The Story of a People on the Move

The Story of a People

on the Move

BY TODD SVANOE

This report on immigration aims beyond simplistic media formulations of economic disparities or campaign rhetoric. It reveals poignant ironies rarely mentioned by either “amnesty” or “enforcement” advocates, whether the backfire of tightened border patrols or the disappointment of immigrants’ hijacked dreams.

It tells of tragic choices and trans-border aspirations that have been greatly complicated by the absence of sound US public policy. It underscores the urgency of reform, but even more, the importance of informed hospitality, empowering relationships, and proactive community development on both sides of the border—until “justice rolls down.”

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Juan, who has made this crossing once before, smiles. “It’s like a game of cat and mouse. If I’m caught and sent back, I don’t care. Mexico is my home.”

US border enforcement is hard to take seriously. Of the 5.2 million border crossers arrested between 2000 and 2005, only 2 percent were ever prosecuted.

Thus, Juan and his group are undaunted.Young and old swim the 30 yards to US soil, are ushered around a border patrolman, and then begin the hardest part of the trip—walking without food for four days. Heatstroke, dehydration, and hypothermia on this inland journey are the leading causes of death for more than 1,000 Mexicans per year on both sides of the border, a number increasing as tightened security leads to more daring evasion efforts.1 The smugglers offer no employment guarantees for the travelers, just rave stories of success and advertisements of the types of jobs available in each state. States like Minnesota, with a thriving economy and progressive social service tradition, are particularly attractive destinations.

Ten years ago, Minnesota was dubbed a “new Ellis Island” by one think tank, rivaled only by Georgia, Kentucky, and North Carolina for the steepest recent influx of immigrants relative to existing populations.2 And that was before 95 percent of the Lake Street entrepreneurs had arrived.

Each September, 25,000 Latinos flood Lake Street to celebrate Mexican Independence Day. Seventy percent of them are estimated to be here illegally.3 Minneapolis community leaders have learned much about the drive, capabilities, and struggles of their new neighbors, a learning curve that would benefit community leaders across the country, whether pundit, politician, or policymaker.

WIDE ANGLE: The hope and tragedy of Latino immigration

On a spring day on Lake Street in South Minneapolis, bulldozers roar, clearing away “Crack Alley” and, along with it, its history of drug lords, prostitution, and porn shops.

In its place a wealthy Palestinian business developer is building a shopping mall, and eager Latino entrepreneurs are flooding in, lining up to lease every storefront.

In 10 short years, a three-mile stretch of this business district has become home to 255 Latino businesses, according to the local Latino Economic Development Center.“Blink and you’ll see 20 more Latino businesses here,” the developer says lustily, as tenants unfurl awnings, paint slogans on windows, and unload merchandise.

Meanwhile, 2,000 miles away in San Jose, Guanajuato, Mexico, two cargo trucks are being loaded with 20 men, women, and children, all headed north in search of a better life.

The group gives the most comfortable seats to elders who will need their energy at the border to swim, drop, or run, if necessary, to evade US agents.

Contracts are inked: $2,500 a head, double the price commanded by smuggling “coyotes” before the US renewed its efforts to tighten the border. Most of the money is extended as loans by sharks who must be reimbursed through work the immigrants hope to find in the US. Days later, the pilgrims arrive at the border, dusty and tired, but full of adrenaline, with Texas in plain view just across the Rio Grande. After waiting at a lookout, a few at a time are escorted to densely bushed areas where they stay until dark, awaiting the signal.

Opposite: A South Minneapolis man expresses his love for both his country of origin and his adopted country at last year’s Mexican Independence Day festival on Lake Street. Photo: Daniel Rojas Right: On May Day 2006 immigrants and their supporters filled the streets of Los Angeles, protesting House bills that would criminalize 12 million undocumented people, among other things. Photo: David Bacon

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greed and political corruption are still rampant, and most industries are monopolized by leaders who receive “absurd” tax advantages, according to Mexican foreign policy expert George Grayson.10 Social programs have until recently largely ignored half of Mexico, including “rag pickers from fetid slums,” says Grayson. Agricultural workers in southern states like Chiapas or Oaxaca, for example, earn literally $1 a day, dwarfed by the $8 an hour paid in rural Minnesota.11 However, it’s not this “extreme poverty” that is driving most migrants north.

It’s “relative poverty”—personal dignity and self-respect.

Undocumented Latinos who emigrate are three times more literate than the Mexican national average.12 In fact, more than 55 percent of foreign-born Latinos in America today are high-school or college educated.13 These are individuals with drive and ambition who are simply unwilling to accept their home country’s depressed standard of living.

A World Bank report helpfully illuminates the dimensions of poverty in Mexico. After the Mexican economy had stabilized in 2004, 18 percent of urban and rural Mexicans still struggled with “food poverty,” 25 percent experienced “capacities poverty” (lack of opportunity to advance), and 48 percent faced “assets poverty” (lack of land or capital to invest).14 First-generation single adults like Juan, whose main goal is rapid material betterment, receive predictably high dividends from American employment. If you ask young men like Juan why they are in Minneapolis, the first thing they say is “to send money home.”

“I sent $7,000 last year,” said Juan, who since 2001 has picked sweet potatoes, laid concrete, landscaped, and sorted mail, never lacking work for more than a month.

