Rita from Honduras is one of an estimated 11 million migrants living in America without legal status. Donald Trump promises to deport them. Will Rita be one of them?
Rita T. spent her first night in America with her young daughter at a gas station.
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Her Toyota stops somewhat abruptly in front of the train station of the small coastal town in the New York City metropolitan area. It’s in good shape, it always is. The car smells strongly of ammonia, which is added to cleaning products to break down grease. On this Sunday morning, there is still an apartment to be cleaned. Rita T.* works whenever there is work, even on Sundays. Because life on the outskirts of New York is expensive. Four of her six children still live with her. Her own apartment? She doesn’t have one at the moment.
At 9.30 p.m., she says, she has to be back at the «shelter,» a lodging for migrants that is funded by a Christian non-profit where people arriving in the New York area can find refuge for a short time free of charge. After more than 20 years in the U.S., Rita is relying on such emergency accommodation for the first time.
There, she and her family live in two small rooms and share a bathroom and kitchen with the others. There was no other way. During the COVID-19 pandemic, her debts piled up and her finances, always tight anyway, got out of hand.
Rita is supported by the non-profit because her residence status in the U.S. is still the same after 20 years. «Undocumented,» left-wing liberals call it. Donald Trump and his supporters call it illegal.
Fierce election campaign for migrants
Hardly any other topic was as hotly debated in the American election campaign as immigration. Immigration increased rapidly under Joe Biden and has recently decreased again following restrictive measures. Donald Trump, on the other hand, used drastic measures to deter illegal immigrants between 2017 and 2020.
During the recent election campaign, Trump accused migrants of taking jobs away from Americans. With his radical rhetoric, he revived old, racist formulas: Their blood is «poisoning» the country. Haitians even eat dogs and cats, he claimed falsely. It is estimated that 11 million people are living in the U.S. illegally, around 3% of the population.
Rita crosses the Rio Grande on an inner tube
Rita crossed the Rio Grande border river in the fall of 2003 at a shallow spot on a large inner tube – her four-year-old daughter Mia on her stomach and her unborn son Allan in her womb. Her smuggler told her to look out for the border guard on the other side, who would then take her to the next town.
They picked up the then 19-year-old a short time later and recorded her personal details. Rita was given a date on which she would have had to appear before a judge. But she never attended the appointment and instead went into hiding – like thousands of Hondurans before her. Their residence status was never negotiated.
«By doing that,» says Rita, «I was breaking American law.» Donald Trump promises his voters he’ll build internment camps and deport «illegals» en masse. Rita would be one of them, as surreal as that sounds to her.
The 40-year-old is raising Americans. Five of her six children were born in the U.S. and have American passports. If you are not born in the U.S., it is difficult to become an American. Marriage would be a possibility. But the men Rita fell in love with were migrants like her, people in search of a better life, in the country illegally – just like her current husband.
Rita expects from America what immigrants have expected for generations from the land of supposedly unlimited opportunities: that it will let her live her life and offer her and her children prospects for the future. This expectation is increasingly being called into question in America.
22 years ago, a Swiss woman meets a Honduran woman
Our paths crossed once before, in 2002. It was a year before her departure, 22 years ago in a suburb of San Pedro Sula, the second largest city in the Central American country of Honduras. At the age of 18, Rita was living with her boyfriend Elvin’s parents. A mutual Swiss friend, Barbara, lived in the same household in San Pedro Sula at the time. Little Mia hid between her mother’s legs during my visit.
Rita was a warm-hearted young woman, short, clever. She grew up fast. She became a mother for the first time at the age of 15. She finished school early and, like many girls in Central America, did not learn a trade. The differences between me, the young Swiss woman, and Rita could not have been greater. My stay in Honduras was a volunteer assignment in a country I knew little about. For many years after I left, Rita existed only in Barbara’s stories.
Her father emigrated to the U.S.
And so I learned from Barbara that Elvin died a year after my visit. He drowned, it was said. A short time later, Rita traveled to the U.S. The news soon came that she had made it, and had now arrived at her parents’ house.
