and of traumatization” in immigrant communities was more intense than at any other time since the mass deportations of Mexican farm workers in 1954.

Federal immigration officials say that stepped-up enforcement over the last year by the Bush administration and some local authorities has persuaded growing numbers of illegal immigrants to return home. But in places like Waukegan, a racially mixed middle-class suburb north of Chicago, most have chosen to stay, held by families and jobs.

This city has been an immigrant landing for generations. Latinos have been coming since the 1960s and now are 40 percent of the population of 91,000. The number of illegal immigrants among them swelled in the last decade.

Despite their illegal status, those immigrants found steady jobs in factories and landscaping. Lacking Social Security numbers, they used Internal Revenue Service taxpayer numbers to open stores and businesses, enroll in the community college and take out bank loans to buy cars and homes.

The welcome began to fade four years ago, when the city government increased fines and penalties for driving without a license. Since Illinois requires a valid Social Security number for a license, many illegal immigrants lost their cars when they could not afford the fees for impounded vehicles.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/18/us/18hide.html?_r=1&ref=us&oref=slogin

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Oh no! How awful for the criminals!

 They arrived here of their own free will, they are free to leave the same way.  These people do not do the jobs Americans won't do.  They take the jobs that employers do not want to pay a fair wage and benfits for.  The government says it is not feasible and too expesive to round them up and deport them.  I take issue with that.  They know where the welfare checks and food stamps are sent, they know where their kids are enrolled in school.  Pick them up and send them back and lock the Damn gate!  They have no right to be here!  Too expesive?! what is the cost to continue to support them and the hoards that keep coming while politicians stall long enough to get through the election cycle without losing the illegal vote. 

These people are taking food right out of the mouths of American Citizens and deserve no mercy or pity.  Let the Mexican government that is dumping its unwanted trash in our yard take care of them. 

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I don't feel sorry for them at all . Americans need jobs too . We have TAXES to pay ! Why can't they go straighten out Mexico ? Leave us alone  , blood suckers

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AMEN BROTHER!!!

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I sure hope they self deport .  Would make things easier.  Doubt that will happen tho.  But the laws being passed by states are sure helping !!!

Fearful and traumatized?  Afraid to leave their houses?  Yeah Right.  These are the same illegals that march our streets and display their national flags, demand OUR Country give them rights and sue bosses for having to speak english on the job?  What a joke.  And if an American married an illegal knowing they are illegal, I say Oh Well!  if they get caught and carted off, then the legal spouses can go live in their country when they get deported.

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speakengl said: Fearful and traumatized?  Afraid to leave their houses?  Yeah Right.  These are the same illegals that march our streets and display their national flags, demand OUR Country give them rights and sue bosses for having to speak english on the job?  What a joke.  And if an American married an illegal knowing they are illegal, I say Oh Well!  if they get caught and carted off, then the legal spouses can go live in their country when they get deported.

 

Now just for the shake of argument . If N.Pelosi was giving America citizens land plots and money to move to an "A+ Country" would you not do it. I sure would (long as my whole family comes too , which Nancy would approve ). This is my #1 issue with the Freak'en Dems . Way to lib with our laws , culture and heritage . If they need votes so bad ? why don't they act American ? Stop pandering to every ideology and giving away what we don't even have . 

Pelosi is going to have us learn spanish , i just know it . Dubya does nothing bout the redirick from Mexico . The Mexicans come here thinking they own the place cause thats what there told . Lot of rigged elections coming up with tens of thousands of illegals voting . 

i've send 3 e-mails to the Salvation Army giving my support . Nancy P is just plain out of her jack-ass mind  

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tencz57 Said:  Now just for the shake of argument . If N.Pelosi was giving America citizens land plots and money to move to an "A+ Country" would you not do it. I sure would (long as my whole family comes too , which Nancy would approve ). This is my #1 issue with the Freak'en Dems . Way to lib with our laws , culture and heritage . If they need votes so bad ? why don't they act American ? Stop pandering to every ideology and giving away what we don't even have . 

Pelosi is going to have us learn spanish , i just know it . Dubya does nothing bout the redirick from Mexico . The Mexicans come here thinking they own the place cause thats what there told . Lot of rigged elections coming up with tens of thousands of illegals voting . 

i've send 3 e-mails to the Salvation Army giving my support . Nancy P is just plain out of her jack-ass mind  

 

Their reasoning is very simple in their simple little minds.  The are taking us too a one world socialist goverment that is wholly owned and operated by the UN or some other "World Body".  It really is in our "best interest" we are just too poor and stupid to know that.  That is why inour wisdom we have elected them so that they (using every sneaky underhanded tactic imageinable) can drag us kicking and screaming against our will  to our salvation.  Just fall in line, drink the Koolaid and it will all be ok 

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Clues like this: works in a factory near here..should alert ICE and they need to go to every single factory near Waukegan and find these people.   

Another clue: Despite their illegal status, those immigrants found steady jobs in factories and landscaping. Another way for ICE to catch these illegal aliens.  ICE should go to every single landscaping contractor and ask them for a list of all their employees. 

How about bars, Night Clubs, etc.  These Mexicans love to party and find girls in Night Clubs and when they leave I am sure they are completely drunk.  Excellent chance to round them up and send back home - MEXICO. 

 

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Go to any dem stump speach, they are there by the thousands, Also the culinary workers union in las vegas is a good place to start.  They have to run ads in spanish because their non english speaking workers are going to caucus today.  If you can't speak english you can't vote thats the law, none the less these illegals will cast their votes in droves and no one will stop them.  Not only will they not deport these people, they will let them decide who is president of the United States. They just have to drag this issue out long enough to sneak the North American Union under our noses, then with one North American currency and no borders there are no illegals.  Hillary said it: "No Human is illegal"

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I know the feeling - "clinging to life in US". My senior citizen status has put me at the bottom of the food chain. Regardless of what many feel, not every senior owns a condo or two and is independently wealthy. And with the housing and mortgage crisis as it is and food prices steadily rising, many of my younger fellow citizens will soon be joining me, if they have not already.

Money paid out through our taxes for free programs for illegals amounts to billions and billions of dollars. I am sure it would not cost that much more to round them up and send them home. In the long run, we would save money. I have never felt the need to go on the public dole, but the job market has been taken over by hispanics. After all, they are hard workers. I, myself, after raising four children and having a job with scant salary, have never learned how to sweep a floor or wash dishes or do the laundry or cut my own lawn. I'm too lazy. I am untrainable. I am American.

Congress will be coming due for their annual raise that they voted themselves last year so they won't have to vote on it every year. I propose, seeing that they get these annual raises and colas, they do the cutting back on their "bennies" - taxpayer paid limousines, cheap lunches, hair cuts, hair stylists, franking privileges, congressional aides, secretaries or rather, administrative assistants, and all manner of everyday services housed in the halls of congress for which we have to travel miles to access - and pay for ourselves to boot. It is all there under one roof for them, our employees. What good bosses we are! We are American.