In 2005 unauthorized manual laborers like Juan held 36 percent of all insulation jobs in the nation, 29 percent of all roofing and drywall work, 27 percent of all food processing, and 24 percent of all farming.15 Today more than $23 billion annually flows from the US into Mexico, making remittances the country’s second greatest source of income after oil.16 The social uplift from these donations is widespread, as an estimated one in four Mexicans receives money for food, housing, or education from America.17 Euphoric tales told by Minneapolis immigrants are reminiscent of gold rush days in America. For example, migrant worker cohorts from Axochiapan, Morelos, wire an after-expenses $4 to $7 million each month to that hometown alone.18 The governor of Morelos, the second smallest state in Mexico and home to an estimated 45 percent of the Mexican immigrants in Minneapolis, has visited Minneapolis and even set up an embassy-like center to assist immigrants in transition, according to Rodolfo Gutierrez, director of Hacer, a Latino research institute in Minneapolis.

When undocumented adults are deported, their children—many of whom are US citizens by birth—are often left to raise themselves.

Photo courtesy of Help4Kidz

Fleeing a land of plenty?

Today’s manic migration from the Mexican border to the city of Minneapolis reflects a demographic phenomenon confronting nearly every major US city. The nation swells with the ranks of an estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants, 75 percent from Mexico and Central America.4 Why do they come?

If measured by natural resources, such as oil and precious metals, Mexico in 2008 is better off even than the US.5 Its modern economy is 12th strongest in the world and the healthiest it’s ever been if measured by its “purchasing power,” with a 3 percent gross domestic product “growth rate” and its inflation rate holding steady.6 This is not to overlook Mexico’s severe income disparities and systemic troubles, but since the 1992 North American Free Trade agreement, the country’s overall stability and welfare have steadily improved, its fortunes generally running parallel to those of US industry, as 70 percent of its exports go directly north.7 Juan and his fellow travelers did not leave home because they were unemployed. Their state leads its nation in autopart and shoe production, and its silver mining is second in the world. In fact, Mexico has enjoyed less than 4 percent unemployment for most of the past decade.8 Yet its per capita income is 51st in the world at only $7,216, compared to the US, which is seventh at $45,660.9 Juan had the option of staying and working in construction with his father. But “Why should I?” he asks. “I would make $200 a week at home. In the US, construction pays up to $700.”

Much could be said about the extreme economic gap between the Mexicans who still live in dire poverty and the developing middle class and spiking upper class. Corporate

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“Towns like this have become literally deserted, like ghost towns,” said Gutierrez. “Nearly the entire male population has relocated.With money sent home you see houses springing up and new roads being built to provide government services.”

Minneapolis Star Tribune reporters visiting Axochiapan found that while in previous years “sewage and refuse piled up in dry creek beds” in the town of 30,000, money from Minneapolis has paid for sewer pipes and a new sewage treatment plant.

A private hospital has been built for $3 million. The next anticipated purchase: the town’s first fire truck.19 This sister city relationship is hardly an isolated example, according to Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Mark Bixler, who profiled the 5,000 residents of Villa Juarez, San Luis Potosi, that have resettled in Atlanta. “It’s a classic immigration pattern that has transplanted thousands of villages and towns from five or six states in the middle of Mexico to places around the United States,” writes Bixler.20

Fernando presented fake papers at a checkpoint; Mrs. Hernandez used a false visa and came by a conventional airline; and Mr. Hernandez fled through the desert on foot.

There was one obvious hitch to this plan: Fernando knew no English.“He learned enough to get along in a Minneapolis public school,” said Mrs. Hernandez. But still, the adjustment, especially for a teenager, was difficult.“He was embarrassed that other students were better dressed,” she said, “and he needed to work to help us survive and to send for his sisters.”

Six years later Mr. and Mrs. Hernandez have missed much of their daughters’ childhoods, Mr. Hernandez’ painting business doesn’t earn enough to cover their mortgage and utilities, and their three-bedroom home does not even meet their needs, said Mrs. Hernandez, who has had two more children since arriving in the US. Fernando finally dropped out of school and worked at a carwash and Mrs. Fernando admits the move wasted Fernando’s talent. “He’d have been better off at a Mexican university. If I had known then what I know now, I never would have come.”

The story of immigration includes many such painful chapters. Some young people, like Fernando Hernandez, can’t navigate the rough waters of two languages and cultures, violent neighborhoods, and poor school systems. They become statistics: 49 percent of gang members in the US are Latino,22; 51 percent of all Latina teens have become pregnant at least once before age 2023; and 41 percent of all high school dropouts are Latino.24

Sacrificing families for futures?

The stories of Mexicans in Minneapolis reveal a stark contrast between the carefree optimism of single adults, who are sending thousands of dollars home each year, and low-income, heavyladen parents who struggle to advance their families’ fortunes in America while bearing its high cost of living.

Years ago the Hernandez family’s ice cream parlor in Mexico City appeared to be doing well. But in reality, soaring utility bills forced them to scrounge for food and clothes left on curbs in wealthier neighborhoods. The Hernandez family felt especially deprived of two “capacities” that Americans take as basic rights—education and healthcare.

