Juanson World

My friend Keith and I spent the weekend at a resort in Montelimar, on the Nicaraguan Pacific coast. Instead of taking the bus, we decided to accept our cab driver´s offer to drive us the 60 kilometers. We asked Rolando, our driver, whether he had ever been to the States, and he told us of the three month nightmare that was his "visit": arrest and deportation.

Whenever I meet a Latino illegal immigrant, I am always fascinated to hear their story: where they were going, why they left, and how they got there. Talking to Rolando reminded me of another cab driver Keith and I had met back in February of 2004, who also drove us to the Pacific, that time Jacó Beach in Costa Rica.

Douglas was a Tico who had spent the last four years off and on living in Maryland. His story was a bit different from most since he would return to Costa Rica fairly regularly, instead of establishing a permanent residence in the States. Like many immigrants, however, he went up north by himself, leaving his wife and children behind.

Douglas was an intrepid and enterprising immigrant; he claimed to be making almost $50,000 a year holding down two jobs for UPS and for Cracker Barrel in western Maryland. He claimed to work 13-16 hour days, six days a week. With a salary of around $13 an hour, this indeed worked out to about $1000 a week, a lavish income for Costa Rica.

Douglas described the myriad ways in which he was able to lower his costs and maximize the the monthly remittances he sent home, which paid for his children´s college education. First of all, instead of taking a flight from San Jose direct to Washington, he would take Martin Air (a Dutch carrier) to Miami (a ticket generally in the $150-$200 range) and then take a Greyhound bus approximately 40 hours to DC. He split a house with 6 other roommates, and most of his meals were either cooked at home or he would eat leftovers from the Cracker Barrel. Instead of going out to the bar, he would "buy a six-pack and drink it on my couch."

The issue of his illegal status also intrigued me. Because his wife is a judge in Escazu, he was able to procure a tourist visa to enter the States. He purchased multiple Social Security numbers on the streets of Washington (Upper 16th St. NW is a good location to conduct this sort of business, he said). In order to make visits back to Costa Rica, he would FedEx his passport back to San Jose, indicating that he could board the international flight in Miami using his Costa Rican ID card. His wife would then meet him at the San Jose airport with the passport, and he would bribe the immigration officer to stamp his passport as if he had only been in the States for a few weeks.

With his fake Social Security number, he was able to gain low-wage employment at several locations over the years, using a fake name. He recalled one of his more awful assignments: working for the Don John´s, the portable toilet company. He would take a truck to the site the day after an event and extract all of the waste through a tube attached to the vehicle. "All they gave me was an oxygen mask and latex gloves," he recalled in disgust. "You could never get out the smell."

So even though that job offered the highest wage he could find ($16 an hour), he didn´t last long there.

Rolando told me of a far less successful immigration story. With a visa to enter Mexico, he left Managua by bus and ended up near the US border thirteen days later. He paid a coyote $1000 to smuggle him and five others across the border into Arizona. He described the arduous trip: "During the day it was hot and we were stuck in the back of the truck. At night, in the desert, it would be freezing. I was afraid, hungry, and thirsty."

Once in Arizona, the vehicle was stopped by immigration officials, and the coyote disappeared. Rolando and others hid in the truck for hours. With the coyote gone, he took the wheel, since none of the others knew how to drive. The next day, he was pulled over for speeding, and sans driver´s license, Rolando was taken to the police station in Phoenix. Since he was the driver, he was charged as a coyote. Unable to communicate in English, he was processed and held in jail, first in Phoenix, then transferred to San Francisco and finally to Los Angeles before being deported three months later.

I asked him about life in prison and he explained that the guards split up the Latinos into two different groups: paisas and sureños. These labels had nothing to do with nationality. "The paisas were like me," he said. "We aren't violent. The sureños have tattoos and will fight. They are gang members."

Rolando said that all of the guards and police spoke Spanish, many of them being immigrants themselves. He said that the treatment in the jail was adequate, and he was never physically harmed.

Rolando and Douglas, both cab drivers in Central America, had two distinct experiences as illegal immigrants. Back in Nicaragua, Rolando earns $400 a month as a cab driver, which supports his wife and two children. Douglas claims that he has learned "the meaning of hard work" in the States ("Ticos are lazy"), and is grateful for the opportunities that he has had, despite facing many racist Americans.

Which is better, I thought to myself. To be struggling to stay afloat within your own country, or to be away from your family nine months a year in order to provide them a better future?

Douglas's dream, he said, was to open a Cracker Barrel type restaurant in Costa Rica. "Then I'll be happy," he said.