The Story of a People

on the Move

BY TODD SVANOE

This report on immigration aims beyond simplistic media formulations of economic

disparities or campaign rhetoric. It reveals poignant ironies rarely mentioned by either
“amnesty” or “enforcement” advocates, whether the backfire of tightened border patrols
or the disappointment of immigrants’ hijacked dreams.
It tells of tragic choices and trans-border aspirations that have been greatly complicated
by the absence of sound US public policy. It underscores the urgency of reform, but even
more, the importance of informed hospitality, empowering relationships, and proactive
community development on both sides of the border—until “justice rolls down.”

PRISM
2008

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WIDE ANGLE:
The hope and tragedy
of Latino immigration
On a spring day on Lake Street in South Minneapolis, bull-
dozers roar, clearing away “Crack Alley” and, along with it, its
history of drug lords, prostitution, and porn shops.
In its place a wealthy Palestinian business developer is
building a shopping mall, and eager Latino entrepreneurs are
flooding in, lining up to lease every storefront.
In 10 short years, a three-mile stretch of this business
district has become home to 255 Latino businesses, according
to the local Latino Economic Development Center.“Blink and
you’ll see 20 more Latino businesses here,” the developer says
lustily, as tenants unfurl awnings, paint slogans on windows,
and unload merchandise.
Meanwhile, 2,000 miles away in San Jose, Guanajuato,
Mexico, two cargo trucks are being loaded with 20 men,
women, and children, all headed north in search of a better life.
The group gives the most comfortable seats to elders who
will need their energy at the border to swim, drop, or run,
if necessary, to evade US agents.
Contracts are inked: $2,500 a head, double the price com-
manded by smuggling “coyotes” before the US renewed its
efforts to tighten the border. Most of the money is extended
as loans by sharks who must be reimbursed through work the
immigrants hope to find in the US.
Days later, the pilgrims arrive at the border, dusty and tired,
but full of adrenaline, with Texas in plain view just across the
Rio Grande. After waiting at a lookout, a few at a time are
escorted to densely bushed areas where they stay until dark,
awaiting the signal.
Opposite: A South Minneapolis man expresses his love for both
his country of origin and his adopted country at last year’s Mexican
Independence Day festival on Lake Street. Photo: Daniel Rojas
Right: On May Day 2006 immigrants and their
supporters filled the streets of Los Angeles, protesting
House bills that would criminalize 12 million
undocumented people, among other things. Photo: David Bacon
PRISM
2008
9
Juan, who has made this crossing once before, smiles. “It’s
like a game of cat and mouse. If I’m caught and sent back, I
don’t care. Mexico is my home.”
US border enforcement is hard to take seriously. Of the
5.2 million border crossers arrested between 2000 and 2005,
only 2 percent were ever prosecuted.
Thus, Juan and his group are undaunted.Young and old swim
the 30 yards to US soil, are ushered around a border patrolman,
and then begin the hardest part of the trip—walking without
food for four days. Heatstroke, dehydration, and hypothermia
on this inland journey are the leading causes of death for more
than 1,000 Mexicans per year on both sides of the border, a
number increasing as tightened security leads to more daring
evasion efforts.1
The smugglers offer no employment guarantees for the
travelers, just rave stories of success and advertisements of the
types of jobs available in each state. States like Minnesota, with
a thriving economy and progressive social service tradition,
are particularly attractive destinations.
Ten years ago, Minnesota was dubbed a “new Ellis Island”
by one think tank, rivaled only by Georgia, Kentucky, and
North Carolina for the steepest recent influx of immigrants
relative to existing populations.2 And that was before 95 percent
of the Lake Street entrepreneurs had arrived.
Each September, 25,000 Latinos flood Lake Street to cel-
ebrate Mexican Independence Day. Seventy percent of them
are estimated to be here illegally.3 Minneapolis community
leaders have learned much about the drive, capabilities, and
struggles of their new neighbors, a learning curve that would
benefit community leaders across the country, whether pundit,
politician, or policymaker.