Mexico spends only $1,656 per student on education, one-third of the $5,450 average for the 30 countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and public subsidies to health providers are a mere $662 per year for each Mexican compared to the $2,500 OECD average.21 The Hernandez family’s brightest hope, their son, Fernando, embodies the tough and often ironic choices of many transborder families. An A-student, Fernando was already studying at a Mexican university at age 16. “He could have become a lawyer,” said his mother.

The combination of Fernando’s costly bronchitis treatment and his hopes for better educational opportunities convinced his parents to emigrate with him, leaving three daughters behind whom they planned to send for eventually. In doing so, however, they amassed $7,000 in debt to coyotes for safe passage: When Ernesto Reyes opened Me Gusta Market in 1993, he became the first Latino grocer of S. Minneapolis. Photo: Todd Svanoe

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Perhaps the highest cost is the agony of family separation.

To grasp the hardship and harm that flow from this problem, one need only look at cities to the south that have been facing these consequences for generations.

Help4Kidz, a faith-based child rescue mission in Phoenix, Ariz., knows about the plight of Latino children, having interfaced in some way with 40,000 of them since 1995.

Many lower-class Mexican families with hopes for a better life find the educational, language, and unemployment barriers insurmountable, explained Help4Kidz founder, Eve Nunez. Some adults turn to drug dealing, theft, or prostitution to survive. Others are arrested for their illegal status.

“More than 65 percent of Help4Kidz children have a parent who is in prison,” said Nunez of kids she serves from the three poorest neighborhoods in Phoenix. “Then it is typical for the single parent to go to work, leaving children without any supervision.”

Often the oldest youth is then pulled from school, as was Fernando Hernandez, either to care for younger siblings or to work for rent money. Thus, the brightest hope of the family—the future of a ladder-climbing youth—is sabotaged.

Nunez has received calls from hundreds of parents who are about to be deported, whose children are US citizens by birth, urging Help4Kidz to take their children, said Nunez.

Many are left behind —most with older siblings, relatives, or adoptive neighbors.

security can be a nearly impossible leap. Lake Street’s 255 shops, for example, have replaced criminal activity and brought relative stability to the neighborhood. However, the owners have not escaped poverty by American standards. In fact, only 20 percent of the 255 Latino shops on Lake Street are “profitable,” said Romero. And all have struggled with raised rent and slow business seasons.

Indeed, Reyes himself bought and renovated a business mall. When the investment failed, brought down by a struggling Latino tenant base, it caused his other seven businesses to fold as well.

Meanwhile, Minnesota’s Governor Tim Pawlenty stirred up “Hispanic panic” in January of this year by moving to overturn the Twin Cities’ “don’t ask, don’t tell” illegal immigrant sanctuary ordinances and directing law enforcement to work with US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, a further detriment to businesses attempting to set down roots.25 The bottom line for real poverty relief is that until a legal base is placed beneath the enterprising ambitions of the nearly 1 million illegal Latinos who come to the US each year,26 longterm generational stability is unlikely.

A groundbreaking study of the family trees of 20 successful African-Americans, including Oprah Winfrey and Whoopi Goldberg, has found that 15 of the 20 celebrities are descended from a line of former slaves that obtained property by 1920, when only 25 percent of African-Americans owned property.27 Sadly in America today, notes the author, “in the wake of the subprime mortgage debacle, an enormous number of houses (owned by low-income families) are being repossessed.”

Latino families and business owners are among these property owners.

Legal status is also necessary for continuing education.

Countless aspiring youth have returned to Mexico after reaching the apex of legally allowed opportunities in the US. They may have shown great promise, graduated from high school, and qualified for scholarships, but were legally forbidden further progress.

The proposed federal DREAM (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors) Act that failed to gain cloture in October 2007 was designed to pave the way to citizenship for 1 million youth of unauthorized immigrants entering college or the military.28 “I want to study!” exclaimed one Minneapolis youth interviewed for this story. “All I want to do is become a gym teacher and a soccer coach. If the president cares about education, he should make a way for everyone to go to college.”

We’ll see if anyone in Washington hears these words.

Nunez of Help4Kidz, whose teenaged daughter hopes to become America’s first Latino president, is running for public office this year herself, to make sure someone does.

Legal status could change the picture But history is also filled with success stories of rising fortunes for naturalized immigrants on American soil.

Consider Monica Romero, a business consultant at the Minneapolis Latino Economic Development Center, serving many of the 255 Latino business entrepreneurs on Lake Street.

She came to the US at age 25 after being denied an advancement at the second largest bank in Colombia. “They used the excuse that they couldn’t hire from inside, but that was ridiculous,” she said, implying gender discrimination.

Since arriving on American soil, she has obtained her master’s in business, empowered other women as a career coach at an agency called Women Venture, and has found her calling guiding dozens of Latinos/as through business plans and financing.

Or Ernesto Reyes, who came to Lake Street in 1993 as its first Latino grocer. All he needed was a patch of ground in an American city to develop Me Gusta Market, which now sells specialty meats to shoppers from miles around. By 2001, Reyes owned four grocery stores and three restaurants operated by his parents and five siblings.

Yet Romero and Reyes have found that moving from their improved standard of living to real wealth and economic

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Healthcare. “Illegal immigration is the number-one reason our healthcare system is on life support,” said California congressman Elton Gallegy. According to the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, 60 hospitals in California alone were forced to close between 1993 and 2003, primarily due to unfunded emergency services for illegal immigrants.

