Undocumented workers aren’t just laborers, they’re consumers too. And in Jackson Heights, Queens their money is helping to keep a neighborhood together.
Matthew Fleischer
On a frigid December day in Jackson Heights, Queens, salsa music blares from the bodegas and restaurants lining Roosevelt Avenue and rattles underneath the tracks of the elevated 7 train. At a nearby taco stand, pillars of steam rise from the open air grill, carrying with them the smells of spiced chicken and beef. Inside the stand two young women with frozen hands struggle to complete orders for a growing line of people. In the line, a mother guarding a stroller coos softly to her child in Spanish as a train thunders overhead.
Up and down the street luscious looking mangos and avocados find the most prominent display in grocery windows and the mannequins in clothing stores are noticeably curvier than one might see in a Madison Avenue department store in Manhattan. Down the block from the taco stand, three pamphleteers stand in front of an employment agency passing out flyers and shouting to be heard over the chaos of the street.
“Trabajo! Trabajo aqui!” Work! Work here!
In Jackson Heights, English is a second language if it’s spoken at all. Most people in the neighborhood are Ecuadorian, but an increasing number of Mexicans are slowly filtering into the community.
Standing in Jackson Heights, like in many ethnic enclaves in New York, it could be easy to forget you are in America. But the omnipresence of one pesky word makes it nearly impossible to maintain the illusion of being in a foreign land for long: immigracion.
In virtually any direction you look, sandwiched between every bodega or in the backdrop of every taco stand, is a business advertising the word “immigration”: Medical clinics advertising “immigration physicals,” translation services offering “traducciones legales” for immigration cases. Legal translations. But perhaps most ubiquitous are immigration law offices. They are an unavoidable blot on the landscape.
The intersection of Roosevelt Avenue and 80th Street sports no less than three immigration law offices. Even on the subway, advertisements for 1-800-IMMIGRATION abound. On one particularly dilapidated stretch of buildings on Roosevelt Avenue, the only structures not condemned by the city are an immigration law office and an immigration medical clinic.
It doesn’t take much investigating to figure out that Jackson Heights has a large population of undocumented immigrants and that they are being marketed to —
successfully.
In the past several months the Bush administration has stepped up its rhetoric over the enforcement of immigration laws, and has threatened to severely enhance government efforts to deport undocumented immigrants. While boasts of boosting border deportations are nothing new, in his recent announcements, Bush claims he will increase interior enforcement of illegal immigration, including workplace enforcement.
Previous conventional wisdom held that once an immigrant succeeded in crossing the border, finding shelter and gaining employment, their chances of being deported were almost moot, provided they didn’t commit other crimes. The administration has vowed to change all that. Now all undocumented immigrants, as well as the businesses which employ them, are under the threat of a new government crackdown.
The administration’s threats have sparked significant national debate over how mass deportations would affect the American economy, even fracturing the consensus among the president’s tightly knit Republican Party.
While many Republican’s see the issue of illegal immigration as a matter of national security, and want to deport illegal immigrants and seal the border to prevent terrorism, other business minded Republicans are fearful of how the American economy would recover from the loss of the cheap labor that undocumented workers provide. However, while the argument over illegal immigration is often framed as a conflict between national security and a need for cheap labor, little attention is paid to the spending power of undocumented laborers.
At the Immigration Services Center on Roosevelt Avenue, a line stretches out the front door and around the block. Dozens of men and women, mostly Asian and Hispanic, stand shivering in the cold, waiting to get inside.
The Services Center provides free legal advice for immigrants seeking visas or citizenship, and on a Wednesday afternoon, dozens of people brave the cold to seek help. At the back of the line, a man named Raul has been waiting in the cold for 20 minutes. “Everyone on this line is here by appointment,” he explains. “I still don’t know how long we’ll have to wait though.”
At the front of the line, a Korean woman is shaking so hard that she is unable to hold her hands still enough to write her name on an essential form. Watching the woman shiver it isn’t hard to see the appeal of hiring a private immigration lawyer.
“Business is good,” says immigration lawyer Jesus Pena, who for the past 20 years has operated his law practice in Jackson Heights.
