Tornado Alley (PROG)

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America's poorest border town: no immigration papers, no American Dream

"Cards Against Humanity buys land along Mexican border to block wall"

Have been reading these stories we should read more of. The humanity of yours fits some in here.

In his third dispatch from the US’s most deprived communities, Chris McGreal visits Colonia Muñiz
in Texas, where the right documents can make the difference between surviving and prospering

Part 1: America’s poorest white town: abandoned by coal, swallowed by drugs
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/nov/12/beattyville-kentucky-and-americas-poorest-towns

Part 2: Poorest town in poorest state: segregation has gone, but so have the jobs
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/nov/15/poorest-town-in-poorest-state-segregation-is-gone-but-so-are-the-jobs

Part 4: A reservation town fighting alcoholism, obesity and ghosts from the past
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/nov/22/blackwater-arizona-native-americans-us-poorest-towns-

Chris McGreal in Colonia Muñiz

Thu 19 Nov 2015 07.00 EST
Last modified on Wed 29 Nov 2017 02.11 EST


Picking parsley in Colona Muñiz. Each basket holds 25 bunches, with 100 bunches typically earning around $3. Photograph: Sean Smith for the Guardian

Seven miles east of McAllen’s palm-studded city streets, the interstate off ramp slides past the sprawling branch of a popular Texas supermarket – HEB (Here Everything’s Better) – and a drive-in bank. Swinging under the highway and heading north on Alamo Road, the shopping malls and car showrooms recede at the first traces of the colonias – the ramshackle but largely unseen towns that are home to hundreds of thousands of Latinos across the Rio Grande valley of southern Texas.

[...]

The colonias

The colonias – the name derives from the Mexican Spanish for the residential area of a town – are a creation of mid-20th century developers who bought up cheap land of little use for agriculture, sometimes because it was sitting on a flood plain, and carved out plots for housing. The great bulk are in Texas where more than 2,000 colonias, home to about 400,000 people, are stretched along the state’s 1,200-mile border with Mexico. Almost half of those are to be found in Hidalgo County. But the scale of their population has not prevented their marginalisation to the point of near invisibility.

Because few in authority wanted responsibility for colonias populated mostly by poor Latinos, many without the right to vote, they largely went unregulated. The Texas state government took little interest as the plots were sold off without access to clean water or electricity, with no paved roads or sewerage systems. Mostly they were sold to Mexican migrants working as crop pickers. The buyers were in no position to complain. Too poor to be of interest to the banks, their only sources of financing were the developers themselves. Lenders operated a system of selling land and sometimes rudimentary housing at interest rates of up to 25%, but with a twist. The buyers had no title to the property until years later, when all payments had been made. If they missed a payment they could, and often did, lose everything: the land, the house and the money already paid.

...For some the only source of drinking water is to buy it by the drum or bucket. Half of all homes do not have clean water from a tap or connection to the sewage service. Even where sewage systems exist, the local authorities often refuse to hook up homes that do not meet building standards because the owners are too poor to make the necessary improvements. Texas health department figures show that the colonias have a higher rate of diseases such as hepatitis A, dysentery and cholera. Tuberculosis is twice as common along the border as it is in the state as a whole.

Theresa Azuara, a short woman with thick dark hair and a perpetual smile, was born in Veracruz, a port city on Mexico’s east coast. When she came to the US she left behind her eldest daughter, who was already married, and three children she had buried after their deaths in infancy. Azuara was keen to underline that her family had survived entirely through their own labour. As undocumented immigrants or “illegals”, as they are derisively called by many of those who advocate mass deportation, they do not qualify for the benefits available to US citizens and legal residents in low-income families.

She has neighbours who claim food stamps and housing grants but there are others in the street who share her struggle. A good number of families in the colonias are a mix of undocumented and legal residents or citizens. Sometimes the divide is across a marriage or between parents who came from Mexico and their children born in the US (giving them automatic citizenship), meaning at least one person in the household qualifies for benefits. But Azuara has had nothing from the state. She has worked at two of the few jobs she can get without papers, although both are dependent on demand. About half of the year has been spent in the fields picking crops. Once they were old enough to work, her children joined her.

[...]

She was not always deported. Sometimes border patrol officers applied their own criteria. “Three or four times I was able to save myself because I told them I work hard and I’m not a criminal. Six or seven years ago, immigration stopped and asked me, what do you ask the government to give you? I said, nothing. I don’t make the government give me anything. No food stamps, no cheques, nothing. I said I get my money with sweat. He didn’t take me,” she said. “The ‘Anglo’ officers are sometimes more considerate. The Mexicans born here are more strict. I think it’s because they consider us an embarrassment.”

Theresa has been deported 10 times and has always made it back to the US within days and sometimes hours. This ritual is not without its complications, including the loss of work. “When we got home from school there would be a little note on the door,” said Maria. “The border patrol took your parents. Go inside. Don’t come out.” Theresa smiled and said: “I have very good neighbours. They would tell the children that they took your mother to Mexico and now we’ll take care of you guys. And they did.” Maria did not smile. “It was scary. You go to school thinking maybe your parents won’t be there when you come home and maybe they won’t come back,” she said.

[...]

The piecemeal improvement in physical conditions in the colonias is welcome but it does not alleviate the other burdens of poverty, particularly for the undocumented. Census figures show that more than 40% of the residents of Colonia Muñiz are covered by public health insurance because of low income or age. But only US citizens and legal residents receive that benefit or qualify for subsidised insurance under Obama’s health reforms.


Theresa Azuara. Photograph: Sean Smith
for the Guardian

Theresa Azuara is left out. She cannot afford insurance and so must pay up front for treatment along with 36% of the other people in Colonia Muñiz, according to the census. Even a simple visit to the doctor costs about a week’s earnings from the fields. “When I get sick I have to go on working,” she said. “I went to the doctor once. He just made me lie down. He never gave me pills. But when I got the bill I freaked out because it was a lot of money. I was thinking, what did the doctor do for this money? Did he dress me in gold? So now I don’t go to the doctor even if I get sick. I just wait it out.

[...to end...]

In much of the US, the American Dream is often regarded as a birthright. For many who live in Colonia Muñiz, it is a symbol of hope but also a reminder of their second-class status and their complicated relationship with the US. “As a child I didn’t feel good because I wished I was an American but I’m not,” said Maria. “What Obama has done is good and I’m proud the United States has helped us. It is a good country. But I want it for my parents too.”

That may yet happen. Under a more recent presidential executive order, undocumented parents of US citizens and legal residents can now also apply for protection from deportation and a work permit. That includes Vallejo, who has two children who were born in the US. The order does not cover the parents of those who have applied under the earlier order, such as Maria. But her brother in Florida now has permanent residence, a green card. That should open the path for Theresa and Emilio if politics doesn’t get in the way.

The programme is on hold after Texas and 25 other states launched a legal action .. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/may/26/obama-immigration-plan-appeals-court .. to challenge the president’s authority to issue the order, although more than 100,000 permits were already issued before the legal intervention. Theresa is waiting. She has a wood burning oven in her backyard on which she cooks Mexican food. “I want to be able to put up a sign in front of my house: tamales .. http://allrecipes.com/recipe/34512/real-homemade-tamales/ .. for sale,” she said. “I cannot do it now. Immigration may see it and come and ask questions. But one day I will do that, thanks to Obama.”

MUCH more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/nov/19/americas-poorest-border-town-no-immigration-papers-no-american-dream