Pennsylvania and New Jersey hospitals provided nearly $2 billion in free emergency and short-term care to uninsured patients in 2002, a large share of them illegal immigrants, according to Gallegy.30

POLICY:

Can we balance enforcement and hospitality?

Public schools. Across the nation, the cost of public school support services for immigrants’ children, from ESL classes to student counseling, have broken already strained school budgets and has contributed to school closings around the nation.

The simplistic thinking that guides much of today’s immigration debate was illustrated, on one side, by a protest sign defending undocumented workers during a December 2007 crackdown at a grocery packing plant in Queens, N.Y. Fresh Direct has become a successful $200 million online grocery business, thanks in part to illegal workers. When the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement warned of a visit, managers ordered workers to update their Social Security identification, which led to an exit of 100 of its 900 employees.

That’s when one of two unions vying to represent the workers posted a sign on the chest of an oversized mouse that read, “Who Would Jesus Deport?”

Chances are Jesus would refer the policy matter, as he did the paying of taxes, to Caesar, while treating as sacred any Latino individual God placed in his path. The union’s implication—that a national policy solution is simple—is naïve.

Neither those demanding closed borders nor those demanding amnesty present the complex issues that sound policy will have to address.

Law enforcement. Former Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official and current immigration attorney Mark Cangemi confirms that the ICE national support center is besieged today by a staggering 600,000 inquiries a year from law enforcement agencies, court administrators, and other officials. Deciding just one case of a legal child in a dual citizenship home whose parents are being deported can tie up a court for months, he said.31 There is no doubt that public services in some heavily immigrant-settled communities today are at the point of collapse. Policies that fail to address these problems will fail, as has the one obvious approach the US Congress has funded: increased border control.

Border backfire Throughout US history, immigrants have followed a circular “enter, return home, re-enter” pattern of immigration, a flow symbolized by seasonal Mexican migrant workers.

Ironically, the “border control” billions spent on walls, fences, and floodlights have upset that natural flow, not so much keeping immigrants out as keeping them in.

The US/Mexico-sponsored Mexican Migration Project (MMP) studied 20 years of undocumented immigration from 1980 to 2002, projecting numbers from records of border arrests, border-crossing deaths, and deportation trends. The study found that, while many assume the US is now experiencing what one think tank called “the highest five-year period of (Latino) immigration in our history,” the rising undocumented population is actually due not to a spiked inflow but to a trapped outflow.

While the rate of arrivals remained unchanged for these 22 years, the rate of return to Mexico dropped from 42 percent to about 25 percent when the US Congress enacted

Overwhelmed public services Diehard amnesty advocates likely do not contend with the daily stress of public systems overwhelmed by undocumented visitors in heavily settled areas of the country. Unless better policy mediates a more gradual assimilation, a systemic breakdown may be on the horizon.

Child protection. Since Arizona became the gateway of choice for unauthorized immigrants in the mid-’90s, swamped schools and child protection service workers there have not been able to tread water, according to Steve Capobres, author of Arizona’s 2003 Poverty Report. “A few years ago the state knew of more than 300,000 latchkey kids under the age of 13 but could only subsidize child care for 35,000 of them,” he said.29

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When the US issues visas, they are not to refugees fleeing injustice, said Holloway. “They are to doctors and astrophysicists.” At the same time, “We turn a blind eye while paying low wages and building economic success on the backs of the undocumented,” he said. “There is an element of exploitation in that.”37 A guest worker program would certify labor shortages and coordinate work placement in specific industries. Even without a pathway to citizenship, such a program would dignify labor that is now of a disputed status and ensure that American workers are not displaced.

As mentioned earlier, more than 55 percent of foreignborn Latinos seen in America today are high school or college educated.38 In the absence of a guest worker program, even highly literate immigrants with needed skills sometimes cannot navigate the US employment process.

Consider Sara, a nurse who came to Minneapolis in 1993.

“As a single mother with three kids in Mexico City, I made $80 a week. It wasn’t enough to buy them food and clothes.”

Unfortunately, when she arrived she learned she would need American schooling to obtain nursing certification. A guest worker placement office in Mexico could have told her that and could have required her to learn English before approving her application.

Instead, after 12 years in the US and still unable to handle an English nursing curriculum, she gave up and returned to Mexico. “Now I was 45, and every employer in Mexico City said I was too old to hire.” In despair, she paid $3,000 for a border crossing to re-enter the US. Although a nationwide nursing shortage exists, Sara’s skills remain unused. Her new husband, Humberto, arrived in the US with degrees in accounting, law, and education from the University of Mexico. But without guest worker placement, both Sara and Humberto clean buildings for a living.

border-tightening legislation in 1986, 1993, and 1994.

Moreover, because of more crafty smuggling at nontraditional locations, the rate of apprehension also decreased from 33 percent to 10 percent during that time.32 New border legislation is also expected to backfire. As one border-tightening critic said, “Show me a 16-foot wall, and I’ll show you a 19-foot ladder.”

Ironically, all that the $10-billion-a-year US Customs agency has produced is disincentives for making a “round trip”: a dramatic increase in the cost of smuggling services in the last 10 years and rising numbers of border-crossing deaths, which have doubled in that time to 1,000 fatalities per year.33

Latinos as economic widgets?