When undocumented adults are deported, their children—many of
whom are US citizens by birth—are often left to raise themselves.
Photo courtesy of Help4Kidz
Fleeing a land of plenty?
Today’s manic migration from the Mexican border to the city
of Minneapolis reflects a demographic phenomenon confront-
ing nearly every major US city. The nation swells with the
ranks of an estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants,
75 percent from Mexico and Central America.4
Why do they come?
If measured by natural resources, such as oil and precious
metals, Mexico in 2008 is better off even than the US.5 Its
modern economy is 12th strongest in the world and the health-
iest it’s ever been if measured by its “purchasing power,” with
a 3 percent gross domestic product “growth rate” and its infla-
tion rate holding steady.6
This is not to overlook Mexico’s severe income disparities
and systemic troubles, but since the 1992 North American
Free Trade agreement, the country’s overall stability and wel-
fare have steadily improved, its fortunes generally running
parallel to those of US industry, as 70 percent of its exports
go directly north.7
Juan and his fellow travelers did not leave home because
they were unemployed. Their state leads its nation in auto-
part and shoe production, and its silver mining is second in
the world. In fact, Mexico has enjoyed less than 4 percent
unemployment for most of the past decade.8
Yet its per capita income is 51st in the world at only
$7,216, compared to the US, which is seventh at $45,660.9
Juan had the option of staying and working in construc-
tion with his father. But “Why should I?” he asks. “I would
make $200 a week at home. In the US, construction pays up
to $700.”
Much could be said about the extreme economic gap
between the Mexicans who still live in dire poverty and the
developing middle class and spiking upper class. Corporate
PRISM
2008
10
greed and political corruption are still rampant, and most
industries are monopolized by leaders who receive “absurd”
tax advantages, according to Mexican foreign policy expert
George Grayson.10
Social programs have until recently largely ignored half
of Mexico, including “rag pickers from fetid slums,” says
Grayson. Agricultural workers in southern states like Chiapas
or Oaxaca, for example, earn literally $1 a day, dwarfed by
the $8 an hour paid in rural Minnesota.11 However, it’s not
this “extreme poverty” that is driving most migrants north.
It’s “relative poverty”—personal dignity and self-respect.
Undocumented Latinos who emigrate are three times more
literate than the Mexican national average.12 In fact, more
than 55 percent of foreign-born Latinos in America today are
high-school or college educated.13 These are individuals with
drive and ambition who are simply unwilling to accept their
home country’s depressed standard of living.
A World Bank report helpfully illuminates the dimen-
sions of poverty in Mexico. After the Mexican economy had
stabilized in 2004, 18 percent of urban and rural Mexicans still
struggled with “food poverty,” 25 percent experienced “capac-
ities poverty” (lack of opportunity to advance), and 48 percent
faced “assets poverty” (lack of land or capital to invest).14
First-generation single adults like Juan, whose main goal
is rapid material betterment, receive predictably high divi-
dends from American employment. If you ask young men
like Juan why they are in Minneapolis, the first thing they say
is “to send money home.”
“I sent $7,000 last year,” said Juan, who since 2001 has
picked sweet potatoes, laid concrete, landscaped, and sorted
mail, never lacking work for more than a month.
In 2005 unauthorized manual laborers like Juan held 36
percent of all insulation jobs in the nation, 29 percent of all
roofing and drywall work, 27 percent of all food processing,
and 24 percent of all farming.15 Today more than $23 billion
annually flows from the US into Mexico, making remittances
the country’s second greatest source of income after oil.16 The
social uplift from these donations is widespread, as an estimated
one in four Mexicans receives money for food, housing, or
education from America.17
Euphoric tales told by Minneapolis immigrants are reminis-
cent of gold rush days in America. For example, migrant worker
cohorts from Axochiapan, Morelos, wire an after-expenses $4
to $7 million each month to that hometown alone.18
The governor of Morelos, the second smallest state in
Mexico and home to an estimated 45 percent of the Mexican
immigrants in Minneapolis, has visited Minneapolis and even
set up an embassy-like center to assist immigrants in transition,
according to Rodolfo Gutierrez, director of Hacer, a Latino
research institute in Minneapolis.
 “Towns like this have become literally deserted, like ghost Fernando presented fake papers at a checkpoint; Mrs. Hernandez
towns,” said Gutierrez. “Nearly the entire male population has used a false visa and came by a conventional airline; and Mr.
relocated.With money sent home you see houses springing up Hernandez fled through the desert on foot.
and new roads being built to provide government services.” There was one obvious hitch to this plan: Fernando knew
Minneapolis Star Tribune reporters visiting Axochiapan found no English.“He learned enough to get along in a Minneapolis
that while in previous years “sewage and refuse piled up in dry public school,” said Mrs. Hernandez. But still, the adjustment,
creek beds” in the town of 30,000, money from Minneapolis especially for a teenager, was difficult.“He was embarrassed that
has paid for sewer pipes and a new sewage treatment plant. other students were better dressed,” she said, “and he needed
A private hospital has been built for $3 million. The next to work to help us survive and to send for his sisters.”
anticipated purchase: the town’s first fire truck.19 Six years later Mr. and Mrs. Hernandez have missed much
This sister city relationship is hardly an isolated example, of their daughters’ childhoods, Mr. Hernandez’ painting busi-
according to Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Mark Bixler, ness doesn’t earn enough to cover their mortgage and utilities,
who profiled the 5,000 residents of Villa Juarez, San Luis Potosi, and their three-bedroom home does not even meet their needs,
that have resettled in Atlanta. “It’s a classic immigration pattern said Mrs. Hernandez, who has had two more children since
that has transplanted thousands of villages and towns from five arriving in the US.
or six states in the middle of Mexico to places around the Fernando finally dropped out of school and worked at a
United States,” writes Bixler.20 carwash and Mrs. Fernando admits the move wasted Fernando’s
talent. “He’d have been better off at a Mexican university. If I
Sacrificing families for futures? had known then what I know now, I never would have come.”
The stories of Mexicans in Minneapolis reveal a stark contrast The story of immigration includes many such painful
between the carefree optimism of single adults, who are sending chapters. Some young people, like Fernando Hernandez, can’t
thousands of dollars home each year, and low-income, heavy- navigate the rough waters of two languages and cultures, violent
laden parents who struggle to advance their families’ fortunes neighborhoods, and poor school systems. They become sta-
in America while bearing its high cost of living. tistics: 49 percent of gang members in the US are Latino,22; 51
Years ago the Hernandez family’s ice cream parlor in Mexico percent of all Latina teens have become pregnant at least once
City appeared to be doing well. But in reality, soaring utility before age 2023; and 41 percent of all high school dropouts
bills forced them to scrounge for food and clothes left on curbs are Latino.24
in wealthier neighborhoods. The Hernandez family felt espe-
cially deprived of two “capacities” that Americans take as
basic rights—education and healthcare.
Mexico spends only $1,656 per student on education,
one-third of the $5,450 average for the 30 countries of the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD), and public subsidies to health providers are a mere
$662 per year for each Mexican compared to the $2,500
OECD average.21
The Hernandez family’s brightest hope, their son, Fernando,
embodies the tough and often ironic choices of many trans-
border families. An A-student, Fernando was already studying
at a Mexican university at age 16. “He could have become a
lawyer,” said his mother.
The combination of Fernando’s costly bronchitis treatment
and his hopes for better educational opportunities convinced
his parents to emigrate with him, leaving three daughters behind
whom they planned to send for eventually. In doing so, how-
ever, they amassed $7,000 in debt to coyotes for safe passage:

