The Shadow of the Law

By Michael Walsh

No one knows exactly how many illegal immigrants are in the U.S. The Immigration and Naturalization Service estimate is 3.2 million, with an additional 200,000 to 300,000 arriving each year. Most come from the Third World -- the list is topped by Mexico, followed by sizable minorities from El Salvador, Guatemala and Haiti -- but Canada and Poland also contribute a good share. The illegals cross the porous border from Baja California, heading north to Los Angeles, where the wages are relatively high and the questions relatively few. They come from China, in coffin ships like the Golden Venture, in quest of asylum. They fly in from Ireland, willing to pull a few pints or pound a few nails in exchange for some greenbacks and, if they're lucky, a green card.

< What they often find, though, is hardship, privation, loneliness and exploitation. Although afforded some protection under American labor and civil rights laws, most illegals live in a shadow world of piecework and day jobs, just one step ahead of the INS and an unwanted ticket home. Whatever their country of origin, however, each illegal comes seeking the same thing: the good life in the good land.

"Do you know where I can get work?" The question echoes from the walls of the St. Francis Center in downtown Los Angeles, where dozens of hungry men, most of them Hispanic and many of them illegals, gather at 7:30 a.m. for a hot meal of rice-and-bean soup before seeking a day's employment. For the past six months, ever since he arrived in L.A., Luis M., 36, has taken his morning nourishment at the soup kitchen and then wandered over to a street corner in the garment district, where a strong back can earn around $20 a day. "A guy will come in a truck and say he needs one or two workers, and everyone rushes to him," he explains.

The work is hard: unloading 200-lb. bolts of wrapped garments, hauling them upstairs and unpacking them. A documented worker might earn $13 an hour for such labor; Luis gets $5. "Even if we paid our legals three times as much, they still would not do this work," observes the job's foreman.

Some of what Luis earns he sends back to Vera Cruz, Mexico, where his wife (her name is America) lives with their three sons. It's been five years since the itinerant Luis first slipped across the border. "I haven't been able to accomplish what I wanted to do here," he says wanly. "I wanted to get a steady job as a driver and bring my family here."

Like many other illegals, Luis is caught in the familiar catch-22: employers are loath to hire him because he lacks a driver's license, and he cannot get a driver's license because he has no Social Security card. So he watches his dream die a little each day. "I feel like I'm not worth anything," he says. "But I have to stick it out."

How are men like Luis able to avoid the immigration laws with such impunity? The answer is that the INS is simply outmanned: with 6,000 miles of open borders, a burgeoning population of illegals and a relatively static force of only 5,600 agents, the U.S. has effectively lost control of its territorial integrity, especially in the Southwest. Duke Austin, a senior INS spokesman in Washington, puts it bluntly: "The system is -- there's no other word -- bankrupt, in money and resources."

Many, if not most Americans, in fact, incline to a live-and-let-live policy in recognition of the illegals' economic contributions. Vigorous lobbying by both the American Civil Liberties Union and their legal countrymen has sought to protect the status of illegals. The A.C.L.U. has consistently opposed any form of national employment-authoriza tion identity card, and the illegals' countrymen have helped pass ordinances in states such as California and New York making it unlawful for authorities to inquire about a person's visa status; until Governor Wilson's recent revocation of such ordinances by local communities in his state, San Francisco and other municipalities had declared themselves as sanctuaries for undocumented workers.

Even in places where it is easy to hide, some illegals are actively pursuing legitimacy. Quiet and self-effacing, H. Lin, 30, a young factory worker from the rural province of Fujian in China, left his family behind in the old country earlier this year to seek his fortune in America. For a fee of $30,000, which he borrowed, he was smuggled into the country by plane at Honolulu. Confronted by the INS, Lin claimed political asylum, boarded another plane and promptly disappeared into the nearly impenetrable subculture of New York City's Chinatown.

Lin's experience in America has been typical. Assured by the smugglers (the Chinese call them "snakeheads") that he would be warmly received, Lin was first hired as a day laborer at a Chinese restaurant, where he worked 14-hour shifts for less than $2 an hour, shucking shrimp and cleaning latrines. Then he was fired after two weeks to make room for another illegal who could pony up the $60 employment-agency fee that new arrivals are routinely charged. Now Lin is busy sewing labels and zippers on counterfeit designer jeans in a Brooklyn sweatshop, earning about $800 a month in exchange for a 12-hour day, six days a week.

Some of that money will go back to China, to pay off Lin's debt. But, roughly $1,300 will go to Lin's lawyer, who is helping him with his asylum application. Like many other Chinese, Lin tells a story of his wife's forced, botched abortions and his threatened sterilization back home, the ugly realities of China's one-family, one-child policy. Chances are he will be approved, as are 55% of Chinese applicants.

And if he is not? He will probably stay anyway. "If they're denied or don't show for their hearing, do we go look for them?" asks INS spokesman Austin. "No."

Because most Americans are themselves descendants of immigrants, there has traditionally been a laissez-faire attitude toward all forms of immigration. While there is a growing backlash against stereotypical nonwhite illegals -- the Mexican wetback, the smuggled Chinese -- one group for which undocumented status is generally just a temporary inconvenience is the Irish. Thanks to the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1990, which included a liberal green-card lottery pushed through by Irish-American politicians, thousands of Irish have been legalized. Most of the estimated 37,000 illegal Irish in the U.S. who have not yet won a green card are patiently waiting their turn, the majority in relative comfort.

Colm M., 25, is a Belfast-born barman and bouncer. More a charmer than a strongarm, Colm arrived in New York as a teenager. His father came originally to escape "the troubles." Colm, his mother and three siblings followed on visitor's visas and stayed on. "There was nothing there for us," he explains. Even so, it took him years to adjust to American cultural attitudes. "In Ireland everybody was afraid of the teacher, but here the kid would tell the teacher to F off. In Ireland you could get killed for that. First the teacher would kill you; then your dad would kill you."

Like many illegal Irish, Colm began by working in the building trades as a "J.F.K. carpenter," as the new Irish arrivals at New York City's John F. Kennedy International Airport were called. "As soon as you get off the plane they hand you a toolbox and you go to work." He has also moonlighted as a fiacre driver in Central Park and a boxer in Atlantic City, New Jersey, although his real ambition is someday to be a cop or fireman.

In the tightly knit Irish community, where word of mouth substitutes for Help Wanted ads, there is always plenty of work, and Colm's income has hovered around $30,000 a year. Yet he lacks the important little things that validate life in America. Though he has a legal driver's license, his Social Security number is invented and his apartment is rented in the name of an ex- girlfriend. "The thing of it is, I've been here since I was 15 years old, I've worked hard, and I've never committed a crime," he says. "This is my home, but yet it's not. That's the hard part."

With reporting by Massimo Calabresi and Sribala Subramanian/New York and Jeanne McDowell/Los Angeles