Some frame the immigration debate as a mere question of new immigrants’ “net value” to the US, i.e., the benefit of their productivity, goods consumption, investments, even Social Security contributions, minus the costs of their healthcare, education, imprisonment, etc.

Yet macro-analyses vary widely and often seem politically motivated. For example, last year a Heritage Foundation senior fellow presented to a US congressional subcommittee a supposedly “comprehensive” analysis of the annual costs of undocumented immigrants. However, only the cost of lowskill immigrants was assessed.

“The annual fiscal deficit (total benefits received minus total taxes paid)...equaled $89 billion” in 2004, he said, with a mere footnote mentioning that immigrants may also contribute to America’s GDP.34 As it turns out, they do so in spades, according to the National Academy of Sciences. “Due to immigrants who have arrived since 1980, total gross national product is about $200 billion higher each year.”35 However, that figure does not distinguish legal from illegal immigrant contributions. A definitive analysis would have to include the national gain from the estimated 45 percent of illegal immigrants whose work is “off the books.”36 Many believe that funds generated from a better-managed guest worker program or immigration policy would easily pay for the public services required for healthy assimilation of Latino immigrants.

Revitalizing inner cities, illegally A second area of American self-interest which could lead to a win-win outcome for Mexican-American immigration policy is the need to revive blighted center cities around the nation. Most Americans would gladly relinquish this turf to anyone who sees its possibilities.

It is no small irony that industrious “illegal” immigrants are revitalizing formerly criminalized neighborhoods today, from Brooklyn to Chicago to Oakland.

Could a geographically specific business relocation program, including business loans and capital investment resources, give immigrants the opportunities they seek while reviving economically depressed areas and improving property values, as they have done throughout American history?

Ernesto Reyes is a case in point. When Reyes opened the

Enlightened self-interest It is safe to say that self-interest will govern new immigration policy, according to Dr. Steven Holloway, professor of geography at the University of Georgia, who studies the impact of immigration on cities. “We like to think of ourselves as the most hospitable nation, telling stories of Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty, but we’re not.”

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among American neighbors who feel their community and workplace interests threatened.

Meanwhile, numerous guest worker proposals have shown the many billions of dollars they would produce, including simply charging immigrants an entry fee, ($2,000 would be less than most pay to coyotes now), in exchange for safe passage, home referrals, and work placement services.39 Even the payment of 15 percent taxes on the estimated 45 percent of undocumented work now “off the books” would generate $3.5 billion to both produce and pay for thousands of American jobs providing public immigration services.40 Many call for a proactive plan that administers and enforces laws regarding a federal worker registry, Social Security payments, language acquisition, college scholarships, and driver’s licensing, and that provides housing, education, and health and legal services—in short, a plan that is good for both Mexicans and Americans.

For decades America has benefited from hardworking Latino immigrant laborers, making businesses in whole industries profitable in countless communities. Now these workers and their families are helping revive blighted urban centers, generating a peaceful, productive environment.

For our management-oriented society, the “how” of hospitable immigration is not the problem. Service payment issues are a red herring. Perhaps “why” we should be hospitable toward our southern neighbors is what holds us back.

And the bottom line for the richest nation on the planet, said Dr. Holloway, is simply this: “We’re behind on our obligations.”

first Latino grocery on Lake Street in Minneapolis in 1993, friends ridiculed him, he said. “They thought I was crazy to choose this neighborhood.” In fact, after seven break-ins and one armed robbery, Reyes began to agree with them.

“We had an alarm system, but the thieves didn’t care,” he explained.

When he arrived at Me Gusta market at 6 a.m., prostitutes were still working his sidewalk. “There was drug dealing and criminal activity everywhere,” said Reyes.

Yet he held his ground, beautified his place with planters, painted a welcoming mural, and added storefront awnings.

Within five years, dozens of Latinos were joining him.

By 2002, thanks to new commerce and community development, the criminal district that had been called “Crack Alley” was “clean and new and bright,” according to crime prevention officer Ron Reier.

The economic, social, and cultural value of 255 Latino businesses on Lake Street is hard to calculate. But as the immigrant population began to open their stores and restaurants, the number of annual arrests for aggravated assaults, thefts, prostitution, and drug dealing all nose-dived, said Reier, producing enormous cost savings in law enforcement, courts, and prisons.

The bottom line In the absence of sound federal immigration policy, “reactive” state and local laws are being drafted to manage the havoc created by inundated public services, and animosity is enflamed

New citizens take the oath of citizenship in a mass swearing-in ceremony at the Masonic Auditorium in San Francisco. Photo: David Bacon

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Partner with corporate sponsors. The study helped persuade Urban Ventures partners Honeywell and General Mills to build two new soccer fields. One converted a dump yard into the Olympic-quality Kix Field, infusing $1.7 million and a heap of pride into a forgotten neighborhood.

Erickson believes in high-class urban investments like Kix Field, he said. “If you treat urban kids as first-class citizens with what you give them, they’ll rise to the respect you show them.”

THE CHURCH: WWJD to serve a neighborhood in transition?

Invest in kids. Jose and Antonio, both of whose immigrant fathers clean buildings for a living, described the loneliness they felt as Latinos in Minneapolis before finding friends at Urban Stars.

