Enrique's Journey (32 page)

SCHIZOPHRENIC POLICIES

In the end, any calculus of the benefits and burdens of immigration depends on who you are. People who own businesses and commercial interests that use cheap immigrant labor benefit the most from immigrants like Enrique and Lourdes. They get a ready supply of compliant low-cost workers. Other winners are couples who hire immigrants to care for their children and drive them to school, tend to their lawns, clean their houses, and wash their cars.

High school dropouts have the most to lose. So do residents of immigrant-heavy states such as California, where an estimated third of illegal immigrants live, because services immigrants use disproportionately, such as public schools, are funded with local and state taxes.

Polls show Americans in recent years have hardened their views of immigrants, particularly those who are in the country illegally. A growing proportion—two thirds, compared with half in the mid-1970s—thinks the government should reduce immigration from current levels.

Many immigration observers believe U.S. officials have pursued a purposefully schizophrenic immigration policy. The government has added Border Patrol agents along the nation's southwestern border and walled off seventy-six miles of that divide. Politicians talk tough about catching illegal immigrants. Meanwhile, critics say, efforts to enforce many of the nation's immigration laws are weak to nonexistent.

Labor-intensive industries—agriculture, construction, food processing, restaurants, domestic help agencies—want cheap immigrant labor to bolster their bottom lines. Whenever immigration authorities make even cursory attempts to enforce a 1986 law that allows employers to be fined up to $10,000 for each illegal immigrant they hire, businesses—onion farmers in Georgia, meatpacking firms in the Midwest—bitterly complain. Fines on businesses and raids by immigration enforcement agents have gone from sporadic to virtually nil. Similarly, a pilot project allowing some employers to check the immigration status of job applicants via telephone has never expanded nationally and remains voluntary.

In essence, politicians have put a lock on the front door while swinging the back door wide open. A crackdown on the U.S.-Mexico border, begun in 1993, was designed to shift immigrant traffic to more remote parts of the border, where Border Patrol agents have a tactical advantage. Since the buildup began, the number of agents patrolling the border and the amount of money spent on enforcement have both tripled, according to a 2002 study by the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC). Yet there is no evidence, the PPIC concluded, that the strategy has worked. In fact, the number of immigrants in the United States illegally has grown more quickly since the border buildup began.

Many outcomes of the new strategy have been unintended—and negative, the PPIC says. More illegal immigrants now use smugglers (89 percent, compared to 70 percent before). Immigrants, particularly those from Mexico, once returned home after brief work stints in the United States. Today, the increasing difficulty and cost of crossing means more come and stay. The new strategy has also resulted in more than three hundred deaths each year, as migrants are forced to cross in areas that are less populated, more isolated, and more geographically hostile.

Some priests in Mexico whose churches are located near the rails are so sure the flow of Central American migrants will be neverending that they have recently built their own migrant shelters. As long as the grinding poverty such as Enrique's mother lived in exists, priests in these churches believe, people will try to get to the United States, even if they must take enormous risks to get there.

In the United States, many immigration experts have concluded that the only effective strategy for change is to bolster the economies of immigrant-sending countries. Hondurans point out a few things that would help bring that about. Forgiving foreign debt would allow more of their country's resources to go into development. Implementing U.S. trade policies that give a strong preference to goods from immigrant-sending countries would help spur growth in certain industries, such as textiles, that employ women in Honduras. Others believe the United States, notoriously stingy among industrialized nations in per capita gifts of foreign aid, should boost donations. Individuals, Hondurans note, can support nongovernmental organizations that encourage job-creating small businesses or improve the availability of education in Honduras, where 12 percent of children never attend a school.

Most immigrants would rather stay in their home countries with their extended families. Who wants to leave home and everything he or she knows for something foreign, not knowing if he or she will ever return? Not many.

What would ensure that more women can stay home—with their children, where they want to be? María Isabel's mother, Eva, says, simply, “What would it take to keep people from leaving? There would have to be jobs. Jobs that pay okay. That's all.”