When Ernesto Reyes opened Me Gusta Market in 1993, he

became the first Latino grocer of S. Minneapolis. Photo: Todd Svanoe

PRISM
2008

11
 Perhaps the highest cost is the agony of family separation.
To grasp the hardship and harm that flow from this problem,
one need only look at cities to the south that have been fac-
ing these consequences for generations.
Help4Kidz, a faith-based child rescue mission in Phoenix,
Ariz., knows about the plight of Latino children, having
interfaced in some way with 40,000 of them since 1995.
Many lower-class Mexican families with hopes for a bet-
ter life find the educational, language, and unemployment
barriers insurmountable, explained Help4Kidz founder, Eve
Nunez. Some adults turn to drug dealing, theft, or prostitution
to survive. Others are arrested for their illegal status.
“More than 65 percent of Help4Kidz children have a
parent who is in prison,” said Nunez of kids she serves from
the three poorest neighborhoods in Phoenix. “Then it is
typical for the single parent to go to work, leaving children
without any supervision.”
Often the oldest youth is then pulled from school, as was
Fernando Hernandez, either to care for younger siblings or to
work for rent money. Thus, the brightest hope of the fami-
ly—the future of a ladder-climbing youth—is sabotaged.
Nunez has received calls from hundreds of parents who
are about to be deported, whose children are US citizens by
birth, urging Help4Kidz to take their children, said Nunez.
Many are left behind —most with older siblings, relatives, or
adoptive neighbors.
Legal status could change the picture
But history is also filled with success stories of rising fortunes
for naturalized immigrants on American soil.
Consider Monica Romero, a business consultant at the
Minneapolis Latino Economic Development Center, serving
many of the 255 Latino business entrepreneurs on Lake Street.
She came to the US at age 25 after being denied an advance-
ment at the second largest bank in Colombia. “They used the
excuse that they couldn’t hire from inside, but that was ridicu-
lous,” she said, implying gender discrimination.
Since arriving on American soil, she has obtained her mas-
ter’s in business, empowered other women as a career coach at
an agency called Women Venture, and has found her calling
guiding dozens of Latinos/as through business plans and
financing.
Or Ernesto Reyes, who came to Lake Street in 1993 as
its first Latino grocer. All he needed was a patch of ground in
an American city to develop Me Gusta Market, which now
sells specialty meats to shoppers from miles around. By 2001,
Reyes owned four grocery stores and three restaurants oper-
ated by his parents and five siblings.
Yet Romero and Reyes have found that moving from
their improved standard of living to real wealth and economic
PRISM
2008
12
security can be a nearly impossible leap. Lake Street’s 255 shops,
for example, have replaced criminal activity and brought
relative stability to the neighborhood. However, the owners
have not escaped poverty by American standards. In fact, only
20 percent of the 255 Latino shops on Lake Street are “prof-
itable,” said Romero. And all have struggled with raised rent
and slow business seasons.
Indeed, Reyes himself bought and renovated a business
mall. When the investment failed, brought down by a strug-
gling Latino tenant base, it caused his other seven businesses
to fold as well.
Meanwhile, Minnesota’s Governor Tim Pawlenty stirred
up “Hispanic panic” in January of this year by moving to over-
turn the Twin Cities’ “don’t ask, don’t tell” illegal immigrant
sanctuary ordinances and directing law enforcement to work
with US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, a further
detriment to businesses attempting to set down roots.25
The bottom line for real poverty relief is that until a legal
base is placed beneath the enterprising ambitions of the nearly
1 million illegal Latinos who come to the US each year,26 long-
term generational stability is unlikely.
A groundbreaking study of the family trees of 20 success-
ful African-Americans, including Oprah Winfrey and Whoopi
Goldberg, has found that 15 of the 20 celebrities are descend-
ed from a line of former slaves that obtained property by 1920,
when only 25 percent of African-Americans owned prop-
erty.27 Sadly in America today, notes the author, “in the wake
of the subprime mortgage debacle, an enormous number of
houses (owned by low-income families) are being repossessed.”
Latino families and business owners are among these prop-
erty owners.
Legal status is also necessary for continuing education.
Countless aspiring youth have returned to Mexico after reach-
ing the apex of legally allowed opportunities in the US. They
may have shown great promise, graduated from high school,
and qualified for scholarships, but were legally forbidden
further progress.
The proposed federal DREAM (Development, Relief,
and Education for Alien Minors) Act that failed to gain
cloture in October 2007 was designed to pave the way to
citizenship for 1 million youth of unauthorized immigrants
entering college or the military.28 “I want to study!” exclaimed
one Minneapolis youth interviewed for this story. “All I want
to do is become a gym teacher and a soccer coach. If the
president cares about education, he should make a way for
everyone to go to college.”
We’ll see if anyone in Washington hears these words.
Nunez of Help4Kidz, whose teenaged daughter hopes to
become America’s first Latino president, is running for public
office this year herself, to make sure someone does.

