Agricultural Personnel Management Program
University of California

10/6/00 News Report -- The Chicago Sun-Times

Like many Chicagoans, Berta Ramirez worries about her children's grades, her elderly mother's poor health and saving to buy her dream home.

What is remarkable is how low the Immigration and Naturalization Service is on her list of concerns. After all, she is an illegal immigrant from Guatemala.

"The INS doesn't scare me," said Ramirez, 49, who asked that her real name not be used. "But there are situations sometimes, like when you drive and you see a police car behind you and you say, `Oh God, don't stop me . . . they're going to ask for papers, and I don't have any.'"

Because of the booming economy, experts say, there are more illegal immigrants in this country than ever. And critics say the INS isn't doing much about it.

The INS once routinely used commandolike raids to remove undocumented employees from workplaces. No more. Immigrants such as Ramirez are being left alone.

An all-time low unemployment rate has heightened the need for workers at the lowest economic rung. That means illegal workers such as Ramirez -- who has a factory job in the western suburbs -- have to commit a felony to get the attention of the INS.

Critics charge that the immigration agency's hands-off approach amounts to an amnesty for the more than 5 million illegal immigrants said to be living in this country. Each year, between 275,000 and 420,000 enter the United States, according to INS estimates.

Illinois has an estimated 290,000 illegal immigrants, the fifth-largest population behind California, Texas, New York and Florida, and about 16,000 are said to enter each year. Most of them live in the Chicago area, with the majority coming from Mexico, Poland, the Philippines, Guatemala and El Salvador.

But even with such high numbers of illegal immigrants, work site raids in the Chicago area have dropped to eight this year, from 69 five years ago.

The INS has focused on deporting illegal immigrants who have committed felonies. It even has started a gang unit, a sex offenders unit and an anti-fraud unit to help local police go after lawbreakers, said Marilu Cabrera, a spokeswoman with the agency's office in Chicago.

"Our focus in the agency is changing from just going into a company to investigating more criminal aliens and people who are definitely a threat to society," Cabrera said.

"We just don't have the manpower to go after every person that is here illegally."

As workplace raids have dropped, deportations of criminals have increased. They are deported after they are convicted and serve prison sentences in this country, Cabrera said.

This year, 42 percent -- 1,022 of 2,417 -- of the people deported between October 1999 and Sept. 1 were criminals. Only 14 percent of those deported five years ago were criminals.

For Ramirez, who has lived in Chicago since 1993, the INS shift has meant that she can walk around like anyone else.

She can deposit her paycheck into a bank account, which happens to be in a legal relative's name. She can board a crowded bus in broad daylight, which used to make her nervous.

From the North Side apartment she shares with her husband and three children, she doesn't hesitate to talk to government officials these days. She even has shared private information about the family's status with U.S. Census workers who have knocked on her door.

Even going to a post office used to make her shake with fear because it is a government agency with wanted pictures of felons and people in uniforms. But she is no longer afraid.

But that doesn't mean her life is easy.

The main problem is that without a valid Social Security number, she can't get a driver's license, and her children can't get financial aid to pursue college courses.

If there is an accident involving a car, it is quickly settled in cash.

"There's always something," she said.

To be sure, even when the INS was cracking down, employers never felt its wrath as harshly as workers.

In the past, shop owners and factory managers were slapped with fines of a few hundred dollars, while the illegal immigrants were deported, said Edward Logozino, deputy director for investigations at the INS Chicago office.

It was difficult for the INS to levy fines because the agency had to prove the company knowingly hired an undocumented worker.

That was difficult because of the availability of high-quality fake Social Security and residency cards. Employers simply would say they were duped by the cards, which workers can pick up for less than $100, Logozino said.

"There was possibly a fine put against the company, if that," Logozino said. "Then they were back in business."

But critics charge the INS, Congress and the Clinton administration with hypocrisy because, even though the agency has beefed up its border patrols, it has virtually eliminated any enforcement inside the United States, said Steven Camarota, director of research for the Center for Immigration Studies.

"What you have are laws on the books and an increasingly difficult border to cross but no real effort where it's needed, which is work site enforcement," Camarota said.