“When I first came to Minneapolis,” recalls Antonio, “I kept my soccer ball in the closet for five months because I didn’t know where to play. But Urban Ventures opened the door to more than soccer. They teach you to live and do things the right way.”

“I had no friends,” said Jose. “Then Tony dragged me to Urban Stars where the guys treated each other like family.”

Jose joined seven Latino players from Southwest High who kept playing in the off-season, refining their skills and teamwork on Kix Field.This prepared them for a high school season in which they won the Minneapolis city conference.

“This was the best experience of my life,” said Jose, later adding, “My family spent seven years in California, where kids were tempted to do drugs, join a gang, rob, fight, and even kill.” But Urban Stars taught him about God, he said.

It has been the stabilizing influence in his life.

How does a compassionate leader in an urban neighborhood adjust when suddenly the neighbors he or she is called to serve do not speak his language, are in legal limbo, and are culturally unfamiliar?

This is exactly what Urban Ventures Leadership Foundation CEO Art Erickson has been asking—and answering through community development—as his neighborhood has transitioned from majority African-American to majority Latino in the past five years.

An urban church youth pastor for 20 years, Erickson turned to corporate-sponsored community development in 1993 when his vision for low-income family empowerment outgrew what church boards would approve and offering plates could support.

Adapt to changing demographics. In the 1980s Erickson and Urban Ventures Athletic Director Kelby Brothen used the Urban Stars basketball league to keep hundreds of African-American youth off dangerous streets in South Minneapolis. By the early ’90s, the neighborhood changed.

Now ball-playing kids weren’t dribbling and shooting free-throws. They were kicking goals between trash cans.

Erickson read the demographic landscape correctly and responded unassumingly, “I don’t know Spanish, but I speak soccer.”

Hire a dynamo. In order to stay relevant in his rapidly changing neighborhood, Erickson needed someone who both understood the Latino culture and could “get things done.”

Enter Susana Espinosa de Sygulla.

As an enterprising youth in Mexico City, Espinosa delivered tortillas to her neighbors by bicycle. By age 26 she bought out a failing spring-producing factory and made it profitable. While running the factory, she trained paint salesmen and managers for DuPont Corporation, making money hand over foot and living lavishly.

But in 1993 Espinosa received a telephone call that changed her life. Pancho, her dearest friend and business partner, had been killed in an auto accident as an illegal immigrant in the US, and his poverty-stricken mother in Mexico did not have the resources to respond.

“Until that moment, I did not see how self-centered or hardhearted I was toward God,” said Espinosa, 42. “Through that funeral and tears, my heart was softened. I was bonded

Pinpoint top community needs. Conducting a study, Urban Ventures found that the suburban Twin Cities boasted a staggering 341 soccer fields in its sprawling communities.

Yet the center city, which had become a port of entry to soccer-playing immigrants, had only one—and that was at a private school.

Building a field as a platform for youth ministry fit Urban Ventures’ threefold mission,“to develop youth leaders, strengthen families, and create meaningful work opportunities.”

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to God and to my people.”

A life calling sprouted from the ashes of Pancho’s death: to provide a safety net for migrating Latinos separated from their families. Espinosa sold the factory and gave all the proceeds to her colleague’s family, helping them start a grocery store. She then moved to Minneapolis on a student visa to study the Bible and to see why so many Latinos, like Pancho, were journeying north, she said.

Erickson hired her for her business record and “just do it” manner, he said. She would learn urban ministry on the job, but he would also learn plenty from his new Latino “cultural translator.” He quickly learned to trust her, empower her, and give her a wide berth.

gregation she and her family attend.

Leave big questions to God. Espinosa feels conflicted about the fact that roughly 70 percent of those who attend her programs are undocumented.“I’m torn,” she said.“I’m amazed at the courage and sacrifices so many have made to be here.

I want to believe that God has protected and provided for them. On the other hand, I know that God does not approve of lying and cheating.”

But, said Espinosa, Americans only have a right to ask about Mexicans’ legal “status” if they’ve first asked a question about their own status.

“As Americans we are overly proud of who we are. God Almighty is the one who decided what side of the border you would be on. Some Americans live in a comfort zone and think they don’t need to help others,” she continued. “But some day God will ask you, ‘Why do you think you were born in the most powerful country in the world, and I didn’t make you to be born in Africa with starving parents?’ I think it’s important that we ask ourselves before God asks us.”

At the same time Espinosa does not see border enforcement as mean or racist. She also questions immigration that splits families long term and has counseled many to return to their loved ones.

Delegate both leadership and strategy. Soon Espinosa created multiple programs through Go Latino!, an agency partner with Urban Ventures.

When waves of Latinos began to arrive in South Minneapolis in the late ’90s, Espinosa rolled out the red carpet, adding to the Kix Field outreach an adult league called Azteca that today draws 1,300 players on 50 teams for weekly games. She sees it as a form of Christian hospitality, she said.

“There’s one main reason our people immigrate,” said Espinosa. “They need money to provide a better life for their families and children.” The problem is that many, like Pancho, leave their families behind. They find that America is a lonely place where people are too busy to make strong relationships.

Providing family-like hospitality is one part of Espinosa’s mission; calling people to faith is the other. “I intervene and pray for these families. I counsel them in their marriages and help kids who are getting into trouble.”