POLICY:
Can we balance
enforcement and
hospitality?
The simplistic thinking that guides much of today’s immigra-
tion debate was illustrated, on one side, by a protest sign defend-
ing undocumented workers during a December 2007 crack-
down at a grocery packing plant in Queens, N.Y.
Fresh Direct has become a successful $200 million online
grocery business, thanks in part to illegal workers. When the
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement warned of a visit,
managers ordered workers to update their Social Security
identification, which led to an exit of 100 of its 900 employees.
That’s when one of two unions vying to represent the
workers posted a sign on the chest of an oversized mouse that
read, “Who Would Jesus Deport?”
Chances are Jesus would refer the policy matter, as he
did the paying of taxes, to Caesar, while treating as sacred any
Latino individual God placed in his path. The union’s impli-
cation—that a national policy solution is simple—is naïve.
Neither those demanding closed borders nor those demand-
ing amnesty present the complex issues that sound policy
will have to address.
Overwhelmed public services
Diehard amnesty advocates likely do not contend with the
daily stress of public systems overwhelmed by undocumented
visitors in heavily settled areas of the country. Unless better
policy mediates a more gradual assimilation, a systemic break-
down may be on the horizon.
Child protection. Since Arizona became the gateway of
choice for unauthorized immigrants in the mid-’90s,
swamped schools and child protection service workers there
have not been able to tread water, according to Steve Capobres,
author of Arizona’s 2003 Poverty Report. “A few years ago
the state knew of more than 300,000 latchkey kids under
the age of 13 but could only subsidize child care for 35,000
of them,” he said.29
PRISM
2008
13
Healthcare. “Illegal immigration is the number-one reason
our healthcare system is on life support,” said California con-
gressman Elton Gallegy. According to the Journal of American
Physicians and Surgeons, 60 hospitals in California alone were
forced to close between 1993 and 2003, primarily due to
unfunded emergency services for illegal immigrants.
Pennsylvania and New Jersey hospitals provided nearly $2
billion in free emergency and short-term care to uninsured
patients in 2002, a large share of them illegal immigrants,
according to Gallegy.30
Public schools. Across the nation, the cost of public school
support services for immigrants’ children, from ESL classes to
student counseling, have broken already strained school budgets
and has contributed to school closings around the nation.
Law enforcement. Former Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) official and current immigration attor-
ney Mark Cangemi confirms that the ICE national support
center is besieged today by a staggering 600,000 inquiries a
year from law enforcement agencies, court administrators,
and other officials. Deciding just one case of a legal child in
a dual citizenship home whose parents are being deported
can tie up a court for months, he said.31
There is no doubt that public services in some heavily
immigrant-settled communities today are at the point of
collapse. Policies that fail to address these problems will fail,
as has the one obvious approach the US Congress has funded:
increased border control.
Border backfire
Throughout US history, immigrants have followed a circular
“enter, return home, re-enter” pattern of immigration, a flow
symbolized by seasonal Mexican migrant workers.
Ironically, the “border control” billions spent on walls,
fences, and floodlights have upset that natural flow, not so
much keeping immigrants out as keeping them in.
The US/Mexico-sponsored Mexican Migration Project
(MMP) studied 20 years of undocumented immigration from
1980 to 2002, projecting numbers from records of border
arrests, border-crossing deaths, and deportation trends. The
study found that, while many assume the US is now expe-
riencing what one think tank called “the highest five-year
period of (Latino) immigration in our history,” the rising
undocumented population is actually due not to a spiked
inflow but to a trapped outflow.
While the rate of arrivals remained unchanged for these
22 years, the rate of return to Mexico dropped from 42
percent to about 25 percent when the US Congress enacted
border-tightening legislation in 1986, 1993, and 1994.
Moreover, because of more crafty smuggling at nontraditional
locations, the rate of apprehension also decreased from 33
percent to 10 percent during that time.32
New border legislation is also expected to backfire. As
one border-tightening critic said, “Show me a 16-foot wall,
and I’ll show you a 19-foot ladder.”
Ironically, all that the $10-billion-a-year US Customs
agency has produced is disincentives for making a “round
trip”: a dramatic increase in the cost of smuggling services
in the last 10 years and rising numbers of border-crossing
deaths, which have doubled in that time to 1,000 fatalities
per year.33
Latinos as economic widgets?
Some frame the immigration debate as a mere question of
new immigrants’ “net value” to the US, i.e., the benefit of
their productivity, goods consumption, investments, even
Social Security contributions, minus the costs of their health-
care, education, imprisonment, etc.
Yet macro-analyses vary widely and often seem politi-
cally motivated. For example, last year a Heritage Foundation
senior fellow presented to a US congressional subcommittee
a supposedly “comprehensive” analysis of the annual costs of
undocumented immigrants. However, only the cost of low-
skill immigrants was assessed.
“The annual fiscal deficit (total benefits received minus
total taxes paid)...equaled $89 billion” in 2004, he said, with
a mere footnote mentioning that immigrants may also con-
tribute to America’s GDP.34
As it turns out, they do so in spades, according to the
National Academy of Sciences. “Due to immigrants who have
arrived since 1980, total gross national product is about $200
billion higher each year.”35 However, that figure does not
distinguish legal from illegal immigrant contributions. A
definitive analysis would have to include the national gain
from the estimated 45 percent of illegal immigrants whose
work is “off the books.”36
Many believe that funds generated from a better-managed
guest worker program or immigration policy would easily
pay for the public services required for healthy assimilation
of Latino immigrants.
Enlightened self-interest
It is safe to say that self-interest will govern new immigra-
tion policy, according to Dr. Steven Holloway, professor of
geography at the University of Georgia, who studies the
impact of immigration on cities. “We like to think of our-
selves as the most hospitable nation, telling stories of Ellis
Island and the Statue of Liberty, but we’re not.”
PRISM
2008
14
When the US issues visas, they are not to refugees fleeing
injustice, said Holloway. “They are to doctors and astro-
physicists.” At the same time, “We turn a blind eye while pay-
ing low wages and building economic success on the backs
of the undocumented,” he said. “There is an element of
exploitation in that.”37
A guest worker program would certify labor shortages
and coordinate work placement in specific industries. Even
without a pathway to citizenship, such a program would
dignify labor that is now of a disputed status and ensure that
American workers are not displaced.
As mentioned earlier, more than 55 percent of foreign-
born Latinos seen in America today are high school or col-
lege educated.38 In the absence of a guest worker program,
even highly literate immigrants with needed skills sometimes
cannot navigate the US employment process.
Consider Sara, a nurse who came to Minneapolis in 1993.
“As a single mother with three kids in Mexico City, I made
$80 a week. It wasn’t enough to buy them food and clothes.”
Unfortunately, when she arrived she learned she would
need American schooling to obtain nursing certification. A
guest worker placement office in Mexico could have told
her that and could have required her to learn English before
approving her application.
Instead, after 12 years in the US and still unable to handle
an English nursing curriculum, she gave up and returned to
Mexico. “Now I was 45, and every employer in Mexico
City said I was too old to hire.” In despair, she paid $3,000
for a border crossing to re-enter the US.
Although a nationwide nursing shortage exists, Sara’s skills
remain unused. Her new husband, Humberto, arrived in the
US with degrees in accounting, law, and education from the
University of Mexico. But without guest worker placement,
both Sara and Humberto clean buildings for a living.
Revitalizing inner cities, illegally
A second area of American self-interest which could lead to
a win-win outcome for Mexican-American immigration
policy is the need to revive blighted center cities around the
nation. Most Americans would gladly relinquish this turf to
anyone who sees its possibilities.
It is no small irony that industrious “illegal” immigrants
are revitalizing formerly criminalized neighborhoods today,
from Brooklyn to Chicago to Oakland.
Could a geographically specific business relocation pro-
gram, including business loans and capital investment
resources, give immigrants the opportunities they seek while
reviving economically depressed areas and improving prop-
erty values, as they have done throughout American history?
Ernesto Reyes is a case in point. When Reyes opened the
first Latino grocery on Lake Street in Minneapolis in 1993,
friends ridiculed him, he said. “They thought I was crazy to
choose this neighborhood.” In fact, after seven break-ins and
one armed robbery, Reyes began to agree with them.
“We had an alarm system, but the thieves didn’t care,” he
explained.
When he arrived at Me Gusta market at 6 a.m., prosti-
tutes were still working his sidewalk. “There was drug dealing
and criminal activity everywhere,” said Reyes.
Yet he held his ground, beautified his place with planters,
painted a welcoming mural, and added storefront awnings.
Within five years, dozens of Latinos were joining him.
By 2002, thanks to new commerce and community devel-
opment, the criminal district that had been called “Crack
Alley” was “clean and new and bright,” according to crime
prevention officer Ron Reier.
The economic, social, and cultural value of 255 Latino
businesses on Lake Street is hard to calculate. But as the immi-
grant population began to open their stores and restaurants,
the number of annual arrests for aggravated assaults, thefts,
prostitution, and drug dealing all nose-dived, said Reier,
producing enormous cost savings in law enforcement, courts,
and prisons.
The bottom line
In the absence of sound federal immigration policy, “reactive”
state and local laws are being drafted to manage the havoc
created by inundated public services, and animosity is enflamed
New citizens take the oath of citizenship
in a mass swearing-in ceremony at the Masonic
Auditorium in San Francisco. Photo: David Bacon
PRISM
2008
15
among American neighbors who feel their community and
workplace interests threatened.
Meanwhile, numerous guest worker proposals have shown
the many billions of dollars they would produce, including
simply charging immigrants an entry fee, ($2,000 would be
less than most pay to coyotes now), in exchange for safe pas-
sage, home referrals, and work placement services.39
Even the payment of 15 percent taxes on the estimated
45 percent of undocumented work now “off the books” would
generate $3.5 billion to both produce and pay for thousands
of American jobs providing public immigration services.40
Many call for a proactive plan that administers and enforc-
es laws regarding a federal worker registry, Social Security
payments, language acquisition, college scholarships, and
driver’s licensing, and that provides housing, education, and
health and legal services—in short, a plan that is good for
both Mexicans and Americans.
For decades America has benefited from hardworking
Latino immigrant laborers, making businesses in whole indus-
tries profitable in countless communities. Now these workers
and their families are helping revive blighted urban centers,
generating a peaceful, productive environment.
For our management-oriented society, the “how” of
hospitable immigration is not the problem. Service payment
issues are a red herring. Perhaps “why” we should be hospi-
table toward our southern neighbors is what holds us back.
And the bottom line for the richest nation on the planet, said
Dr. Holloway, is simply this: “We’re behind on our obligations.”