M
aría Isabel travels up the length of Mexico on buses. Her smugglers secure her passage by bribing Mexican law enforcement officers all along the way. For part of the journey, the smugglers pack her and sixteen other migrants into the back of a truck. María Isabel is grateful to have a smuggler—partly because it means she can avoid the trains Enrique had to ride.

María Isabel has a setback one morning before dawn as she is swimming across the Rio Grande into Texas. She loses her backpack in the river, and the only photograph she has brought of her daughter Jasmín is in it. Yet a few weeks after leaving Honduras, she arrives safely to Enrique in Florida.

Meanwhile, whenever four-year-old Jasmín hears the drum of a plane engine overhead, she rushes outside.
“Adiós, mami!”
she yells.

Jasmín, left with Enrique's sister, Belky, asks, “Auntie, is my mommy coming back?”

“No,” Belky answers, “your mommy is with your daddy.”

Jasmín persists. “And she's not coming back?”

Belky tells Jasmín no, but that her parents hope to have her with them in the United States someday.

María Isabel misses waking up each day to bathe and dress Jasmín. She misses taking her on weekends to a doughnut shop for a treat. She misses their evening ritual, lying next to her daughter in bed. The girl would drink a bottle of warm milk, rub her mother's belly, and slip into a deep sleep.

Enrique and María Isabel call their daughter once or twice a week from Florida. They ask Jasmín if she is behaving. Jasmín tells them everything she has done that week, the places she's been, how she plays with Belky's pet rabbits. She tells them she wants to be with them in the United States. She sings Enrique songs she learns in kindergarten. But when she hangs up, it is a man she knows, Belky's common-law husband, whom she calls
“papi.”

Enrique talks of saving enough to buy a house and open a small store in Honduras someday. He talks of going back. Lourdes thinks it is more likely that her sister, Mirian, will be the one to return. In 2003, Mirian left three children, ages nine, seven, and two, in Honduras to come to the United States. She works two jobs, one as a hotel maid and another as a restaurant dishwasher. She sends $240 a month home to her children. She has remodeled her mother's house, adding a second-story beauty salon. Belky has taken courses in hair styling. Together Belky and Mirian will operate the salon. Mirian hopes to save enough money to return in the next year or two—before her children are grown.

Lourdes is happy she is with Enrique, who is affectionate. Yet she misses Belky terribly. On New Year's Day, 2006, she calls her in Honduras. Belky is pregnant. Belky will give birth to Lourdes' second grandchild, which means that Lourdes will not have been present for the birth of either grandchild. Lourdes cries and tells Belky she has been having bad headaches. “I feel like I am going to die and am never going to see you again,” she tells her daughter. “I may see you only if I fulfill my dream of retiring in Honduras. You'll see me when I'm old,” she says.

When Belky was growing up, night after night, year after year she had the same prayer. She would ask God to let her see her mother again. She told God she would be satisfied even if she only saw and hugged her mother once more. Belky doesn't tell Lourdes, but she has finally given up her nightly request. She has lost any hope of ever seeing her mother again. She has never allowed herself to even envision what a reunion might be like.

On July 31, 2006, Belky gives birth to a baby boy, Alexander Jafeth. That summer, one of Spanish television's top rated shows,
Don Francisco Presenta
, invites Enrique and Lourdes to appear on the program. Don Francisco's show is widely watched in the United States and throughout Latin America. It and Don Francisco's other major show,
Sábado Gigante
, have made him one of the most recognizable figures in the Hispanic world—a Latino combination of David Letterman and Oprah.

On September 11, 2006, Enrique, Lourdes and I arrive to tape the show before a live audience. Before going on, Don Francisco asks Enrique about his past troubles with his mother. Enrique says things are much better now. Each morning, before heading off to work, he drives over to his mother's apartment. Each morning, she hands him his morning cup of coffee. Each morning, he gives her a big hug. They love each other very much. Enrique also tells Don Francisco that he works six days a week and focuses on saving money.

Don Francisco asks him if he still uses drugs. Enrique says he doesn't sniff glue—but does smoke marijuana when he goes out with friends. Don Francisco scowls with disapproval.

The show's audience cheers as Enrique, Lourdes and I enter through a white sliding door and sit next to Don Francisco on stage. Don Francisco fixes on one point: Are these separations, in the end, worth it? What do mothers and children who have experienced them think? Would they do it again?