A straight-talking firebrand, Espinosa has called dozens to faith in Christ who are now members of the Latino con-

Start parenting and discipleship classes. Espinosa has left no stone unturned in ministering to her people, starting Siempre Padres to teach parenting to Latino men and La Victoria to provide Christian discipleship to teenagers, as well as providing informal counsel and encouragement to dozens of Latino shop owners in the South Minneapolis business district.

Foster economic development. When in 2005 an Urban Ventures partner bought and renovated La Hacienda Plaza, a retail mall, Espinosa helped identify eight Latino business owners to lease space.

Restaurant owners Miguel and Maria Zagal were a hit when they first brought their specialty tacos to Lake Street in 1999, as Mexicans lined up around the block to get a longawaited taste of home. As anchor tenants in the plaza, the Zagals have done well enough to open two other restaurants and say they may purchase the plaza next year, fulfilling Urban Ventures’ vision to re-establish local ownership.

The soccer team run by Urban Ventures gives kids a place to make friends, build skills, and learn about God. Photo: Todd Svanoe PRISM 2008

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At Cristo Rey high schools across the country, otherwise underprivileged Hispanic kids get a challenging education and valuable on-the-job training. Photo courtesy of Cristo Rey Network Joseph Bernadine.

On one of five school days each week, students work as interns with partnering businesses that pay for 70 percent of their education, giving kids “real world” experience.

Seeing the relevance of their education, kids are responding. Cristo Rey graduates an astounding 95 percent of its students. The same percentage enrolls in a two- or fouryear college.

Host a cultural celebration. Just outside the De la Rivas’ shop, Espinosa hosts an annual Mexican Independence Day festival on Lake Street each September that provides economic opportunities to 175 street vendors and brings customers from miles around.

An unprecedented 25,000 Latinos parade, wave flags, dance to mariachi bands, and buy food and souvenirs. Three stages feature 35 different Latin American bands and dancing groups in traditional costumes.

The alcohol-free party itself is a testament of hope in what was until recently a drug-infested and violent neighborhood.

According to a violence prevention officer interviewed at the parade, crime statistics have dropped in every category since Latinos began to settle and shop in south Minneapolis.

“The only category of crime that has increased is physical assaults. Ironically, Latinos get jumped because they carry large wads of cash instead of credit cards that might raise the issue of their legal identity.”

Build Catholic/Protestant partnerships. Erickson, many of whose core supporters have been evangelical Protestants, turned a few heads when he began showing up flanked by Roman Catholic priests. But here, too, he models the power that can be harnessed from yoking Catholicism’s strong tradition of social service with evangelical Protestantism’s energetic witness.

“Our objective is to help our neighborhood kids graduate from high school, gain a college degree, and succeed in a career,” said Erickson, “and Cristo Rey is best able to help us achieve that goal.”

Catholic business leaders, and even Minneapolis’ Jesuiteducated mayor, stepped forward to endorse the multi-milliondollar 160,000-square-foot Colin PowellYouth Development Center, the new home to both the high school and Urban Ventures, which opened in 2007.

“I can’t tell you a day in my life, outside of the birth of my five children, when I’ve been more proud,” said Jesuit-educated developer and Erickson recruit Pat Ryan of the Ryan Companies, whose brother Jim announced on the center’s opening day that over $3 million was contributed by contractors and suppliers who believed in the project.

Start a Cristo Rey high school. While the pace and scale of Urban Ventures’ community development may seem overwhelming to community leaders seeking a model for hospitality toward Latino immigrants, even its grandest investment is truly replicable—hosting a branch of Cristo Rey Jesuit high schools (cristoreynetwork.org/).

While urban schools around the nation are closing, school districts are struggling, and many of the best teachers, students, and resources are being drained from cities, Cristo Rey Network answered the challenge and has begun a significant educational renewal, from New York to Los Angeles, in a dozen inner cities around the nation. All of its students are low income; 62 percent are Latino.

When Erickson saw that 68 percent of Latino public high school students were failing to graduate in south Minneapolis, he studied how Chicago-based Jesuit leaders responded to the same dismal record with low-income Hispanic immigrants in 1995. Jesuits conceived of the Cristo Rey education model in response to a challenge from Chicago Archbishop

Operate outside the box. Cross-cultural ministry can be, as one practitioner put it,“like plowing concrete.” But Erickson acquired his responsive mission-driven impulses through his early Young Life leadership, he says, and it has served him well in his transitioning neighborhood.

“The principles were to go to where the people are, soak in their environment, talk in a language they can understand, build your mission to meet their needs, connect with and develop trust in indigenous leaders, and figure out how to make five loaves and a few fish into a smorgasbord,” he said smiling.

“Over 35 years here, I’ve seen 65 churches give up and leave because of the changing urban face of South Minneapolis. We’ve found creative ways to survive.” And thrive.

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This stands in contrast to the often serious and intense demeanor of the inner-city teenage basketball players I coach who seem to get re-infected weekly with the “winning-iseverything” disease so typical of American sports. My observation of Latinos has provided a reminder of how to “play.”

CLOSE-UP:

What Latino immigrants have taught me about my citizenship

Relationships. The second challenge I’ve received is from Latino business persons in my neighborhood whose values may be instructive for our uptight “time-is-money” culture.