THE CHURCH:
WWJD to serve
a neighborhood in
transition?
How does a compassionate leader in an urban neighborhood
adjust when suddenly the neighbors he or she is called to
serve do not speak his language, are in legal limbo, and are
culturally unfamiliar?
This is exactly what Urban Ventures Leadership
Foundation CEO Art Erickson has been asking—and answer-
ing through community development—as his neighborhood
has transitioned from majority African-American to majority
Latino in the past five years.
An urban church youth pastor for 20 years, Erickson
turned to corporate-sponsored community development in
1993 when his vision for low-income family empowerment
outgrew what church boards would approve and offering
plates could support.
Adapt to changing demographics. In the 1980s Erickson
and Urban Ventures Athletic Director Kelby Brothen used
the Urban Stars basketball league to keep hundreds of
African-American youth off dangerous streets in South
Minneapolis. By the early ’90s, the neighborhood changed.
Now ball-playing kids weren’t dribbling and shooting
free-throws. They were kicking goals between trash cans.
Erickson read the demographic landscape correctly and
responded unassumingly, “I don’t know Spanish, but I speak
soccer.”
Pinpoint top community needs. Conducting a study, Urban
Ventures found that the suburban Twin Cities boasted a
staggering 341 soccer fields in its sprawling communities.
Yet the center city, which had become a port of entry to
soccer-playing immigrants, had only one—and that was at a
private school.
Building a field as a platform for youth ministry fit Urban
Ventures’ threefold mission,“to develop youth leaders, strength-
en families, and create meaningful work opportunities.”
PRISM
2008
16
Partner with corporate sponsors. The study helped per-
suade Urban Ventures partners Honeywell and General
Mills to build two new soccer fields. One converted a dump
yard into the Olympic-quality Kix Field, infusing $1.7 mil-
lion and a heap of pride into a forgotten neighborhood.
Erickson believes in high-class urban investments like
Kix Field, he said. “If you treat urban kids as first-class citi-
zens with what you give them, they’ll rise to the respect you
show them.”
Invest in kids. Jose and Antonio, both of whose immigrant
fathers clean buildings for a living, described the loneliness
they felt as Latinos in Minneapolis before finding friends at
Urban Stars.
“When I first came to Minneapolis,” recalls Antonio, “I
kept my soccer ball in the closet for five months because I
didn’t know where to play. But Urban Ventures opened the
door to more than soccer. They teach you to live and do
things the right way.”
“I had no friends,” said Jose. “Then Tony dragged me to
Urban Stars where the guys treated each other like family.”
Jose joined seven Latino players from Southwest High
who kept playing in the off-season, refining their skills and
teamwork on Kix Field.This prepared them for a high school
season in which they won the Minneapolis city conference.
“This was the best experience of my life,” said Jose, later
adding, “My family spent seven years in California, where
kids were tempted to do drugs, join a gang, rob, fight, and
even kill.” But Urban Stars taught him about God, he said.
It has been the stabilizing influence in his life.
Hire a dynamo. In order to stay relevant in his rapidly
changing neighborhood, Erickson needed someone who
both understood the Latino culture and could “get things
done.”
Enter Susana Espinosa de Sygulla.
As an enterprising youth in Mexico City, Espinosa deliv-
ered tortillas to her neighbors by bicycle. By age 26 she
bought out a failing spring-producing factory and made it
profitable. While running the factory, she trained paint sales-
men and managers for DuPont Corporation, making money
hand over foot and living lavishly.
But in 1993 Espinosa received a telephone call that changed
her life. Pancho, her dearest friend and business partner, had
been killed in an auto accident as an illegal immigrant in the
US, and his poverty-stricken mother in Mexico did not
have the resources to respond.
“Until that moment, I did not see how self-centered or
hardhearted I was toward God,” said Espinosa, 42. “Through
that funeral and tears, my heart was softened. I was bonded
to God and to my people.”
A life calling sprouted from the ashes of Pancho’s death:
to provide a safety net for migrating Latinos separated from
their families. Espinosa sold the factory and gave all the pro-
ceeds to her colleague’s family, helping them start a grocery
store. She then moved to Minneapolis on a student visa to
study the Bible and to see why so many Latinos, like Pancho,
were journeying north, she said.
Erickson hired her for her business record and “just do
it” manner, he said. She would learn urban ministry on the
job, but he would also learn plenty from his new Latino
“cultural translator.” He quickly learned to trust her, empow-
er her, and give her a wide berth.
Delegate both leadership and strategy. Soon Espinosa
created multiple programs through Go Latino!, an agency
partner with Urban Ventures.
When waves of Latinos began to arrive in South
Minneapolis in the late ’90s, Espinosa rolled out the red carpet,
adding to the Kix Field outreach an adult league called
Azteca that today draws 1,300 players on 50 teams for weekly
games. She sees it as a form of Christian hospitality, she said.
“There’s one main reason our people immigrate,” said
Espinosa. “They need money to provide a better life for their
families and children.” The problem is that many, like Pancho,
leave their families behind. They find that America is a lonely
place where people are too busy to make strong relationships.
Providing family-like hospitality is one part of Espinosa’s
mission; calling people to faith is the other. “I intervene and
pray for these families. I counsel them in their marriages and
help kids who are getting into trouble.”
A straight-talking firebrand, Espinosa has called dozens
to faith in Christ who are now members of the Latino con-
PRISM
2008
17
gregation she and her family attend.
Leave big questions to God. Espinosa feels conflicted about
the fact that roughly 70 percent of those who attend her
programs are undocumented.“I’m torn,” she said.“I’m amazed
at the courage and sacrifices so many have made to be here.
I want to believe that God has protected and provided for
them. On the other hand, I know that God does not approve
of lying and cheating.”
But, said Espinosa, Americans only have a right to ask
about Mexicans’ legal “status” if they’ve first asked a question
about their own status.
“As Americans we are overly proud of who we are. God
Almighty is the one who decided what side of the border you
would be on. Some Americans live in a comfort zone and
think they don’t need to help others,” she continued. “But
some day God will ask you, ‘Why do you think you were
born in the most powerful country in the world, and I didn’t
make you to be born in Africa with starving parents?’ I think
it’s important that we ask ourselves before God asks us.”
At the same time Espinosa does not see border enforce-
ment as mean or racist. She also questions immigration that
splits families long term and has counseled many to return
to their loved ones.
Start parenting and discipleship classes. Espinosa has left
no stone unturned in ministering to her people, starting
Siempre Padres to teach parenting to Latino men and La
Victoria to provide Christian discipleship to teenagers, as
well as providing informal counsel and encouragement to
dozens of Latino shop owners in the South Minneapolis busi-
ness district.
Foster economic development. When in 2005 an Urban
Ventures partner bought and renovated La Hacienda Plaza,
a retail mall, Espinosa helped identify eight Latino business
owners to lease space.
Restaurant owners Miguel and Maria Zagal were a hit
when they first brought their specialty tacos to Lake Street
in 1999, as Mexicans lined up around the block to get a long-
awaited taste of home. As anchor tenants in the plaza, the
Zagals have done well enough to open two other restaurants
and say they may purchase the plaza next year, fulfilling Urban
Ventures’ vision to re-establish local ownership.
The soccer team run by Urban Ventures
gives kids a place to make friends, build skills,
and learn about God. Photo: Todd Svanoe

