October 31, 2000SPECIAL REPORTMarvin's Journey: The promised landTrying to fit in
Marvin's daily routine begins with a train ride, followed by rides on a bus and a van. His warehouse job his hard, but he's grateful for it. 
Three days after his arrival, Marvin was set up with a fake Social Security card and resident alien card. When he applied for his job, he found the cards were not necessary. Marvin's dream is a reality. He's settled in and working for $6 an hour stacking boxes in Boston. But for the illegal Salvadoran immigrant, the fear is not over. He could be discovered and deported at any time.Last of three parts Story by Ignacio Ibarra • Photos by Jeffry Scott ARIZONA DAILY STAR BOSTON - The alarm sounds at 4:30 in the tiny room that Marvin Hernandez shares near Boston's industrial district with his brother, Francisco, and eight other men from Central America. Forty-five minutes later, Marvin steps into the dark from the run-down brownstone and boards a train. It takes him across the Charles River to high-rise office buildings downtown. There he catches a bus that travels past Boston Harbor out to working-class Chelsea. He rides the rest of the way to work in a beat-up van with 15 other Latino men and women.
Just a month after arriving in Boston, Marvin has been on the job three weeks, stacking gift boxes eight hours a day onto shipping pallets at a factory warehouse for $6 an hour. The work isn't easy, but it pays him more in a week than -the 2,000 colones he earned in a month at the tire shop in El Salvador. By 6:30 at night, he's back in his spartan room, studying English by himself. Marvin acknowledges that his life doesn't sound like much, but it is his American dream come true. It was all worth it to him - the 4,200-mile journey across El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico and the United States, and the thousands of dollars he spent to join the half-million people a year who cross into the country illegally. Marvin is now helping to change the character of Boston. It's still called Bean Town, but with the Hispanic population growing by nearly 50 percent in the last decade, the traditional baked beans are giving way to black beans and rice. Boston is slowly changing Marvin, too. "I feel good here. I feel like I'm home. The only difference is that I can't be as free to go where I want, to shop, to go into some place to eat or drink. But I don't worry about it. Things are hard here, but it was much worse in Salvador," he said. "I'd like to go out and see more, but I don't know. There's the fear. "You're afraid from the day you set out, and you're afraid all along the road until you get here. Then you get here, and you're still afraid. "I don't know how long it will last. It takes awhile to get over it, I guess." False documents Marvin worked quickly once he arrived in July, getting his fake Social Security and resident alien cards in three days. "I gave this guy a photograph, the information and $100, and three days later I had them. They're fakes, but they're good enough to get a job," he said. "Getting false documents is easy. There are a lot of people who will do it." Marvin filed some job applications but found his factory job a couple of days later with the help of a friend from El Salvador who also lives here. "He took me to see the people, and I was hired," he said. "They didn't even look at the card. The man asked me if I had a Social Security number, but he didn't ask to see it." That's one reason Marvin's brother, Francisco, moved to Boston almost a year ago, after first leaving El Salvador to join his father in Los Angeles. A friend told Francisco it was much easier to get jobs without legitimate documents in Boston than in Los Angeles. Francisco gave Marvin a book on English instruction, and Marvin covets time to study it. "If you can speak English, you earn more, so I try to learn a different page every day," he said. "But it's hard to learn English here because everywhere you go people speak Spanish." Just seven weeks after leaving El Salvador, he's blended into the immigrant community. There's more Spanish than English spoken on some of these streets. Japanese, Korean and Russian are heard, too. Many find a piece of home at Mayfair Foods, a small neighborhood grocery in Brighton that caters to Central Americans who fled wars in the 1980s. The shelves are stocked with Spanish-language music, videos, magazines and newspapers, along with beverages and foods, like Central American yams, tropical fruit drinks and Salvadoran Cheetos.
