Immigrants boycott in their own ways

 

Associated Press

It was supposed to be a "Day Without Immigrants," but their voices were never louder.

More than 1 million illegal immigrants and their supporters took to America’s streets Monday, at least 500,000 of them in California. They wore white, waved signs, chanted, sang — and their absence from work shuttered stores and work sites.

Four Associated Press reporters spent the day with individuals observing the boycott. Here are their stories.

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Ramon Cervantes, Mexican farmworker in the Central Valley

TERRA BELLA, Calif. (AP) — In the vineyards, it’s time for snipping unnecessary buds so the vines will produce perfect, evenly spaced bunches. But on Monday, Ramon Cervantes’ spring-loaded shears rested in a leather holster.

The farmworker and three relatives who share a one-bedroom apartment in this San Joaquin Valley town stayed home, joining immigrants across the country in a boycott they hope will demonstrate their economic heft.

Their employer, Giumarra Vineyards, grows 10,000 acres of grapes. Even though the foreman took down the names of those who planned to skip work, Cervantes wasn’t worried about retaliation.

"What are they going to do?" he said. "Fire everyone? There are too many of us."

All 18 members of his field team skipped work, like almost everyone else in Terra Bella. Some played with their kids in the street, others shared lunch and a beer. Cervantes and his family relaxed at home before heading to an afternoon rally in nearby Porterville.

The long process of tending table grapes in the rising heat of summer ends in the fall with workers on their knees packing the fruit for shipping. The work is backbreaking. Last year, four farmworkers died of heat stroke in California.

"I’d like to see who’d take my job," the 23-year-old Cervantes said in Spanish, sitting on the arm of a fold-out couch he shares with a male cousin at night. When deployed, their bed nearly touches the stove. His aunt and uncle share the only bedroom.

They crossed the parched Sonoran desert on foot to get here. The apartment’s cluttered walls tell the story of the family’s journey, from Aguacaliente, a village in the Mexican state of Michoacan, to this dusty town in California’s agricultural midsection.

Pictures of grandparents and babies not seen in years share space with brightly colored saints. Reproductions of the sea creatures they fished for back home hang alongside bunches of plastic grapes.

Above the front door, the black eagle of the United Farm Workers spreads its wings against a red background. Nearby is a neatly folded American flag that Cervantes’ aunt, Marta Sanchez, will wave above her head during the march, shouting "Justice now!"

"We’ll march, we’ll go wherever we have to go, because we want to be legal," said Sanchez, 49, chopping nopales, an edible cactus, and adding it to a table piled high with carnitas, tortillas, beans and fresh salsa, all bought Sunday to avoid spending money during the commercial boycott.

Legalization for this family would mean much more than being able to work. Like most undocumented immigrants, they already hold jobs.

It would mean no fear of the migra, or immigration officers. It would mean being able to have a driver’s license and a car, instead of paying neighbors $20 for a ride to the supermarket.

Most of all, for Cervantes, it would mean reuniting with his 2-year-old, Juan Francisco Cervantes Lopez. When he last saw the boy, with his chubby cheeks, he was 3 months old.

But the border crossing is treacherous. Cervantes’ aunt and uncle were caught in an earlier attempt, and a 14-year-old cousin who fled the Border Patrol got lost in the Arizona desert. When he reunited with his family in Mexico two weeks later, he was thirsty and starving.

"I can’t ask my wife to cross," he said. "It’s too dangerous. But it’s difficult, not seeing him. Children change so much when they’re small."

By Juliana Barbassa

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Wilber Prada, Peruvian gardener in Los Angeles

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Wilber Prada marched, but he wasn’t comfortable doing it.

The 45-year-old illegal immigrant from Peru supported the boycott. Like thousands of others, Prada dreams of getting papers that would let him, his wife and their 19-year-old son – a UCLA freshman – emerge from the shadows.

Until then, he tries not to draw attention to himself as he has for 16 years. And marching across Los Angeles, even among an estimated 400,000 others, wasn’t exactly low profile.

"Everyday I’m afraid to leave my house because immigration agents could come and get me," said Prada, who kept his second son, a 10-year-old born in the U.S., close as they walked.

Fear was his invisible companion.

"I didn’t want to come, but she told me, ‘Let’s go, we’ve got to support this,’" said Prada, who wore blue jeans and a leather jacket, not the white most marchers did.

Fear was no barrier for Prada’s wife, Gladys, who decided to pull their son out of class for the day.

For her, the day was cathartic. She wore a white T-shirt, blue jeans and red bright shoes. She jumped up and down while waving a large American flag, her pony tail and a blue Andean necklace bouncing off her neck. She screamed "Si se puede" ("Yes it can be done") until hoarse.

During the march, sometimes Prada would fall a few feet back. He was just too used to trying not to stick out.

"I came crossing rivers, mountains, day and night, and with a child," said Gladys, 40, reflecting on her journey from Peru to Nicaragua, then into Mexico and north from there.

Wilber came first, working four years before saving enough money to pay a smuggler to bring his wife and son, then 7.

