Life in the shadows
St. Charles County woman puts a face on the illegal immigration debate
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| An infant Cecilia is shown here with her sisters in their childhood home in Mexico. |
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She has faced countless challenges as an undocumented immigrant from the state of Michoacan, Mexico. She sometimes works 14-hour days at a St. Charles shop and is isolated from neighbors because she doesn't speak English. But she says her struggles are worth the chance for her children and nieces - all American citizens - to achieve their dreams.
The two older girls, nieces whom she has raised as daughters, want to be a pediatrician and a dentist.Thirty-year-old Cecilia is at the center of a debate that has engulfed the country, state and St. Charles County, where local law enforcement and social workers say a small but growing nucleus of people live and work illegally. An estimated 12,000 undocumented immigrants are living illegally in the St. Louis metro area, including St. Charles County, according to a study from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. Local churches and refugee advocates say the number might be slightly higher, though estimates are hard to come by because people living in the country illegally can be difficult to find and count.
Missouri lawmakers, led by state Sen. Scott Rupp of Wentzville, are pushing for a new bill that would toughen penalties for people like Cecilia and businesses who employ them. Politicians, voters and advocates on all sides have argued mightily about what, if anything, people who came to the U.S. illegally deserve here. Locally, immigration agents have cracked down on construction sites in O'Fallon in the last two years, arresting 13 and prompting bills like Rupp's.
Meanwhile, immigrants like Cecilia, who trudged through the Mexican desert 11 years ago, carry on living and working in St. Charles County every day.
Sharing transportation and sometimes housing, undocumented immigrants form tight communities, social workers say, with each looking out for the other.
Life without documents, Cecilia said, is a constant struggle. For the first year following her arrival in Missouri, Cecilia rented an apartment with 15 other people until she received help from a church, which gave her the money for a deposit on her own place. She has been deceived by criminals posing as lawyers who took her money promising to help her secure legal residency, which is nearly impossible because she had neither marriage ties nor a job offer when she came to the United States.
Click Here to hear Cecilia's story in her own words.
She spends her days working for a store that appears hers from the exterior but belongs to her sister, who is in the country legally. She has nightmares of being taken from her children. Her life, she said, is very different from her star-spangled American dream.
"It will always appear that I don't have anything," she said in Spanish, the volume of her staccato voice rising. "I live in the shadows. I can't do things the way I want because I don't have documents."
But Cecilia is able to give her children, all girls ages 1 to 16, something they could never have had in Mexico - a house. When she first arrived in Missouri six years ago, she received assistance from various groups that aid the poor, including Sts. Joachim and Ann Care Service in St. Peters. Through such groups, she was able to leave the crowded apartment for a more livable one.
Through her sister, Cecilia and her husband later were able to purchase a house in St. Peters two years ago. They get along well with the neighbors, all of them American-born. The pastel yellow paint and brick front of their home looks like any of the others on the block of their middle-class neighborhood, which is full of postage stamp-shaped lawns and basketball hoops in the driveways.
Miriam Mahan, executive director of Sts. Joachim and Ann Care Service, said her organization helped Cecilia find new housing upon arriving in St. Peters six years ago. She said she remembered Cecilia and her husband as hardworking folks.
Cecilia, who agreed to be interviewed on the condition that her last name not be used, spoke to a Spanish-speaking Journal reporter nearly a dozen times in the last three months, sometimes with the help of an interpreter. In addition to those interviews, the Journal spoke with family and friends and researched property and business records related to Cecilia. The newspaper also spoke with sources familiar with Cecilia's story, including Mahan, who has known Cecilia since her arrival in Missouri.
WORK A CHALLENGE
Cecilia, unlike the construction workers arrested during raids in O'Fallon, works in a store owned by her sister, who is married to a U.S. citizen and has become a legal resident. Her sister, Maria, now owns the very strawberry farm where the two of them first worked upon arriving without documents in Oxnard, Calif. The profits from the farm allowed Cecilia to rent space for her store. Cecilia's husband, Juan, cleans restaurants at night.
With their wages, they are able to send money back to their families in Mexico. Her brother plans to study law there, a goal that would be just a dream if she could not send money. Her parents are poor; she remembers being hungry. She remembers what it was like to live without ambition for the future.