At home in El Salvador, Marvin lived near a Domino's Pizza. Today his neighborhood is dotted with Latino cafes. He mixes it up, splurging on roasted chicken at Boston Market or rice, chicken and plantains at a Brazilian buffet. The Census Bureau estimated in August that 391,000 Hispanics live in Massachusetts, the state's second-largest minority community behind the 405,150 blacks. The government estimates the number of illegal immigrants in Massachusetts at 85,000, just behind Arizona's 115,000. The numbers could be far higher, Latino leaders in Boston say. Salvadorans are a big part of the picture. Only Mexicans outnumber them among illegal immigrants in the United States; in the city of Boston, they account for nearly half the Hispanic population of about 70,000. An alien world This helps explain why Marvin feels at home in his new neighborhood. The world nearby, though, is alien to him. He lives near Boston University, not far from Cambridge and Harvard University. Shops, restaurants and pubs that pour Guinness cater to the university students, business professionals and tourists, as on Tucson's North Fourth Avenue or Tempe's Mill Avenue. Marvin doesn't have the money to shop. And he's too nervous to go out for an evening of nightclubbing or drinking for fear he'll be carded and his phony I.D. will be discovered. He's noticed three college coeds in the bottom floor of one apartment building. When they have parties, they line the front rail of their porch with brightly colored candles. "They look like they're having fun," Marvin said wistfully. Despite all his roommates, Marvin is usually alone. "There are 10 of us, but I don't really know anyone but my brother. I see them in the hall and say hello. They say hello back, but that's all. "Everyone has more than one job, so people are in and out all the time. It's rare that everyone is there together, but there's always someone there." The apartment is probably temporary. The landlord is raising the $1,600-a-month rent by at least $200. The roommate who signed the lease decided that's too much, and he's looking for another apartment in Jamaica Plain, Chelsea or out in Waltham, where rents are lower and the buildings sounder. Some people see problems in the new migration. Seth Cooper, 22, a Boston University graduate, said Hispanic immigrants began arriving in his neighborhood four years ago and still have little interaction with the community. As their numbers grew, they started competing for housing with students, driving up rent. "I don't think that's really helped the community because there's not a lot of housing and students are having to move farther away," Cooper said. But Michael Salamone, 58, owner of an auto repair shop and billiard bar on Cambridge Street, said Boston is a city that appreciates diversity. It welcomes new immigrants the same way it made room for the Irish, Italians and Puerto Ricans. "It's a regular United Nations here, and we have never had a problem," Salamone said. "The immigrants that come here from Latin America have a good work ethic. They don't just have one job; they have two or three because they want to have the American dream." He's opposed to the idea of new immigrants, particularly illegal immigrants, on welfare. But he's equally opposed to exploitation, especially when it comes to pay. "I believe they should get paid for what they're doing. In Massachusetts, a family man needs to take home at least $500 a week to live." Job discrimination So far, Marvin said, he and other Central Americans have been made welcome at the place where they work, at least by their co-workers. "The Americans treat us well and try to talk with us, but the language is a problem. I think they appreciate us because, at least in that factory, if it weren't for us, the gringos would be doing all of that work." But exploitation on the job is one of the biggest problems faced by immigrants, particularly illegal immigrants, in New England, said Jenny Alexander, program coordinator for the Immigrant Workers Resource Center in Boston. "For immigrants in general, discrimination and a hostile work environment are a big problem," she said. "Workers are underpaid, there are illegal firings and there are so many tricks that employers use in order to avoid paying people." The problems often go unreported, she said, because victims don't know where to go for help or are afraid of losing the job or risking deportation. Immigrant workers are in demand with unemployment below 3 percent in Massachusetts. The labor shortage is a serious problem in the heavy-construction industry. Boston has massive projects under way, including the "Big Dig" - a $14 billion highway tunnel - and several major hotels. "There's a shortage of skilled workers whether they are immigrants or not," said Frank Callahan, legislative director for the Massachusetts Building and Trades Council, an association of trade unions. "What matters is the skills they have." The council has targeted immigrant abuses, including employment agencies that hire laborers, then take most of their money by charging for transportation, lunch, check cashing and other services. Two years ago, the council came to the aid of Mexican workers who were moved with their families into a construction site trailer, then made to work without pay for six weeks, Some labor groups even support amnesty for undocumented workers, many of whom are "hard-working and dues-paying members of our union," said Gabriel Camacho, business agent for the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Local 26 in Boston. The union has also called for an end to sanctions against employers who hire undocumented workers and to the law making them responsible for obtaining proof that a job candidate is here legally. "The U.S. economy is in very good shape right now and can absorb the part of the work force that is undocumented," Camacho said. "The key for the labor movement is not to alienate this population of workers but to open the house of labor. They are the key to economic strength in the future."
