tBlog - Seeking Freedom and Liberty

In Arizona we have a problem with illegal immigration. In November we passed Prop. 200 which supposedly would keep illegal imigrants from getting welfare, voting and getting a drivers license. It of course has been stopped by a Federal Judge. The feds love to butt their noses in state business. Anyways since the election there has been alot said about this Prop. More information has come out now about how illegals can't do what was said they could. I would like to know where this information was before hand. Anyways here is an article that is helping me change my attitude slightly about illegal immigrants as far as their attitudes about welfare fraud. They are still breaking the law by being here illegally.

Dec. 6, 2004 12:00 AM

The atmosphere at the Macehualli Work Center has changed incredibly since Election Day, when voters passed Proposition 200, the Protect Arizona Now initiative designed to kick undocumented immigrants off welfare.

The main change is that, over those weeks, it has gotten really cold. When Benito Garcia shows up at 6 a.m., temperatures are in the low 30s. He wears a thick green jacket and a ball cap. Others wear hooded sweatshirts or knit caps. Most of the workers, like Garcia, are here illegally. They stand and wait, hoping someone hires them to do construction or yard work.

"It's something I've noticed," Garcia said in Spanish, his hands in his pockets, as he stood at the center one morning last week, "the will of the immigrant is strong, even if the pay is weak."

A federal judge in Tucson temporarily blocked Proposition 200 from becoming law last week. But even if it did go into effect, it wouldn't change anything at this work center, located on 25th Street, just south of Bell Road. After all, that law would have affected undocumented immigrants on state welfare. These undocumented immigrants, standing or sitting for hours in the cold morning air, are waiting to work.

"We came to work. We didn't come to take," said Sergio Sanchez, 33, who crossed over illegally from Mexico seven years ago.

People here illegally are already kept off the state welfare rolls, although those who pushed Proposition 200 were convinced otherwise. And even if welfare were open to them, Garcia spoke of the program as something dishonorable.

"They're lazy people," he said of welfare recipients, "that have children and don't want to provide for them. They want to live off the government."

Sanchez, Garcia and the other 60 workers assembled most mornings at Macehualli do not live off the government. They live off the cash given by the anonymous drivers who hire them to pull out bougainvilleas or tile a floor.

The Macehualli Work Center consists of an asphalt driveway that leads cars past a series of benches shaded by a green canopy. To the north of that is one port-a-potty, a drinking fountain, a stack of shovels leaning against a chain-link fence and, oddly enough, an exercise bike that somebody donated. A Spanish-language station floats out of a small portable radio. A few benches down, a waiting worker strums a guitar.

The center cost the city of Phoenix $120,000 in land lease and construction. It also cost a lot of political headaches.

This is the birthplace of Proposition 200. The center, lauded by businesses and neighbors in its Palomino area, was attacked, mostly by people who lived nowhere near it. That raw emotion led to an attempted recall of Peggy Neely, the city councilwoman who oversees the neighborhood. That failed.

But it did succeed in giving some political footing to a disparate group of people: Rusty Childress, an auto dealer; Kathy McKee, a grass-roots immigration activist; and Randy Pullen, a twice-failed candidate for Phoenix mayor. At the news conference called to denounce Neely, Childress said it was the first of many efforts against illegal immigration. A few weeks later, he and McKee announced the drive to get Protect Arizona Now on the ballot.

But waging these two battles meant supporters had to simultaneously hold opposing views of undocumented immigrants.

Proposition 200, aside from the laughable notion that undocumented immigrants vote, was motivated by the notion that undocumented immigrants are on the state's welfare rolls. However, the controversy over Macehualli came about because undocumented immigrants wanted to work so badly, they were standing in busy Bell Road, trying to flag down willing employers.

Macehualli probably couldn't be built today, since the passage of Proposition 200. Not that the law would stop spending for it. But because politicians would be too afraid of it. Already, the center is facing a tough fight at City Hall to stay open. Its future could rest on whether city leaders have the guts to publicly vote to keep it open, facing charges that they are aiding and abetting an illegal activity.

Immigration has become the third rail of politics. Pullen is receiving more airtime and ink now, talking tough about illegal immigration, than he ever received as a mayoral candidate.

The initiative passed with 56 percent of the vote. Wonder how it did among the regular customers of the center, the ones who leave with undocumented workers in tow.

"A lot of guys who come here and hire these workers, they're hypocrites," said Salvador Reza, who heads up Tonatierra, the social service agency that runs the center. It's basic supply and demand, he said. These workers are needed, and that's evident by the vehicles that drive up to hire them.

As if it were on cue, a blue and white truck drove into the center. The side of the truck advertised a roofing company.

Jobs get distributed through a lottery. Workers put their ticket in a plastic bucket. They're drawn and determine a list of workers. One worker volunteers each day to keep everything organized. Their reward is a guarantee of a job the following day. Garcia was not in charge this day but was helping out anyway. "Who's next?" he shouted in Spanish.

Reza talked to the man behind the wheel. He wanted someone who spoke English to help him clean up a roofing job and take some materials to the dump. Pay was $10 an hour, and it figured to be a four-hour job.

The next man on the list was Jose Lopez, but he didn't speak English. So the job went to the next man on the list who did. "Christopher," Garcia shouted.

Reza opened the door and let "Christopher" into the passenger seat of the truck. "The license plate, the license plate," Reza shouted as the truck pulled away. The center keeps record of its customers' license plate numbers. It protects the workers and helps them screen out customers who don't pay.

Reza dropped four quarters into a plastic bucket on a table by the list. Each worker who goes out on a job donates a dollar to the pot to help the center's upkeep. Last year, the take was $16,000, Reza said.

Garcia, who is originally from Chihuahua and crossed the border illegally a year ago, was still waiting for work. His last job involved digging out a concrete pipe from the yard of a home near 24th Street and McDowell Road. The day before that, he rolled insulation into a home near Greenway Road and 32nd Street. "That stuff pokes you," Garcia said of the insulation.

These are the jobs that people don't want to do. So they hire someone here illegally to do them.

A man in an Infiniti I-30 pulled up. Reza talked to him and then shouted to the workers like he was ordering a combo meal. "One with English, two with no English." Sanchez stepped forward to take the English-speaking spot. "How is your English?" Reza asked him. Sanchez shook his head and walked with Reza to greet his employer and give him a sample of his English skills. After a few words, Reza waved two others over and they got in the back seat. The job was a simple yard cleanup at $8 an hour.

Neither Garcia nor Sanchez, nor anyone else at the work center, said they knew of someone, even anecdotally, who was illegally on the state's welfare rolls. Garcia said there a few people he knew of whose children, born in the United States, qualified for aid. Some stop working and try to live solely on that government money, Garcia said, shaking his head in disgust.

Asked what should be done with any undocumented immigrants who are illegally on the welfare rolls, Garcia had a quick answer. "Take it away and put them to work."

Reach Ruelas at richard.ruelas@arizonarepublic.com or(602) 444-8473.

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