Griego: Election results bring hope to a houseful of immigrants

Published November 11, 2006 at midnight

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Eight people gathered in a house in Aurora election night. They turned on every television in the house, three in all, set them on different channels and as the evening grew later and the Democratic victories started piling up, they became jubilant.

"We won!" they shouted around midnight, and the house brimmed with hope. Among those rejoicing were a teacher's aide who has lived in Colorado eight years, a construction worker who has lived here 18 years, a cashier who has lived here seven years, a restaurant manager and a window glazer, both of whom have lived in the state 11 years.

They are all illegal immigrants.

"It's so exciting," said the restaurant manager, who is 32 and has lived in the U.S. since she was 15. "We think with this change, with the Democrats, we have a better opportunity."

Most of the illegal immigrants I have come to know have never stopped hoping that Congress would get its act together and pass a law allowing them to work and live legally in the United States. Most people I meet have never understood how hard that has been to do.

The odds just improved. Veterans of the immigration debate are eyeing the new Democratic majority with "cautious optimism," - burn me once, shame on . . . oh, never mind - but the chances our immigration laws will get the overhaul they need are better now than they were Monday. Than they have been for 12 years.

We're talking basically about increased border security plus expanded temporary work visas and a way for the millions of illegal immigrants who live here now to become legal residents. Pay a fine. Learn English. Stay out of trouble. Pay your taxes. That's a good start toward citizenship.

Three facts can't be repeated often enough.

First, the current number of worker visas is ridiculously low. Either exhausted within a day (seasonal workers, for example) or so backlogged that years pass on waiting lists.

Second, no visas exist for temporary, year-round, low-skilled workers, for the woman taking your order at McDonald's, the man putting up drywall in your basement or pushing a trash can around your office.

Third, as long as a man or woman can make in a day here what it would take a week to earn in Mexico and Central America, a fence alone will never be a solution. (Nor, by the way, does it address the millions of illegal immigrants who enter this country legally and then overstay their visas.)

Lisa Duran, the head of Rights for all People here in Denver, nails the problem when she says that all this local tinkering around the edges fails to address the underlying problem. "Our economy and our immigration system are out of sync."

It's as simple and as hard as that. Fifteen days ago, the construction worker watching TV in Aurora was fired from his job of 11 years because he could not provide a valid Social Security number. Another 60 workers went with him, he said. Within the last three months, the fast-food restaurant manager has lost 42 employees from 11 restaurants. She says she has been unable to find legal replacement workers.

On Wednesday, President Bush called immigration reform vital, saying it was an issue "where I believe we can find some common ground with the Democrats."

A guest worker program, he said, is an important part of border security.

No one is calling this a done deal. But, at the very least, the tone of this debate should improve. Finally. Hysteria has hijacked reason for too long. In this hopped-up atmosphere, a Spanish surname, olive skin, an accent are cause for suspicion. In the eyes of too many now, Latino automatically means Mexican and Mexican means only one thing: illegal.

When the director of a language school teaching hundreds of Spanish speakers English does not want publicity because she is afraid the Minutemen may show up, you know the debate has gone off track.

When a state legislator has become so disconnected from his own humanity that what he wants to know about a traffic accident in which children were killed is the legal status of those involved, you know the debate has gone off track.

When a man in a suburban neighborhood walks up to his neighbor's house, takes the license plate number of a visitor's van and then inquires, upon being discovered, "are you Spanish?" you know the debate has gone horribly off-track.

The last incident happened a few weeks ago at the home of the daughter of Gil Cisneros. Cisneros is the president and CEO of the Denver-based Chamber of the Americas. He has been honored as one of the most influential Hispanics in the United States. He was appointed by Presidents Reagan and Bush the elder to serve as the Rocky Mountain Regional Administrator for the U.S. Small Business Administration. He's a Republican whose family has lived in New Mexico for generations.

His nephew from Albuquerque was visiting. The family said that when they asked the neighbor what he was doing he said something about Republicans needing to keep an eye out for illegal immigrants. The nephew, torn between amusement and outrage, pointed to the license plate.

"This," he said, "says New Mexico."

griegot@RockyMountainNews.com

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