Host a cultural celebration. Just outside the De la Rivas’
shop, Espinosa hosts an annual Mexican Independence Day
festival on Lake Street each September that provides economic
opportunities to 175 street vendors and brings customers
from miles around.
An unprecedented 25,000 Latinos parade, wave flags,
dance to mariachi bands, and buy food and souvenirs. Three
stages feature 35 different Latin American bands and dancing
groups in traditional costumes.
The alcohol-free party itself is a testament of hope in what
was until recently a drug-infested and violent neighborhood.
According to a violence prevention officer interviewed at the
parade, crime statistics have dropped in every category since
Latinos began to settle and shop in south Minneapolis.
“The only category of crime that has increased is physi-
cal assaults. Ironically, Latinos get jumped because they carry
large wads of cash instead of credit cards that might raise the
issue of their legal identity.”
Start a Cristo Rey high school. While the pace and scale
of Urban Ventures’ community development may seem over-
whelming to community leaders seeking a model for hospi-
tality toward Latino immigrants, even its grandest investment
is truly replicable—hosting a branch of Cristo Rey Jesuit
high schools (cristoreynetwork.org/).
While urban schools around the nation are closing, school
districts are struggling, and many of the best teachers, stu-
dents, and resources are being drained from cities, Cristo Rey
Network answered the challenge and has begun a significant
educational renewal, from New York to Los Angeles, in a
dozen inner cities around the nation. All of its students are
low income; 62 percent are Latino.
When Erickson saw that 68 percent of Latino public high
school students were failing to graduate in south Minneapolis,
he studied how Chicago-based Jesuit leaders responded to the
same dismal record with low-income Hispanic immigrants
in 1995. Jesuits conceived of the Cristo Rey education
model in response to a challenge from Chicago Archbishop
PRISM
2008
18
At Cristo Rey high schools across the country, otherwise
underprivileged Hispanic kids get a challenging education and
valuable on-the-job training. Photo courtesy of Cristo Rey Network
Joseph Bernadine.
On one of five school days each week, students work as
interns with partnering businesses that pay for 70 percent of
their education, giving kids “real world” experience.
Seeing the relevance of their education, kids are respond-
ing. Cristo Rey graduates an astounding 95 percent of its
students. The same percentage enrolls in a two- or four-
year college.
Build Catholic/Protestant partnerships. Erickson, many of
whose core supporters have been evangelical Protestants,
turned a few heads when he began showing up flanked by
Roman Catholic priests. But here, too, he models the power
that can be harnessed from yoking Catholicism’s strong
tradition of social service with evangelical Protestantism’s
energetic witness.
“Our objective is to help our neighborhood kids gradu-
ate from high school, gain a college degree, and succeed in
a career,” said Erickson, “and Cristo Rey is best able to help
us achieve that goal.”
Catholic business leaders, and even Minneapolis’ Jesuit-
educated mayor, stepped forward to endorse the multi-million-
dollar 160,000-square-foot Colin PowellYouth Development
Center, the new home to both the high school and Urban
Ventures, which opened in 2007.
“I can’t tell you a day in my life, outside of the birth of my
five children, when I’ve been more proud,” said Jesuit-edu-
cated developer and Erickson recruit Pat Ryan of the Ryan
Companies, whose brother Jim announced on the center’s
opening day that over $3 million was contributed by contrac-
tors and suppliers who believed in the project.
Operate outside the box. Cross-cultural ministry can be, as
one practitioner put it,“like plowing concrete.” But Erickson
acquired his responsive mission-driven impulses through his
early Young Life leadership, he says, and it has served him
well in his transitioning neighborhood.
“The principles were to go to where the people are, soak
in their environment, talk in a language they can understand,
build your mission to meet their needs, connect with and
develop trust in indigenous leaders, and figure out how to make
five loaves and a few fish into a smorgasbord,” he said smiling.
“Over 35 years here, I’ve seen 65 churches give up and
leave because of the changing urban face of South Minne-
apolis. We’ve found creative ways to survive.” And thrive.
 This stands in contrast to the often serious and intense
demeanor of the inner-city teenage basketball players I coach