There is no reason to disbelieve him. His office waiting room is filled with clients and chaos. A small boy with tan skin and head full of bowl-shaped brown hair stomps around the office, bouncing off of every available piece of furniture he can find. Nearby his mother chats amiably in Spanish with the woman opposite her on a plush, leather couch. Between them her infant daughter lies motionless on her back. She is awake but bundled up tightly in a giant, pink snowsuit looking somewhat like a starfish.
A young Hispanic man in work jeans and immaculate white Nike sneakers enters the lobby and greets the receptionist with a familiar smile. He heads to the back of the office for a spell and two minutes later he is gone, exchanging pleasantries with the receptionist in Spanish on his way out. The parade of people bouncing in and out of the office make it appear that a brief stop in with a lawyer is not an uncommon occurrence in this part of town.
“20 years ago when I started this business I was dealing with mostly Cuban and Ecuadorian clients,” says Pena. “Now it’s Mexicans and Dominicans. It’s constantly in flux.”
Pena estimates among his more than 25,000 clients, 50 percent of his business comes from immigration cases. Even though his assistance carries no guarantee of receiving citizenship or even a visa, his clients seek help in negotiating the application processes in order to maximize their chances. His services can cost upwards of $2000.
A tall man with a thick head of grey hair and a confident stride, Pena, 67, is an immigrant himself, arriving in America from Cuba at the age of 24. He is as familiar with the ins and outs of American immigration policy as anyone in the city. He has to be, it’s his livelihood.
“The Bush administration doesn’t have a comprehensive understanding of what they’re talking about when it comes to immigration.”
Pena feels that any legislation enacted by the administration will create legal chaos-- that the laws are too complex for immediate, sweeping change. It’s exactly because of his lack of faith however, that he hopes Bush acts on his rhetoric.
“What I am afraid of is that nothing gets implemented. My client pool is drying up. The people who can get visas have already got them. But if what [the administration] is talking about gets passed I will have enough litigation to last me for decades.”
Though the thought of sweeping legal reforms may have lawyers licking their lips, other businesses would undoubtedly not fair as well were such legislation to be enacted.
Further up the street from Pena’s law office, three day laborers stand outside a bodega smoking cigarettes and waiting for a truck to pick them up and take them to work. Periodically one of them ducks in and buys coffee or snacks for the group. Though they aren’t comfortable confirming their status, it’s clear that they are undocumented workers.
Scenes like this one are ubiquitous in Jackson Heights. From the bodegas to the shoestores, to the doctors and the lawyers, this is a neighborhood indebted to and woven around illegal immigration. Without their continued support, things could just fall apart.
“I’m not really sure where these guys come from,” says one clerk at the Kacha Bazar, one of the few non-Hispanic bodegas in this part of Jackson Heights, “but they’re in here all the time.”
According to the Pew Hispanic Center, the most widely accepted statistics indicate there are 11 million undocumented immigrants living in America. Many may argue that these immigrants earn very little and what they do earn is often shipped to relatives back in their home nations. This may be true. A study commissioned by the Pew Hispanic Center showed that in 2003, money transfers to Mexico alone totaled $13.2 billion. However, with an average service fee of 4.4 percent per transaction that equals nearly $600 million in annual revenue to wire services and other financial institutions-- and that number is growing. Between lawyers, medical services and everyday living expenses, this is only a fraction of what undocumented immigrants spend annually in the United States.
Others may argue that the nature of these interactions is exploitative—that the often exorbitant price of remittance services and immigration lawyers take advantage of powerless and fearful immigrants. This as well may be true. But for better or for worse, significant sectors of the American economy are woven into ebb and flow of undocumented immigration. These immigrants aren’t just laborers, they are consumers, and as neighborhoods like Jackson Heights demonstrate, they spend a lot. As such, a mass deportation of undocumented workers would not only affect the labor force, but would result in the loss in circulation of billions of dollars from the American economy. For Jackson Heights, and communities like it all over the country, this would be devastating.
Won’t You be my Illegal Neighbor?
By Matthew Fleischer