"My father is 60 and retired, and my mother, who is 64, cleans a library in one of the government schools," she said. "The pay doesn't cover enough for them to maintain themselves, so they depend on the help of my sister and I."
Her home state of Michoacan, which lies in the southwest region of Mexico, has been the subject of government crackdowns on organized crime and drug trafficking.
With the help of migrants like Cecilia, the state also benefits greatly from remittances, or money sent from the United States. Money sent back to Michoacan is the greatest source of income for that state, reaching $1.75 billion through the first nine months of 2007, ahead of exports, tourism and foreign direct investment. But unlike previous years, the income from remittances from the United States to Michoacan was estimated to have fallen nearly 7 percent from 2006 to 2007, according to a report in the newspaper Cambio de Michoacan.
The state's capital, Morelia, is a cultural center renowned for its art galleries and museums, but also for its feathered mosaics, a tradition derived from the native P'urhepecha Amerindians there.
While Cecilia sends money to family in the Mexican town, she faces financial problems in America. The house where she and her husband live was purchased with an adjustable-rate mortgage, the now infamous culprit in a nationwide housing slide that has prompted foreclosures.
In facing a slipping housing market and carrying dreams of her children achieving levels of success she could never dream of, Cecilia seems more American than her legal status would let on. The American dream led her to this country, she said. And she continues to chase it.
"Mexico has nothing," she said.
But that's only half true for Cecilia. Mexico has part of her family. If not for her brother trying to become a lawyer and the poverty of her parents, her voyage to a strange land might not have been necessary. She chooses to live in the shadows here so they may one day step out of poverty's darkness in Mexico.
'YOU JUST KEEP ON WALKING UNTIL YOU SEE LIGHTS'
Asked how the decision was made to come to the United States or when she first wanted to come, Cecilia shrugged.
"Always," she said. "You always think of coming."
She needed the trip more than she wanted it, she said. Watching her parents work hard and having a sister who once already had come to the United States, Cecilia struggled to select a distinct moment when she resolved to sneak across the border. Sometime in her childhood, she said, she began thinking there was no other choice.
When she came with her sister 11 years ago, their journey was treacherous. Her sister previously had been sent back to Michoacan by deportation officials. On their return journey, they saw others suffer broken legs and feet; some were captured by immigration border police. It was a journey without much water, food or light, as they traveled at night. When she did sleep, it was in houses of those she had paid to guide her, safely or otherwise, to the United States.
"You just keep on walking until you see lights," Cecilia recalled.
Cecilia spent a month in the border town of Tijuana, just south of San Diego, waiting to enter the United States.
She spent that time with guides who eventually would sneak them across the border. Smugglers, often called coyotes or polleros (which means "chicken herders"), offered help crossing the border in exchange for fees of up to $5,000.
"They lend you money and clothes, so you don't look like you're illegal," Cecilia said.
But using polleros came with dangers. She knew people who were taken advantage of and stolen from as they crossed, she said.
"It's dangerous," Cecilia said with warning in her wide eyes. "There are people who rob and kill."
Cecilia and her sister Maria made it to southern California. They were filthy from the journey, she said. It felt good to take a shower and become presentable as she went searching for jobs. They landed at a strawberry field where they picked fruit among other workers, most from Mexico and Central America.
Five years later, Cecilia came to Missouri on a tip from friends here saying jobs were available. Now, with the money from her sister's strawberry farm, she runs her own shop in St. Charles.
STARING DOWN SHADOWS
As more and more politicians and news anchors talk on the air about illegal immigration, Cecilia and her husband have faced varying reactions from their neighbors and people on the street.
Cecilia knows that many people in the country think she has no right to be here, including Rupp, the state senator from Wentzville, who has proposed a bill that would crack down on illegal immigrants. Rupp's bill would make sure they are ineligible for public assistance, driver's licenses and bail. The bill also would punish employers who hire undocumented workers.
"We welcome those who come to this country, if you do not break our laws and go through the process legally," said Rupp, a Republican whose bill, SB 858, got a nod from the state Senate earlier this month and is expected to come up for another vote there. "We want to make sure we're not providing benefits and spending tax dollars on those who are here illegally when they should be spent on hardworking Missouri families."