"When my husband and I saw each other after four years it was wonderful," said Gladys.

But life can be hard. The couple was swindled of $3,000 by a shady lawyer who promised them legal residency when that was impossible. Neither have been back, and terribly miss parents and siblings still there.

In Peru, Gladys was a grade school teacher, Wilber a biologist. They left because even with college degrees they felt poor, without a future. Now Prada is a gardener while his wife cleans houses. They’ve built up steady clients and earn about $40,000 annually.

For both husband and wife, their son personifies why they came. They proudly told those around them why he wasn’t marching: He had an important exam at UCLA.

"He’s going to be an engineer," said Gladys. "For us, this is like touching the clouds with our hands."

By Peter Prengaman

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Juvenal Corona and Cristhian Villa, Mexicans who build fences and bus tables in San Diego

SAN DIEGO (AP) — Moving.

That’s what a "Day Without Immigrants" was to Juvenal Corona and Cristhian Villa.

Money is tight, but months of steady work meant the husband and wife and their 2-year-old daughter were trading the two-bedroom apartment they have shared with four others for a three-bedroom in the same modest complex.

Instead of rising early to bus tables and build fences, they slept in and woke up bleary eyed from a late night of packing. By boycotting work, they want their adopted country – and Congress in particular – to realize their economic importance.

"I hope it opens some eyes," Corona said as he watched his wife prepare ham sandwiches for a noontime rally.

Corona, like his wife 23 and Mexican born, makes $11 an hour and dreams of starting his own company – but knows he can’t get a business license. He pays taxes but accepts that he will never collect Social Security.

Still, the couple will stay here.

Rent is increasing $225 a month to $1,100, but the extra bedroom makes it worth the cost given that there are seven of them. The couple rarely sends money home to family. Corona, who can’t count how many times he crossed into the United States illegally, wants more children.

"I want my daughter to learn English, to establish a career here," said Villa, who moved to the United States legally at age 16, then met Corona four years ago at an adult school and married a year later.

On Monday, Corona rose three hours later than usual and Villa wasn’t up until 9:30 a.m., an hour after her shift busing tables for $6.75 an hour at a coffeehouse normally begins.

After loafing around the spacious kitchen of their new apartment with a neighbor, they packed the car headed to a rally at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Corona was disappointed to see only about 300 people. He scolded a man who was selling American flags; it wasn’t the right day to be making money.

Within sight of a steel-and-mesh fence that separates San Diego from Tijuana, Mexico, the couple stood impassively through speaker after speaker. Villa complained that people might leave if it lasted much longer.

Their mood lifted when they learned that a protest just over inside Mexico blocked traffic heading north through the world’s busiest border crossing.

The crowd swelled to 5,000 people. Pushing his daughter Jazmin’s pink stroller, Corona smiled when a co-worker called to say he wished he too skipped work. Villa was heartened by a friend’s reports on protests in Northern California.

Then it was time to return home.

The suntanned couple grilled steak and hot dogs and prepared for another late night moving.

Corona called work and was told to stay home Tuesday – a one-day punishment for missing Monday like half of his 12-man crew.

It was a small price to pay, Corona decided.

"It’s another $100 to make a point," he said. "I accept their decision."

By Elliot Spagat

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Sai Jun Liang, Chinese home care worker in San Francisco

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The middle-aged Chinese woman stood out in the sea of mostly Hispanic faces.

While many Asian immigrants have stayed away from the recent immigration protests, Sai Jun Liang took time off from her job as a home care worker to stand in solidarity with other immigrants in downtown San Francisco.

"The Chinese should not think this is not their issue," the 54-year-old Liang said in Mandarin. "Chinese and Mexican workers should stand together. Chinese and Mexican workers are doing the hardest, lowest-paid jobs in this country."

She joined about 40 other Chinese immigrants, mostly female garment workers. They waved signs with Chinese characters reading "Immigrants Unite," and "Don’t Separate Families."

While other demonstrators chanted "Si se puede," Liang and her group sang China’s May Day workers’ anthem as they marched past a construction site with idled equipment and no workers.

Still, many Asian immigrants see the rallies as a Hispanic, or Mexican movement, said Alex Tom, an organizer with the Chinese Progressive Association, which brought the women to the rally.

"We want to make sure our voices are heard so Asian and Latino communities know this is our issue as well," he said.

Liang emigrated from Guangzhou in southern China three years ago. Unlike many workers who participated in Monday’s rallies, she’s here legally. Liang moved to San Francisco three years ago to marry a naturalized U.S. citizen.

In China, she managed a construction company. Here, she works for a state-sponsored program taking care of elderly Chinese immigrants – cooking, cleaning, doing their laundry, taking them to the doctor.

She’d arranged to take most of Monday off, but had to leave the march early to spend an hour with a client.

Though Liang has a green card and hopes to soon become a U.S. citizen, she wants the federal government to provide a way for undocumented immigrants to gain legal status. She opposes efforts to make criminals of them.

"This is work most Americans aren’t willing to do," she said. "Without them, society would be in disarray."

By Terence Chea