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AN IMMIGRANT'S STORY
Coming to Athens, Part 3
Editor's note: The story below concludes a first-person
account by an Athens resident of coming to the United
States illegally from Mexico. Read Parts 1 and 2 at www.
flagpole.com.
T he first night I slept on a hide-a-bed. It was
like paradise, considering the hellish jour
ney I had been through. Early in the morn
ing, I got the surprise of my life: a little three-
year-old boy who had been watching me while I
was sleeping. He seemed very interested in how I
slept. The first thing I saw in Athens was his tiny
face: my grand-nephew's face.
He was born here in Athens. That makes him
a citizen. In recent months, he had big problems
because of the new immigration laws, which de
nied Medicaid and PeachCare for him. For several
months, he has not had medical insurance; This
is the same situation facing a lot of children
whose parents are undocumented. The law is
confusing to the medical community, and so very
often the children's medical insurance is fouled
up. These anti-immigrant laws are affecting our
families, but especially our children. Citizens
or not, the children are guilty of nothing, yet
they are being penalized every day. Laws like SB
529 (before it was modified) included a propo
sition denying citizenship to children of the
undocumented. Luckily, that part of the law was
defeated. Children born here remain citizens, but
their parents can still be deported without them.
One example is the case of Elvira Arellano, who
has been deported while her son remains in the
United States. He has his life here, his friends
and his school. Now they are fighting to get back
together. I cannot imagine being separated from
my daughter or my son. These laws are designed
to particularly target children, children like my
grand-nephew. Now they are citizens, but what
would happen if they lost their citizenship?
A PLACE TO SLEEP
The second night, I moved to the place I
would live in for the next several months. I left
my nephew's house and I moved in with my
friend who was waiting for me. The apartment
had two rooms. One had a space for a single bed.
I had to sleep there on the floor, along with an
other guy, and someone else had the bed. It was
June and there was no air conditioning in the
apartment. It had broken long ago. The tempera
ture in there was like 100 degrees. The problem
was that no one there spoke English and no one
knew that the landlord was responsible for re
pairing the air conditioner as well as the carpet,
stove, windows, doors, and so on. Everything
there needed repair. The first night, the three
of us slept in a room designed for one. We had
just one fan for the whole room. The fan was
about five or six inches in diameter and pointed
towards the guy on the bed, missing me com
pletely. It was difficult
to sleep, and it was
very hot. Still, I was so
tired from the trip that
I slept anyway.
Suddenly something
moved over me, wak
ing me up. I opened
my eyes, but it was
dark and whatever it
was moved really fast. Then I realized that it was
a roach, the biggest roach I ever saw. I started
to panic. I felt frightened. There I was with the
biggest roach I ever saw in my life, crawling over
my body, in a country that has a macro-economy,
a macro-market and macro-roaches!
My friend and the other guy slept as if noth
ing happened. Now, it seems hard to believe how
we fit in that little room, the three of us and the
giant roaches.
When I took a look at the next room of the
apartment, there were six people laying across
the fioor, while othe r apartments had more
people, like 10 or 12 in one room and others
sleeping in the living room, even the kitchen. It
was cheap living like that, but you had to live
with people you never knew before. But when I
told a friend about my first nights in this coun
try, he said, "That's nothing compared to my
first night." But that is another story for another
time...
FIRST DAYS
From the first day here, everything was new to
me: the food, the language, the culture. It is very
difficult for an adult to learn another language.
Whoever says that we do not like learning English
is wrong. It is just that it is very difficult. Even
children, who learn much faster, are in school six
hours a day, and then it still takes them months
or years to learn. As working adults, we attend
churches or schools to learn English, but we
come to these classes only after eight hours of
hard work. Once I was sitting and listening to
the teacher and I couldn't help but keep blinking
my eyes. It took great effort not to fall asleep,
because after eight
hours of digging holes
or cutting chickens,
the only thing you
want to do is sleep.
What really made a
mark on my first days
in the country was
my fear of everything,
especially the police.
I remember one day I was riding with a friend
to visit another friend. At the entrance of the
parking lot was a police car with its lights flash
ing. They had pulled over a Latino and had him
handcuffed, ready to put him in the car. At first,
when I saw the lights I felt my breath quicken,
but when I saw that the side of the car said
"state patrol," my heart started to beat fast,
too. I started to sweat all over; all the panic was
because I associate the world "patrol" with the
INS. And I had the idea that the immigration
service was hunting and spying everywhere in
the United States, which was what I had been
warned about in Mexico: at any time the authori
ties could come and you would have to run.
GOING TO WORK
I started working construction, making floors
for big stores and doing other work. The pay was
good. We drove every day to South Carolina. The
guy vho drove the truck drove very fast. Every
day, this guy, a "gringo," a tall white man, drove
90 miles an hour or more, listening to rock and
roll. He had this machine to detect police on
the highway, and always when we came back
from the job, he snorted cocaine, drank beer
and played "air guitar" or "air drums," taking his
hands off the wheel to do it! This was more like
the America I'd seen in the movies...
One day, the bosses stopped us early. They
took us out to the translator and said that
Immigration was there. Someone had called
Immigration on us, so it looked like they were
going to check our IDs. I was in a panic, but
there was nothing I could do. We waited, but no
one came over to ask us anything. I lost that job
right away.
I found other work with a company making
holes for cable lines. It was the hardest job I
have ever had in my life. I worked under the
sun with a pick and shovel. I did this work for a
week, but a guy disappeared with our checks. I
did not see a single penny for that week of work!
It happens every day to construction workers,
especially to Latino day workers. Their employers
cheat them. In most cases, nothing can be done.
Usually these day laborers are not even given
the names and addresses of their employers, and
even if they have that information, they still
have no rights.
TENDERS
One day, I found a job in a poultry factory. It
was hard from the first day. The first thing you
noticed when you went in there was the smell;
the next was the cold. It was cold no matter
what month it was, or what the weather was like
outside. You always had to wear a sweater.
The first day they trained me to cut tenders.
The first 30 minutes standing and working was
kind of hard. But after an hour of doing the same
thing, standing was painful. Cutting 32 chickens
per minute, 1920 per hour, the pain in my hands
became unbearable. If you were to tell someone
If you were to tell someone “This is a
hard job,” most of the time they’d tell
you, "Querias Norte”— ‘You wanted
Norte, you got Norte"—which meant
“Shut up and keep working.”
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8 FLAGPOLE.COM • SEPTEMBER 19, 2007
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