The influx of immigrants, both legal and illegal, is driven by dynamic growth in the high-tech economy, said Daniel J. Monti, a sociology professor at Boston University. "That many of these people are probably going to become far better citizens than I am is a no-brainer. They don't take for granted that which I was privileged to be born into. These newcomers, both illegal as well as legal, have every incentive to learn our customs and try to fit in as best they can." Hard to get ahead Marvin still hasn't sent money home to his mother, Angela, in El Salvador. The high cost of living in Boston has made it difficult to save, he said, and he owes his brother Francisco nearly $3,000 - for the coyote in El Salvador who helped get him here and for air fare from Phoenix to Boston. "I'd like to send about $200 a month to my mother, but I'm still gathering that money together. It's expensive to live here. I spend about $200 for the room, and I think it probably costs me about $10 a day for food and everything else." Marvin is slowly getting used to living as an illegal immigrant in Boston. Alberto Calzado, who slipped over the border and made his way to Boston from Mexico, is seven years ahead. "I crossed the border at Tijuana, and then I walked in the desert for more than eight hours," said Calzado, 26. "It was nothing; I would do it again. I would rather be here - I'd rather die trying to get here - than to live in that damned country." Calzado started as a dishwasher and worked into better-paying jobs as his English improved. Now he earns $11.50 an hour as a cook and lives in a Boston suburb with his girlfriend and her children. His younger sister, a single mother, joined him in late August with her three young daughters after an 11-hour march across the desert to Tucson, then on to the Phoenix airport. "I asked my niece about it, and she said, 'Tio, I got stuck and scratched by the plants, and I got so tired.' But then she smiled and said to me: 'Tio, I like it here. It's so cool and green.' " He choked up as he recounted the story.
"It's like that for Mexicans, and it's the same for Guatemalans, Salvadorans and everyone else. We'll take the chance; we'll gamble everything, our lives, our families. Why? Because there's money here. There's hope." Still, many illegal immigrants say they would like to return to their homelands someday. Going home is a common theme among new arrivals, said Francisco J. Hernandez, who is not related to Marvin. He runs the local Gigante Express, a courier service used to send money to Central America. "When they first arrive, the people talk of returning to their homes and using the money they will earn to buy a home or set up a business, but there is really very little hope they will return and even less of setting up a business," he said. "But Boston is a good place; it offers advantages. For one thing, there is no one looking for you." A mother's hope In July, when he was still stranded in Arizona, Marvin Hernandez said he hoped to stay in Boston for just a year or two. Long enough to earn some money to help his mother. Long enough to put away some cash for a minivan to haul people and cargo around for a fee back home, in San Salvador. His mother, Angela Hernandez, was never so sure he'd be back. She hasn't seen her husband, Miguel, since 1992, when he left for Los Angeles, although he's always sent money home to her. Her son Francisco left three years later. Now her only other son, Marvin, who just turned 26, has joined Francisco. Like so many families separated by the northern migration, Angela fears they'll become disconnected to each other as the years go by. Visits home become nearly impossible when the costs and dangers are so high. But since Marvin rode away on the Condor bus the morning of June 22, Angela had kept up hope through a daily ritual. Every evening she placed a tarp over the 1985 Isuzu pickup that Marvin left behind, to protect it from the overnight rain. She has never driven. But once a week she asked one of Marvin's friends, or his girlfriend, to turn the engine on. Marvin, the mechanic who liked to tear out photos of fancy cars from magazines to hang on his mother's walls, had rebuilt the truck himself. He asked his mother to keep it ready for his return.
But Marvin is no longer talking about coming home to join his girlfriend, Nancy. "I hope that someday I'll have enough money that I can bring her here to join me," he says instead. Ten days ago, he asked his mother to sell the truck. * Contact Ignacio Ibarra at (520) 432-2766 or at nacho@primenet.com. 
 Ignacio Ibarra, 45, has covered border issues for the Arizona Daily Star since 1991. He lives in Bisbee. Jeffry Scott, 38, has been a Star photographer since 1996. Both men have traveled extensively in Mexico and Latin America. They also worked together to produce the Star's special July 1999 report, "Lives on the Borderline." We want to hear from you about immigration situation Marvin Hernandez wanted a way out of the poverty that pervades his homeland of El Salvador. So he paid $5,700 - nearly twice what he earned in a year - to travel 2,000 miles through El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico to join the half million other people who annually slip into the United States. Some questions to consider about Marvin's story: * What does Marvin's story make you feel about illegal immigrants? Does it make you change your mind about them and their attempts to cross into this country? * And what about the larger issues raised by Marvin and others like him? * If illegal immigrants make it into this country and prosper, should they be allowed to stay? Should the status of illegal immigrants be considered on a case-by-case basis? Or should they all be automatically returned to their homelands? * What about the border with Mexico? Should more be done to regulate and control the flow of illegal immigrants? Or should existing immigration laws be reconsidered to allow some entrants easier access? * And what about our relations with Mexico and other Latin American countries? Should the United States push them to more aggressively help control illegal immigration? We'd like to share your thoughts in an upcoming edition of the Arizona Daily Star. To respond, e-mail letters to thinkq@azstarnet.com or fax them to 573-4107. You also may mail responses to "Marvin's Journey," Arizona Daily Star, P.O. Box 26807, Tucson, AZ 85726-6807. You also may phone in messages of no more than two minutes to 573-4209. All letters and messages must include the author's full name, address and daytime phone number. |
