Undocumented New Yorkers: Life in the Shadows

Jeff Coplon in New York Magazine recently wrote a probing article on the psychology and daily life of undocumented migrants.

It hits a little close to home.  I practiced at a small nonprofit in Brooklyn not far from Sunset Park for two years.  The profiled family could very well have come through our doors at some point.

The article confirms my experience since 2007: New York City is now a city of raids and fear as much as it is a city of immigrants.

"New York at one point was impenetrable," says Marisol Ramos of the New York Immigration Coalition's youth council, "but now the fear has become very real."

. . .

so you'll see certain dark-skinned people move to the next car when they spot a blue uniform on the subway. They steer clear of hospitals until they are too sick to stand. The undocumented are muted when landlords withhold heat, or bosses refuse to pay, or Feds search their bedrooms without warrants. When you are "out of status," you learn to keep quiet. To dodge exposure. To stay to work another day.

"They live like ghost citizens," says Kelly Fincham, executive director of the Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform. "They're here, but they're not here."

It wasn't always like this.  That's what many second, third, and fourth generation immigrant New Yorkers forget or just don't realize.

A century ago, a migrant like Alberto could have crossed the open Southwest border as he pleased. Fifty years ago, with immigration still unrestricted within the Western Hemisphere, he might have gained admittance after a head tax and literacy test. Thirty years ago, he would have entered unlawfully and then been rescued by the amnesty of the late eighties. But Alberto joined a later cohort, the surge that followed passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994. More than anything, NAFTA crystallized a neocolonial conceit: that the U.S. could foster a free flow of trade and capital while freezing Mexican labor in its tracks. The hitch was that people, unlike commodities, moved of their own accord.

Coplon notes that for the majority of migrants in this family's situation, there is no line in which to wait to immigrate legally.  But ICE is not concerned with broader issues of fairness or history.

In the fiscal year ending September 30, ICE removed a record 349,041 people from the United States, many of them severed from jobs and families after a decade or more in this country. Detention centers are crammed with those awaiting ejection; the border bristles with troops and high-tech surveillance, like the old Berlin Wall.

. . .

. . . Alberto had quit and returned to [his employer] Jesse at least half a dozen times. ("It's like a bad marriage," Luisa joked.) The boss was supposed to sponsor him for a green card, but he let it slide and soon the notion became moot as Congress phased out the program in 2001. When a co-worker discovered that Jesse had strung him along, he set his paperwork aflame on the factory floor. Alberto learned a hard lesson: "Nobody here is really going to help you."

I've seen how, as an undocumented person, you really can't trust anyone.  Not employers, for sure.  Not family, friends, neighbors, business partners, clergy, co-parishioners.  Not immigration attorneys.

You have to trust some people.  But people betray trust, and the stakes are high.

Though immigration reform barely surfaced during the fall election campaign, Obama's intentions might be signaled by his likely choice for secretary of Homeland Security, the department that oversees ICE: Janet Napolitano, the Arizona governor who has backed harsh penalties for those who hire the undocumented while opposing the criminalization of the workers themselves. Advocates dare to hope for a regenerated DREAM (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors) Act, which would give youngsters like Berto and Juliana a route to legalization through either college or military service. "That's the kissing-babies issue," Smith says. "I think we'll probably get something for the kids. The thing for the grown-ups is a whole other fight."

The DREAMers have waited, have organized, and they are ready.  But the DREAM Actc won't help Alberto and Luisa, and all the other parents who crossed the border without visas.  For that, the Democrats in Congress have to find their cojones and pass legislation paving a way out of the shadows for all those workers squashed under our economy, propping it up from the bottom.