"In effect, we say run the gauntlet, and if you make it, we've got a job for you, and you're free and clear."

The farther immigrants get from the Mexican-U.S. border, the safer they feel, said Daniel Vazquez, a 22-year-old illegal immigrant from Mexico, who asked that his real name not be used.

He crossed the border with two friends, one of whom was nabbed immediately by the Border Patrol and deported. A second friend was caught later in California and also deported.

Vazquez made his way up to Chicago seven months ago, where he managed to find work almost immediately with an industrial cleaning service. The risk was worth it for a chance to make some money, he said.

"You're not afraid here. In California, you're afraid that at any moment you're going to get picked up. . . . The worst thing is not knowing English," said Vazquez.

"Even if you make $30 a day here, it's a lot of money. In Mexico, you only make $4 a day," he said as he walked out of an English language class on the North Side.

Critics contend that the shift by the INS has meant unskilled people who earn relatively low wages are coming into the country and taking advantage of services, Camarota said.

A July study by the Immigration Research Center found that immigrants and their children amounted to 59 percent of the growth in the nation's uninsured population since 1993.

"Illegal aliens still get sick and still have to use services, so they go to Cook County Hospital, and taxpayers have to pick up some of the bill, and some of the bill is written off as charity care," Camarota said.

Carmen Sanchez came to Cicero from Mexico four years ago. She and two daughters joined her husband, who had been living with relatives.

Her aim was to give Laura, her 14-year-old severely mentally retarded daughter, a shot at a better education. Because the Cicero school district couldn't accommodate her daughter, the district had to pay to have her attend a private school in Chicago designed to treat special education students.

For $90, she bought false Social Security and immigration cards, which let her hold her factory job. Because the job pays only $170 a week, her husband must hold down two jobs and works seven days a week.

Still, it's worth it, Sanchez said.

"In Mexico, when she was in school, they had her sitting in a corner the entire time," said Sanchez, who asked that her real name not be used. "That's why I'm happy here."

And the U.S. economy is benefiting from the illegal immigrants who are here to work, said Paul Zulkie, a Chicago immigration lawyer and the national secretary of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

The 6,500-member group of immigration lawyers supports the INS policy shift.

"The vast pool of undocumented workers are not a threat -- they are, in fact, an asset that keeps our economic engine rolling," Zulkie said.

In its latest survey of economic conditions, released in June, the Federal Reserve System found that worker shortages "persisted in the Chicago area as well as other parts of the country."

The report concluded that severe worker shortages would be worse if not for the inflows of immigrants. In fact, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has testified before Congress that the labor shortage is "the greatest threat" to America's economic expansion.

Even the AFL-CIO, which once rallied against illegal immigrants, has been calling for reforms that would help illegal immigrants. The union sees immigrants as viable new members, said Executive Vice President Linda Chavez-Thompson.

"Throughout our country's history, immigrants have played an important role in building democratic institutions and vibrant new communities," said Chavez-Thompson.

But even though there are enough jobs to go around at the moment, some experts predict that when the economy slows, undocumented workers will have the jobs that citizens and legal residents should have, said Barry Chiswick, a research professor and head of the department of economics at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Chiswick applauds the INS for going after criminals, but he criticized the agency for paying too much heed to the claims by many employers that they cannot find enough workers.

"Employers would have less difficulty finding workers if they paid higher wages," Chiswick said. "The INS is going to be making it more difficult to enforce immigration laws in the future when the next recession comes, and the next recession will come."

Sitting on her living room couch, Berta Ramirez was surrounded by family photographs and reminders that she is a spending consumer as well as an illegal worker: a VCR, a DVD player, a stereo and a large television.

She recalled what she had to give up in Guatemala to get such trappings. There, she was an accountant with her own office, employees and a secretary.

When she arrived in this country, she was cleaning homes for about $60 a week. Now, she's a factory worker taking home about $250 a week, which is supplemented by the $30 a day her husband brings home from his car wash job when it doesn't rain or snow.

Still, it's more than they ever made in Guatemala City, where they earned about $400 a month.

"What my children have here, they could never have had back in Guatemala," she said.

"The United States offers us a refuge."