Don Francisco asks Enrique, now twenty-three, how old he was when his mother left him. Five, Enrique answers.

“You were pretty mad at your mom?”

“Yes, I felt alone when I was in Honduras with my grandmother. I felt resentful towards my mother,” he says.

Don Francisco turns to Lourdes. She is still torn about her decision to leave her children.

“Any mother feels bad when she leaves her children alone. But at the same time, it gave me strength and the courage to be here knowing that he could have things he could never have had if I had stayed (in Honduras).” Each month, she sent Enrique and his sister Belky money for food and for schooling. Her money has enabled Belky to build a one-bedroom house in Honduras.

Don Francisco asks Enrique why he wanted to come to the United States.

“I wanted to get to know my mom. I only knew her through photographs.”

At first, he says, he was happy to see his mother. Yet with time, the resentment he felt towards her for leaving him came out. He rebelled against her.

Don Francisco asks Lourdes if it was worth it.

“To tell you the truth,” Lourdes says, “on the one hand it was worth it—at first. But on the other hand—no. I lost their childhood. Sometimes, you feel bad.” She tells the talk show host she is glad to have two of her three children with her. “What I'm missing,” Lourdes says, “is my other daughter.” She hasn't seen Belky since she left her in Honduras in 1989.

Don Francisco's voice softens. “I know your biggest dream is to see your daughter after not seeing her for seventeen years.”

Lourdes nods. Her voice gets tight. She swallows hard, fighting back tears. Lourdes doesn't know it, but the show has obtained a visa allowing her daughter Belky to come to Miami for a surprise reunion with Lourdes.

Don Francisco continues. “It's a frustration for you.” Lourdes can't hold it in any longer. Belky's name makes emotion well up inside her. A tear rolls down each cheek. She quickly brushes them away. “I want you to think,” Don Francisco asks, “what would you want to say to your daughter, and what would you like to ask your daughter? I ask because today you are going to see her for the first time after seventeen years.”

Lourdes' face becomes a river of tears. Her eyes go vacant. She is in shock.

Don Francisco asks, “You left her when she was…?”

Lourdes sputters, “Seven years old.”

Don Francisco turns to the white sliding door Lourdes, Enrique and I came through moments before. “Here is your daughter, Belky.”

Lourdes stands. She looks around frantically.

Belky walks through the door and walks towards the stage.

When Lourdes glimpses Belky, her knees buckle. She forces herself to stay upright.

Arms outstretched, they meet and lock in an embrace. Lourdes shrieks with joy. “
Hija, te vinistes
. Daughter, you're here.” Lourdes and Belky's shoulders shake with each sob. They hold each other tight. Enrique stands. He embraces both of them—all three are together in a hug. He tells his sister she looks beautiful. Lourdes briefly turns to me. “I never expected this. I never expected this, Sonia,” Lourdes says, with tears of joy. Lourdes turns back to Belky. “I love you so much. My daughter!”

Lourdes' American-born daughter is in the audience. It is the first time Lourdes and her three children have been together in one room.

Don Francisco gives them a moment to calm down.

Belky tells him she has just given birth to a baby boy in Honduras. The boy is forty days old. It was hard leaving him in Honduras with her husband. She did so knowing this might be her only chance to get an American visa and come see her mother.

Don Francisco asks what she felt when hugging her mother after not seeing her for seventeen years.

Belky's voice fills with emotion. “Something unexplainable.” She pauses. “Something…I don't know.” She shakes her head, reaching for the right words. “After so long without her, it's very hard to explain what I feel. She knows I adore her. That I love her so much.” Lourdes dabs tears with a handkerchief.

Was the separation worth it? Belky says her mother has helped her a lot. She helped her build a small house in Honduras. “But it never fills the void I have felt for so long.” Her hand taps her heart. “Not even now that I have my baby. The love of a mother is something you cannot replace with anything else.”

Belky best answers Don Francisco's question eight days later. On September 19th, 2006, she gets up early. At a Florida airport, she gives Lourdes one last tight hug. Then she boards an airplane back to Honduras.

Back to her son.