http://newsok.com/article/3184616/1198496230
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Traffic to El Paso, Texas, has been so steady in recent weeks that the downtown Oklahoma City
Greyhound bus terminal has started running buses there twice a day. Every Christmas, thousands of Hispanics living in the
U.S. return to
Mexico to visit their families. This year, many say they are not coming back.
Bartolome Flores, 35, has been working in Oklahoma City for several weeks. He has family in Nogales, which is just south of Arizona. However, he is from Mexico City, which is well into the Mexican interior.
Flores said he will travel to El Paso, the farthest south that Greyhound will take him.
He will then buy another ticket in El Paso for transport to Juarez. There he will spend a day with extended family members before traveling to Nogales to spend Christmas with his family.
He heard about some work in Phoenix, but he is not sure how he will re-enter the country. He’s heard that immigration enforcement has made entering Arizona more difficult. He also heard that employers are more fearful of hiring Hispanics without documentation.
“So really, I don’t know where I will be New Year’s Day,”
Flores said. “I have no money. Everything I make, I send to my wife in Mexico City. I save enough for rent and food. But now, I have nothing. I have to work. And there’s no work here, so ... ”
Flores had been working at a commercial construction site, installing lights and displays at a local gas station. He is a skilled laborer but employed on a contractual basis.
Until recently, the work came fairly steady. By the end of one job, he would have only a few days off before starting another. His Arizona license recently expired. He currently is unable to get another in Oklahoma. The least an unauthorized immigrant needs to work in the
U.S. is valid state or federal identification, or a valid work visa. Without those things, it is very difficult to find work, he said. More deterrents
It is not known exactly how many people are returning to
Mexico, Mexican officials said. But many are clearly leaving the
U.S., said
Pat Riley, spokeswoman for the
Department of Homeland Security.
Officials there have ramped up efforts to deter unauthorized stays in this country through workplace raids, increased foot patrols on the border and more cooperation with state and local law enforcement.
In addition, homeland security would like to force employers to report workers using mismatched Social Security numbers. That program currently is being litigated in federal court.
Officials said efforts have been augmented by statewide immigration enforcement statutes and increased cooperation between federal, state and local authorities. All these things, they say, have led to a decline in attempted crossings of the southwestern
U.S. border.
Oklahoma’s House Bill 1804, the toughest state immigration enforcement statute in the nation, took effect Nov. 1. It prevents undocumented immigrants from obtaining driver’s licenses and public services. It criminalizes transporting, concealing or harboring them.
There were dozens of people boarding two buses leaving downtown Oklahoma City on Thursday, heading for El Paso. Dozens more, all Hispanic, were getting on a bus on the city’s south side at
Rapidos Chihuahua, a transportation company that travels directly to either El Paso or the Mexican cities of Chihuahua City, Juarez or Cuauhtemoc. But most Hispanics traveling this holiday season will likely go by car.
An unbearable distance
Teresa and
Francisco Altamirano packed up the family car and left for Chihuahua City Friday afternoon. The couple, who have lived in Oklahoma for more than 20 years, will stay in the north central Mexican city for about a week before making the 17-hour trek back home.
“It’s been a long time, more than a year,”
Teresa Altamirano said. “When we come here about 22 years ago, we came just to work. Our families did not come.”
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I'll wave bye bye from here