CLOSE-UP:
What Latino immigrants
have taught me
about my citizenship
Soon after my family moved to an inner-city South Minne-
apolis neighborhood in July 2000, I saw a grocery cart full
of Latino kids disappear down our alley, motored by a stocky,
impish-looking teenager.To an urban photojournalist this was
tantalizing, so I bolted up the stairs to grab my camera.
But as a white, middle class parent, my first thoughts
betrayed a bias: “Okay, so here are our children’s new neigh-
bors—poor, out-of-control latchkey kids, unashamed to play
with stolen property. Don’t they know any better? Is this teen-
ager holding those kids hostage?”
One year later, we knew not only this Latino teen’s name
and face but more importantly his story. Manny’s mother was
“somewhere” in prison, and his father was probably deported.
He lived with his grandmother and mowed our lawn to pay
for his school notebooks.
Then it dawned on me that Manny didn’t have a YMCA
membership or sports equipment like my kids have. He enter-
tained his younger cousins in the grocery cart the best he
knew how. The cart was not “stolen” property so much as a
poor family’s means of transporting heavy groceries, a tool
that doubled as a toy.
A number of encounters with the Latinos in my com-
munity have made me aware of God’s intention to correct the
biased and condescending grid through which I had previ-
ously viewed my neighbors as “aliens.”
who seem to get re-infected weekly with the “winning-is-
everything” disease so typical of American sports. My obser-
vation of Latinos has provided a reminder of how to “play.”
Relationships. The second challenge I’ve received is from
Latino business persons in my neighborhood whose values
may be instructive for our uptight “time-is-money” culture.
This is best illustrated by a story told me by a Brazilian
missionary friend of mine. Maria made her living by deliv-
ering fruit by bicycle each day to customers along a circular
route. An American visitor suggested that it would be more
efficient and profitable if she built a centrally located fruit
stand so that customers came to her. Her response: “But then
I wouldn’t get to visit with all the families and friends along
the way.”
With all the books today about the lost soul of business,
perhaps it is time to borrow a leaf from Maria’s manual: the
“customer is first” is not just a consumer appeasement strat-
egy. It’s a way of life for those who have learned that we “work
to live, not live to work.”
After telling me that 80 percent of the 255 Latino busi-
nesses in our neighborhood are barely making it, consultant
Monica Romero said, “That’s not negative or positive,
because they want to be there for other reasons. Business is
not just a source of income. It’s how they define their iden-
tity, relationship, and belonging in the community. It’s how
they share their lives.”
Continued on page 30.

Joy. The first encounter was with Latino men who play
their hearts out in South Minneapolis soccer fields and
parks, having the times of their lives, invariably wearing
joy-filled smiles.

My Latino neighbors have brought

joy and spontaneity to my routine-driven,
overscheduled life. Photo: Todd Svanoe

PRISM
2008

19
The Story of a People on the Move
continued from page 19.

Spontaneous compassion. In 2005 a few handymen from our

church started a home cleaning/repair outreach called Hands
and Feet in our neighborhood. As our neighbors became
increasingly Latino, we invited a Latino pastor to lunch to dis-
cuss a partnership. Knowing he was passionate about reaching
his people, we were shocked when he refused.
Thinking he saw it as an imposition on his time, we
explained how well organized this Saturday event was and
that we only offered the service once every two months.
But he asked,“What do you do the other 59 days? Just call
us any time and we will be there.”
His answer caught us right between the eyes. Having so
organized our social programs to fit our schedules and satisfy
our service quotas, we hardly realized how little we were doing.
How many needs of our neighbors did we pass by on a day-
to-day basis?
The same pastor, later that year, led a men’s retreat I
attended. He had fasted and prayed for four days that week
in preparation. For doing so, many of us looked at him as
an “alien” indeed, but were we the ones most foreign to
God’s purposes?

Manny’s gift
As our friend Manny ate at our table and played with our kids,
we became one link in his safety net of relationships. But to
us, Manny became much more.
One day the doorbell rang. It was Manny, looking both
proud and sad. A youth worker in our community had invit-
ed young Manny to be in his wedding party, and with the
wedding due to begin in one hour, Manny had nothing to wear.
“Do you have a suit I could borrow?” he asked sheepishly.
Picture this short, pudgy teenager next to my tall bean-
pole frame. He probably had me by 50 pounds. I said,“Manny,
you know I’d like to help, but I don’t see how you could fit
into any of my clothes.”
Something about this challenge seemed uncomfortably
reminiscent of gospel stories, so with a childlike obedience,
knowing there was no time to shop, I walked with him to my
closet. We found a short-sleeved shirt that he could barely
button, but on Manny my loosest slacks were ruffled and
dragging. Just then, a contractor, who was working on our
house, appeared with duct tape, “hemming” the extra slack
up inside.
Manny pointed to my best tie—that part was easy—but
then to my best suit coat. My first thought was,“Absentminded
teenager. He’ll take it off and leave it. I’ll never see it again.”
My “alien” friend Manny (pushing the cart) has taught
me that in terms of following Christ, it is more often
I who am most alien to God’s purposes. Photo: Todd Svanoe
But he insisted. “Please!” And now Jesus’ words about the
“cloak” were ringing in my ears.
I will never in my life forget Manny’s beaming face as he
walked off to church, reveling in the moment, hands disap-
pearing within the sleeves of that gold-buttoned blazer.
Manny and his fellow Latinos gave us more than we ever
gave them, by bringing joy and spontaneity to our routine-
driven, overscheduled lives—by openly sharing their needs
in a culture suffocating with self-sufficiency, but most of all,
by reminding us that we are all aliens whose citizenship in
heaven and on earth is pure gift. ■
Todd Svanoe is a freelance journalist, promotional copywriter, and
urban ministry consultant. He owns Storyrcraft Communications, Inc.
(www.storycraftinc.com) and lives with his wife and three children
in South Minneapolis.
Editor’s note: Due to space limitations, the endnotes for this article have been posted
at esa-online.org/EndNotes.