This is best illustrated by a story told me by a Brazilian missionary friend of mine. Maria made her living by delivering fruit by bicycle each day to customers along a circular route. An American visitor suggested that it would be more efficient and profitable if she built a centrally located fruit stand so that customers came to her. Her response: “But then I wouldn’t get to visit with all the families and friends along the way.”

With all the books today about the lost soul of business, perhaps it is time to borrow a leaf from Maria’s manual: the “customer is first” is not just a consumer appeasement strategy. It’s a way of life for those who have learned that we “work to live, not live to work.”

After telling me that 80 percent of the 255 Latino businesses in our neighborhood are barely making it, consultant Monica Romero said, “That’s not negative or positive, because they want to be there for other reasons. Business is not just a source of income. It’s how they define their identity, relationship, and belonging in the community. It’s how they share their lives.”

Soon after my family moved to an inner-city South Minneapolis neighborhood in July 2000, I saw a grocery cart full of Latino kids disappear down our alley, motored by a stocky, impish-looking teenager.To an urban photojournalist this was tantalizing, so I bolted up the stairs to grab my camera.

But as a white, middle class parent, my first thoughts betrayed a bias: “Okay, so here are our children’s new neighbors—poor, out-of-control latchkey kids, unashamed to play with stolen property. Don’t they know any better? Is this teenager holding those kids hostage?”

One year later, we knew not only this Latino teen’s name and face but more importantly his story. Manny’s mother was “somewhere” in prison, and his father was probably deported.

He lived with his grandmother and mowed our lawn to pay for his school notebooks.

Then it dawned on me that Manny didn’t have a YMCA membership or sports equipment like my kids have. He entertained his younger cousins in the grocery cart the best he knew how. The cart was not “stolen” property so much as a poor family’s means of transporting heavy groceries, a tool that doubled as a toy.

A number of encounters with the Latinos in my community have made me aware of God’s intention to correct the biased and condescending grid through which I had previously viewed my neighbors as “aliens.”

Continued on page 30.

Joy. The first encounter was with Latino men who play their hearts out in South Minneapolis soccer fields and parks, having the times of their lives, invariably wearing joy-filled smiles.

My Latino neighbors have brought joy and spontaneity to my routine-driven, overscheduled life. Photo: Todd Svanoe PRISM 2008

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The Story of a People on the Move continued from page 19.

Spontaneous compassion. In 2005 a few handymen from our church started a home cleaning/repair outreach called Hands and Feet in our neighborhood. As our neighbors became increasingly Latino, we invited a Latino pastor to lunch to discuss a partnership. Knowing he was passionate about reaching his people, we were shocked when he refused.

Thinking he saw it as an imposition on his time, we explained how well organized this Saturday event was and that we only offered the service once every two months.

But he asked,“What do you do the other 59 days? Just call us any time and we will be there.”

His answer caught us right between the eyes. Having so organized our social programs to fit our schedules and satisfy our service quotas, we hardly realized how little we were doing.

How many needs of our neighbors did we pass by on a dayto-day basis?

The same pastor, later that year, led a men’s retreat I attended. He had fasted and prayed for four days that week in preparation. For doing so, many of us looked at him as an “alien” indeed, but were we the ones most foreign to God’s purposes?

Manny’s gift

My “alien” friend Manny (pushing the cart) has taught me that in terms of following Christ, it is more often I who am most alien to God’s purposes. Photo: Todd Svanoe

As our friend Manny ate at our table and played with our kids, we became one link in his safety net of relationships. But to us, Manny became much more.

One day the doorbell rang. It was Manny, looking both proud and sad. A youth worker in our community had invited young Manny to be in his wedding party, and with the wedding due to begin in one hour, Manny had nothing to wear.

“Do you have a suit I could borrow?” he asked sheepishly.

Picture this short, pudgy teenager next to my tall beanpole frame. He probably had me by 50 pounds. I said,“Manny, you know I’d like to help, but I don’t see how you could fit into any of my clothes.”

Something about this challenge seemed uncomfortably reminiscent of gospel stories, so with a childlike obedience, knowing there was no time to shop, I walked with him to my closet. We found a short-sleeved shirt that he could barely button, but on Manny my loosest slacks were ruffled and dragging. Just then, a contractor, who was working on our house, appeared with duct tape, “hemming” the extra slack up inside.

Manny pointed to my best tie—that part was easy—but then to my best suit coat. My first thought was,“Absentminded teenager. He’ll take it off and leave it. I’ll never see it again.”

But he insisted. “Please!” And now Jesus’ words about the “cloak” were ringing in my ears.

I will never in my life forget Manny’s beaming face as he walked off to church, reveling in the moment, hands disappearing within the sleeves of that gold-buttoned blazer.

Manny and his fellow Latinos gave us more than we ever gave them, by bringing joy and spontaneity to our routinedriven, overscheduled lives—by openly sharing their needs in a culture suffocating with self-sufficiency, but most of all, by reminding us that we are all aliens whose citizenship in heaven and on earth is pure gift. ■ Todd Svanoe is a freelance journalist, promotional copywriter, and urban ministry consultant. He owns Storyrcraft Communications, Inc. (www.storycraftinc.com) and lives with his wife and three children in South Minneapolis.

Editor’s note: Due to space limitations, the endnotes for this article have been posted at esa-online.org/EndNotes.

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