Crossing the desert to reach a land of hope: a migrant family's story

By Ann Hess, OSV News

YAKIMA, Wash. (OSV News) -- The lives of immigrants without the necessary legal documents to stay in the U.S. are often as undocumented as the people themselves. This is not surprising, as they have to live in the shadows. People in the Yakima Valley joke that it is easy to identify these immigrants; they are the ones who never, ever exceed the speed limit.

Only the exceptions to this rule make the news.

Another barrier to learning their stories is language. Most of the immigrants in Yakima County come from the Mexican state of Michoacán, and with nearly 100,000 people who speak Spanish by preference -- whether or not they are bilingual -- one can get by without ever learning English.

Finally, there is the issue of literacy. Publicly funded education in Mexico ends before high school, so it is still possible to live and work there with no formal education at all.

The story of Luis and Yesenia, who are husband and wife, and their infant son -- all born in Mexico -- illustrates what many immigrants like them go through once they arrive in the United States without legal permission. Their names have been changed to protect their privacy, and details of their story were gleaned by a Catholic volunteer who ministered to this family for eight years.

They live in a run-down house in a worn-out neighborhood. Luis works nine months of the year in the orchards, and Yesenia takes care of their six children, five of whom were born in Washington state. The center of their lives is their church, where the children learn both to pray and make music in praise of God. After the church, their highest priority is their children's education. Yesenia gets everyone up and off to school every day, properly outfitted. This task is complicated by the dearth of cash to buy supplies and the fact that the children are assigned to different schools in the area.

Like nearly 70% of Mexican immigrants in Yakima County, they are not citizens and like most, they entered the country before 2010, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey.

Luis was born to a young woman whose husband suddenly died while she was pregnant. She was unable to care for him and he was taken in by a farming family. He grew up with eight brothers and sisters but was never sent to school.

He married Yesenia as a young man and they soon had a son. They struggled -- the only work he could find had a daily wage that hardly paid for a day's supply of food -- and so they planned to emigrate. To protect their child, they paid a smuggler to take him across the border. Luis went first, and waited in California for a heart-stopping 24 hours until 9-month-old Luisito, disguised as a girl to match the false document, was delivered into his arms.

For years, Yesenia could not talk about her experience crossing the border. She was caught and sent back twice. During those attempts, she saw terrible things: a young man shot dead; a young woman run over by a Border Patrol ATV. She endured months of anguish before she held Luisito again.

They had a cousin in Ellensburg, Washington, so they moved there to get a start. This cousin took advantage of their ignorance to siphon off most of their earnings. Luis and Yesenia had no recourse.

They learned they could not rely on anyone for help. One night, the cousin's girlfriend seemed to suffer a psychotic break and threatened to kill Luisito. Desperate, Yesenia called the police. The operator asked her if she was a citizen, and Yesenia had to say no.

The police did not arrive for three hours, by which time the girlfriend had left.

Eventually, they moved to Yakima, and life settled down. Luis' work is steady, if seasonal. He pays his taxes using a Taxpayer Identification Number. While he does not qualify to ever receive Social Security benefits, the standard amount is deducted from his pay.

As Luis sees it, he took a chance in order to build a better life for his children and it is people who put family first who make society stronger.

Five of his children are citizens, and he hopes that all six will take advantage of the opportunities he did not have to create good, productive lives for themselves and their own families one day.

Luisito is now 16 and excels in his high school work. He and his siblings communicate in Spanish with their parents, but are more comfortable in English. Unlike the previous generation, they are equipped to tell the immigrant story and Luisito has already begun. Four years ago, he wrote:

"I admire my father for being brave and hard-working.

"My dad works hard. He leaves for work at five in the morning. The work is tiring, because he has to work fast. I went with him once, and my arms got sore pretty quickly because the apple stems are tough, and hard to pull off the tree. He has to do it six days a week. Then he comes home, and has to take care of us -- and we are not that easy to take care of! Sometimes he would like to take a nap, but we are too loud.

"My dad is very brave. To cross the border, you have to be brave, because it is very frightening.

"My dad grew up in Guerrero, Mexico. In Mexico, he had eight siblings, and he was in the middle. It was very hard to get a job to pay for food and clothing, because the pay was so low. He wanted to move to the U.S. to get a better job and for his children to have a better future than him.

"To get here, my dad had to cross through a desert. He stayed in California his first year here. When he arrived, he was always afraid that he might get deported back. It was hard, because he didn't know anyone or anything.

"But there were some kind people who helped him. There was a woman who took care of me when I was a baby, while my parents crossed the border. There were people from church who welcomed us to Yakima. They pray for us, and support us through bad times.

"I think that it was a great sacrifice that he had to make, to leave his family, and he was taking the chance that he might get caught. If he had stayed in Mexico, I probably wouldn't have nice clothing, enough food, or shelter."

Luis and Yesenia's story is not one of the more dramatic tales people are used to reading on the front page or newsfeed. It is a far more common story, but hardly known in all its human details: a poor family fleeing desperate poverty, crossing a desert to reach a land of hope.