PRISM
2008

30
ENDNOTES for "The Story of a People on the Move" by Todd Svanoe (May/June 2008 issue of PRISM)

1. U.S. side: Pew Hispanic Center Estimate, March, 2005; Mexican side: numbers from Mexico’s Secretariat of Foreign Affairs reported by the U.S.
Government Accountability Office, August 2006. On June 27, 2006, Frontline World reported in The Season of Death that 271 had died in 2005 trying to walk
the Mexico-Arizona desert.
2. Steven A. Camarota and John Keeley, The New Ellis Islands, September 2001, Center for Immigration Studies.
3. Interview with community leader and celebration coordinator Susana Espinosa de Sygulla, January 9, 2008.
4. US Government Accountability Office, September 2006; and Pew Hispanic Center, March, 2005.
5. Mexico has had less than 4% unemployment for most of the past decade, Latin Focus, http://www.latin-
focus.com/latinfocus/countries/mexico/mexunemp.htm .; the U.S. was at 5% unemployment in December 2007,http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-
3484641,00.html
6. With the exception of Mexico’s famous crisis of 1994 and a period of stagnation in 2001, CIA World Fact Book, 2008.
7. “Mexico's economy,” The Economist, Sept. 27, 2007.
8. Latin Focus, http://www.latin-focus.com/latinfocus/countries/mexico/mexunemp.htm.
9. World Fact Book, Central Intelligence Agency update, February 12, 2008
10. George W. Grayson, www.greatdecisions.org, Neighbor in Turmoil, 2007 Report, pp. 37-38, Foreign Policy Association.
11 Interview with Rodolfo Gutierrez, Director of Hacer, a Latino research center in the Twin Cities, January 2008.
12 Immigrating Mexicans are three times more high school educated than the general Mexican population. Pew Hispanic Center research, Star Tribune, The
Money Pipeline, May 21, 2006.
13. 55-60% of foreign-born Latin American adults had a high school education or higher at their date of immigration; Dr. Wendy Erisman and Shannon
Looney, Opening the Door to the American Dream, Institute for Higher Education Policy, April 2007.
14. World Bank 2004 figures, Urban Poverty in Mexico, p. 150.
15. Pew Hispanic Center Research Report estimates by demographic expert Dr. Jeffrey Passel, based on the March 2005 Current Population Survey.
Passel found that the most commonly held jobs among undocumented workers nationally, in descending order, are those of cook (436,000), construction
worker (400,000), and maids and housecleaners (342,000).
16. Julia Preston, figures reported by Mexico’s central Inter-American Development Bank, New York Times, August 9, 2007)
17. Numbers from 2003, according to pollster and consultant Sergio Bendixen, hired by the Inter-American Development Bank, when annual remittances
were only $13 billion. “A Surge in Money Sent Home by Mexicans,” by Ginger Thompson, New York Times, October 28, 2003.)
18. Kevin Diaz, The Money Pipeline, Star Tribune, May 21, 2006.
19. ibid.
20. Mark Bixler, The village left behind, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, November 20, 2000.
21. George W. Grayson, www.greatdecisions.org, Neighbor in Turmoil, 2007 Report, pp. 37-38, Foreign Policy Association.
22. Judith Greene and Kevin Pranis, Gang Wars, A Justice Policy Institute Report, July 2007.
23. “Think Twice,” Newsweek online, October 30, 2007, cites the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy.
24. Child Trends Data Bank, 2005 figures, www.childtrendsdatabank.org/indicators/1HighSchoolDropout.cfm.
25. “Governor Pawlenty unveils actions to combat illegal immigration,” Office of the Governor, Press Release, January 7, 2008
26. Estimate based on rising figures, Illegal immigrants in the US: How many are there?, Brad Knickerbocker, Christian Science Monitor, May 16, 2006
27. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Forty Acres and a Gap in Wealth, New York Times, November 18, 2007, Op Ed.
28. Dave Michaels, DREAM Act…fails Senate test vote, The Dallas Morning News, October 25, 2007.
29. Capobres interview, Phoenix, Ariz., July 2005
30. Press Release from California Congressman Elton Gallegy, Today and Tomorrow, February/March 2005
31. (Minnesota Public Radio interview, January 8, 2008)
32. George W. Grayson, www.greatdecisions.org, Neighbor in Turmoil, 2007 Report, pp. 45-47, Foreign Policy Association.
33. Crossing costs averaged from numerous street interviews in Minneapolis; Fatalities: U.S. side from Pew Hispanic Center Estimate, March, 2005;
Mexican side from numbers from Mexico’s Secretariat of Foreign Affairs reported by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, August 2006.
34. Testimony from Robert E. Rector, Senior Research Fellow, The Heritage Foundation, before the Subcommittee on Immigration of the Committee on the
Judiciary of the U.S. House of Representatives, May 17, 2007.
35. Paul Grogan and Tony Proscio, Comeback Cities, Westview Press, 2000, pp.139
36. Randy Capp, The Urban Institute, May 2006, Footnote 3, p. 6
37. Phone interview, January 13, 2008
38. 55-60% of foreign-born Latin American adults had a high school education or higher at their date of immigration; Dr. Wendy Erisman and Shannon
Looney, Opening the Door to the American Dream, Institute for Higher Education Policy, April 2007.
39. George W. Grayson proposes a temporary worker visa program with a $500 fee, www.greatdecisions.org, Neighbor in Turmoil, 2007 Report, p. 50,
Foreign Policy Association. I suggest $2,000 to cover the costs of immigration services.
40. Randy Capp et al., Civic Contribution Taxes Paid by Immigrants in the Washington, DC. Metro Area, The Urban Institute, May 2006, p. 6.