According to a 2006 report by the Missouri Budget Project, Cecilia and other undocumented immigrants already are ineligible for federal programs such as Medicare, Social Security or food stamps. They also are unable to receive aid from Missouri's Medicaid program, subsidized child care, temporary cash assistance or housing assistance programs. Cecilia said she did not come to the United States to drain the system, only to work in it.
"I came to work; I came here to pay my way," she said. "You come to the United States wanting to work, not wanting to cause harm to anyone."
Not knowing English is Cecilia's greatest obstacle, she said. She carries around Spanish like a boulder, and said she aspires to learn English to lighten her load.
"It's a huge problem, because people think that because this person doesn't speak English, she's ignorant, or she doesn't think at all," she said. "I want to learn so they don't view me so badly."
But with work and five children in her family, time is short. She is not taking English classes, and relies on her clientele of mostly Hispanic immigrants to speak to her in Spanish.
'YOU CAME AND YOU FIGHT'
Her neighbors are kind, Cecilia said, and she finds hope in the encouraging words of others.
"There are many Americans here that say, 'You are very strong to come here without documents, without speaking the language - you are very brave,'" Cecilia said. "At school, my daughter's teacher said to me, 'I admire your family because you came and you fight.'"
Daily life for Cecilia is much like anyone else's, she said.
"You find good people, and also those that are bothered by you," she said.
"Life here is a little better than in California," Cecilia said of St. Charles County.
In California, the rent was high, the pay little, and immigrant labor abundant. When she was in California, she never owned a car.
She has lived in her present house for two years. The streets of her St. Peters neighborhood, she said, are tranquil, and provide a much safer haven for kids.
Despite her happiness for her children here, she knows she doesn't always fit in.
On a January night, putting her arms in a brown suede coat with dusty-brown fur at the wrists, Cecilia sat in a wooden rocking chair in her store. Her darting brown eyes, dark as the desert nights of her trip here, peered out from her chubby face. In her long-sleeved blue T-shirt and cotton pants, Cecilia tapped the floor nervously with her graying white sneakers in a rhythm dictated by the rocking chair, which creaked in time with the tapping.
She looked around the shop at the innocently pink and white floral-laced dresses she sells. Cecilia didn't have dresses like this in the grit of her childhood. Now her life - and livelihood - depend on the lace and ruffles, and the celebrations of little girls like her own.
YEARNING TO ASSIMILATE, BUT CLINGING TO THE PAST
Cecilia wants her own family to celebrate America's customs.
"I want my kids to become part of the culture," she said.
Her children, all American citizens, have never known Mexico as home. Their heritage has a place, too, but one that is not as important as assimilating into American culture, Cecilia said. In the past, occasional trips to Mexico with their aunt have kept her children connected to her homeland. Cecilia stayed home in St. Charles County during the trips. Crossing back and forth is too dangerous without documents, she said.
"When I explain to my daughter that I can't go with her to Mexico, she says to me, 'If you don't have the documents, I can lend you mine,'" Cecilia said with a laugh.
But Cecilia no longer allows her children to go on the trips. During her daughter's last visit, the girl unknowingly was caught in the middle of a street skirmish and was injured.
"Mexico is very dangerous - I don't want to return or my kids to return," Cecilia explained. "Life in Michoacan is too risky; there are too many bad people."
There are risks in St. Charles, too. Cecilia and her husband, Juan, said they want to emerge from the shadows and become legal residents. A few years ago, they thought they had their chance.
"Some lawyers came to the restaurant where Juan works and said they could get us documents," Cecilia recalled.
Those men, who Cecilia later found out weren't lawyers at all, said that for $500 a month, they would help undocumented immigrants become legal residents.
After paying $1,500, Cecilia brought some documents she received from the men to a friend at a church where she had previously received help. She was told the documents would do nothing to help her become a legal resident, she said.
In all, at least 100 others lost money, Juan estimated.
"There were so many people deceived," Cecilia said.
Had they been familiar with immigration law, the couple would have known that only through marriage to legal residents or via business sponsors could they become legal residents.
