That was six years ago, and Ana (not her real name) has yet to return to Mexico. Now 35, she has climbed through the ranks of the service economy from laundrywoman to maid to a successful broker for illegal cleaning women. Last year Ana made $50,000, and because her business is off the books, the money is tax-free. Such success has not come without a price. Ana cannot go home. To her children, she is now just the things she sends home: the latest videogame, the piles of clothing and the wired cash that has turned her relatives into the royal–and resented–family of an impoverished neighborhood.
Ana usually has little interest in politics, but this week she will pay close attention. With his Mexican counterpart, Vicente Fox, visiting the White House, President George W. Bush is expected to sketch out the most sweeping immigration reform in 15 years, a plan that could make Ana and millions of other undocumented workers legal. Negotiating the details, such as exactly who would be able to apply for legal residence–including whether the program would be open to all illegals or only Mexicans–could take another year.
Predictably, the idea that a U.S. president would welcome illegal immigrants during an economic downturn isn’t going over well on Capitol Hill. As a result, the key players “went from talking about a bilateral agreement to talking about principles,” says one Democratic source. Sen. Phil Gramm, a fellow Republican and Texan, said recently that any Bush amnesty would occur over his “cold, dead political body.” Yet such a law would simply formalize what already exists: a growing embrace of immigrants, legal and illegal. The new attitude is partly political. Latinos will soon surpass blacks as the largest minority, and Bush has been under enormous pressure from U.S. Latino groups to issue a broad amnesty. But there is also a recognition that the U.S. economy has been built, in part, on the labor of foreigners who arrived without visas. The new thinking can be seen in the small but growing number of states that grant driver’s licenses to illegal aliens. In Texas, they qualify for in-state tuition at state universities. Mexican officials recently persuaded some banks to allow undocumented aliens to open accounts. Even the protectionist-leaning AFL-CIO favors an amnesty.
What about all the armed agents along the border with Mexico? They capture and return thousands of illegal entrants every day. But the story is much different for those who make it into the country. At least 6 million people live illegally in the United States. Last year only 46,750 were deported. Illegals are thought to be staying longer than ever–precisely because the border has become more difficult to cross. And they’re sending home record amounts of cash–a projected $9.3 billion to Mexico this year.
An amnesty could ease the pressure on U.S. border police and encourage former illegals to visit home. But it could also result in a flood of others drawn by success stories like Ana’s–and not just from Mexico. The scope of any new U.S. immigration policy will be fought out in Congress over the next year. At a minimum, Congress is likely to create an extensive guest-worker program, which would provide temporary visas to Mexicans. Democrats and some moderate Republicans want a broader legalization that would be a first step to U.S. citizenship–if migrants can prove they have been in the United States before a certain date. But even that compromise has sparked vitriolic reaction among the most conservative Republicans, who argue that it would be rewarding illegal behavior.
Ana doesn’t want a reward–just to be with her children from time to time. Like most people who sneak into the United States, she was simply following a family trail. Relatives had arrived illegally a few years before, and they took her in to their apartment in the New York borough of Queens. From there, the trail led to a job-placement service that charges $100 to find you work, papers or not, usually in less than a day. “If a restaurant required papers, nobody would work there,” says the boss. “Who ever heard of an American dishwasher?” Ana took a job in Manhattan folding and delivering clothes for a laundry, 12 hours a day, six days a week, for $200 a week, paid every Wednesday in cash. It was eight times what she earned in a sock factory back home.
While many undocumented immigrants cling to the world of illegals, Ana cultivated American friends. On a laundry delivery, Ana met Christina, a teacher who offered her a job cleaning her studio apartment and introduced her to friends who also needed maids. Soon Ana had enough clients to quit the laundry business. “Suddenly she was making more money than me,” Christina recalls.
But back in Ana’s hometown of Puebla, what she earns is practically a scandal. Using cash wired by Ana and her siblings, her family is building a sprawling two-story structure that overshadows the cinder-block shacks of her neighbors. The new home is already filled with plush sofas, stereos and television sets. As in many Mexican barrios, where the difference between poor and comfortable is a relative in the United States, her family’s conspicuous consumption has bred deep resentment. Poorer kids are banned from the house out of fear that they would steal toys and food. “I don’t have friends,” says Angel, Ana’s 13-year-old daughter. “I have money.”
Ana hasn’t seen her son, Misa, now 7, since he was an infant. Her daughter made the trip across the border–with false papers–to New York in 1996, but soon grew rebellious and flew home. “If I want to continue giving them a better life, I can’t be in Mexico,” Ana says. “I would not be able to pay the bills. I have to be here.” Ana’s mother sometimes wonders if the family is paying too high a price for their prosperity. Four of her eight children are now in the United States, all illegally. “It was better before,” she says. “Although we were poor, we were content. Now we have everything, thanks to them, but they are not here.”
Meanwhile, Ana has been sucked into the culture of consumerism. She arrived with one pair of shoes. She now has 60. The shelves of her apartment are filled with videos. She orders $3.50 cappuccinos. And she admits that it is her new taste of the good life, almost as much as her concern about her family income, that keeps her in the United States. “Mexico is a strange country to me now,” she says. “I am part of here.”
Today Ana holds the keys to 70 Manhattan apartments, though she rarely cleans anymore. Instead, she assigns other Mexican illegals, most of them recently arrived, to jobs and pays them $200 a week. “They can’t communicate at all with the clients,” says Ana, who is just starting to string phrases into sentences in her new language. To avoid English problems with her customers, she bought a fax machine so they can send her instructions and maps. She also asks them to pass on her business cards. “New York is my gold mine,” says Ana, who is expecting a baby with her boyfriend in February.
On a recent afternoon, Ana rests on a bench in Central Park as police and in-line skaters pass by. Her mobile phone rings. Ana’s daughter is on the line. Ana is happy to chat, but that day she awaits a more urgent call. Her cousin left Puebla for the border a few days earlier, and Ana is waiting for a call from the smuggler instructing her to send a $1,600 money order to Phoenix. Ana had agreed to put up the money, as her sister had done for her. The call finally comes, Ana sends the money and a week later he arrives on a plane from Los Angeles. At the moment, he is not planning to stay long.