It was a considerable setback for Cecilia and Juan to see their money vanish after months of working to earn it.
Cecilia said she has not sought out an immigration attorney since she was duped. The gamble, she said, is too much.
St. Charles immigration attorney Elizabeth Licker said the reason most people sneak across the border is because they have no family tie or offer of work in the U.S. that would make them eligible for visas. Even with legal family ties, there are few visas that allow people to stay in the country for more than five years.
Licker said those who do marry citizens or legal permanent residents often are caught by what she called a catch-22. In order for immigration paperwork to be processed, applicants from many nations must return to their home countries. But people who have been in the country illegally for more than a year may face a 10-year ban on residency applications if they leave the U.S. In order to return to the United States legally before that period ends, immigrants must prove extreme hardship to their U.S. spouse or family. It's a wait many can't or won't stand.
THE CENTER OF UNWANTED ATTENTION
Cecilia's journey began before a recent push by lawmakers and citizen groups to crack down on illegal immigrants. Today, after several 2006 federal immigration proposals failed in the face of protest from many sides, U.S. immigration policy is more likely to be discussed at the dinner tables and city council dioceses of middle America.
In Valley Park, about 25 miles south of St. Charles, the mayor made national headlines when he pushed for a local crackdown on landlords and businesses that rented to or employed illegal immigrants. In most cases, immigration enforcement has been left to a federal agency, Immigration and Customs Enforcement. But around the country, a smattering of cities like Valley Park have passed local ordinances against illegal immigration, along with state measures like Rupp's.
Lake Saint Louis Alderman Harry Slyman has proposed a city ordinance that would require developers to be questioned about the legality of their employees' paperwork when filing for licenses and applications to build in that city.
Rep. Cynthia Davis, whose 19th District comprises parts of St. Charles County, also has proposed a measure to crack down on developers who use undocumented workers on projects paid for with public money.
City and state officials who support such proposals have said they are trying to help enforce existing immigration laws and address a problem the federal government has failed to control.
Others say politicians are using illegal immigration as a hot-button issue to scare voters into siding with them at the polls.
All the political fighting has caused Cecilia's American dream to lose some of its luster.
"When I see the news, it depresses me," Cecilia said. "But I have my kids. You suppress those feelings inside yourself so that your kids have strength."
Attention from the news media isn't the only unwanted attention Cecilia and Juan receive. Juan was stopped three times in the last year alone on traffic incidents. The couple spent $1,000 on lawyers last year so Juan wouldn't have a record or have to appear in court.
"You need to drive because you need to get to work, and without work you don't have a way to support your family," Cecilia explained.
Maj. Bill Cibert with the O'Fallon Police Department said traffic incidents account for most of his police department's interaction with undocumented immigrants.
"We don't send police looking for them and we don't get that many calls," he said. "It's mostly officers on car stops, when someone is speeding or not using a turn signal."
Sgt. Donovan Kenton with the St. Charles Police Department and Capt. Kevin Pyatt with the Wentzville police echoed that statement.
Knowing she shouldn't move too freely, Cecilia keeps a low profile.
She says it's better than Mexico, but she can't help but feel that she traded financial stability for peace of mind.
The shadows in her life seem to never go away. In the day, she cloaks herself in as much secrecy as she can take, living and working among people who don't know or care whether she is in the country legally. At night, after Juan leaves for his cleaning shift, she has nightmares of being separated from her children.
"I dream sometimes that the government is sending me back to Mexico," she said, "away from my kids."
About this series
This is the first in a series of stories about illegal immigration in St. Charles County.
The context: In the wake of local immigration busts and as election season approaches, lawmakers have proposed crackdowns on undocumented immigrants. The Journal seeks answers on what life is like for immigrants living in St. Charles County illegally, and how illegal immigration has affected the county.
Today: One St. Charles woman's life in the shadows.
Next week: Becoming a legal resident takes more than just waiting in line.
Later: How local police are working with federal agents to handle illegal immigration.
On the Web: Hear Cecilia's story in her own words, follow a map of her journey and weigh in with your comments at stcharlesjournal.stltoday.com.