Although Elvin was someone who stayed away from drug dealing and gang crime, the incident captured our imagination back home in Switzerland. In Honduras, young men died every day in the ‘00s. The drug war was rampant. With almost 180 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, San Pedro Sula was considered one of the most dangerous cities in the world at the time.
Rita’s father had already emigrated to the U.S., in 1988, and earned a living for the family back home as a day laborer. It was a lonely life. He barely saw his children grow up. He traveled by bus back then. A smuggler was not yet necessary. When the children were older, their mother also moved to New York.
Rita remembers how the family paid their «coyote,» the trafficker, $5,500. It was a «friends» price for a young woman with a small child. During the twelve extraordinary days of her journey, Rita slept in a hammock, in a tent, in a simple guesthouse. She traveled through Mexico partly on horseback. Rita knows how dangerous it can be for young women to travel through Central America. «I was lucky,» she says. «I always felt safe.»
It wasn’t until she spent her first night on American soil with her toddler at a gas station «somewhere in the Texas desert,» as Rita recalls, that she began to imagine all the bad things that could happen to her . She covered Mia with a cardboard box and huddled next to her until Elvin’s sister, who lives in Texas, finally drove up in the car. From Texas, Rita continued her journey to New York by bus.
Exorbitant price for an apartment
Immigrants should not expect much from the American state, especially not as «illegals.» In the U.S., you have to do it yourself. Apart from a kind of child allowance, Rita receives no state support and has no health insurance. Rita pays significantly more for many things than people with legal status. Her car insurance company charges her the maximum amount. A credit card is also only available with expensive conditions.
Above all, she says, living here in the New York City catchment area is actually far too expensive for her. But her father– her greatest source of support, who helps her with the children – and her uncles live here. Her mother died of cancer a few years ago. And there is work here. Rita paid over $4,000 a month for her last apartment. Her husband earns $600 a week working in a Mexican restaurant. Rita has to earn the rest, which was almost impossible during the pandemic.
There is a kind of unspoken deal in the U.S.: American companies get cheap labor, private households get cheap services, the state looks the other way. Companies, consumers, migrants and countries of origin – everyone benefits from the deal. Rita worked at the fast food chain Dunkin’ Donuts for years after her arrival. The starting wage was $8.50 per hour. Her employer registered her using a fake social security number, as happens millions of times in the country.
Rita founded her own cleaning company a few years ago. The women she employs also have no legal residence status. They receive $120 a day from Rita. Customers are used to fast and inexpensive service. Nobody asks about residence status here.
The tax authorities also look the other way
Even the IRS does not want to know whether someone is in the country legally. It just wants to know if they’re paying taxes. Rita pays so that she can’t be accused of anything should a path to naturalization ever open up. People without legal status paid over $60 billion in taxes at state, federal and local levels in 2021, the American Immigration Council calculates.
There is a consensus among economists that America benefits from migration, including illegal migration. The economy is booming and workers are urgently needed. It is precisely those without legal status who do the work that Americans have long been unwilling to do.
Rita wants her children to have a better life than she had. But she doesn’t sleep much, and works hard. And she also takes the time to advise others in a similar situation. Rita knows where to find doctors who offer affordable treatment. Or where you can get medication such as anti-hypertensives at a lower price. Her phone rings constantly: Work, children, friends.
Is she ashamed that she had to move into emergency accommodation after 20 years in the U.S.? Rita shrugs and says: «That’s life, it always goes on.»
She wants to visit Honduras
She will soon be able to move back into an apartment – an expensive one, but not quite as expensive as the last one. Next year, Allan, who she was carrying in her womb when she entered the country illegally, will also turn 21 and thus come of age in America. He then has the right to submit an application for his mother and Mia, his older sister, so that they can finally become Americans.
Rita, who speaks almost accent-free English, doesn’t believe that Donald Trump could block this path for her. Rita says she has long been a Honduran American or an American Honduran, it doesn’t matter. What matters most is being American. She can even sympathize, to some extent, with Trump’s tough stance on migrants. «He protects the country.»
Last year, Rita sat on an airplane for the first time in her life, a domestic flight. «I was really nervous,» she says. She squints her eyes and laughs. The trip to visit her aunt in San Francisco was an adventure.
But once she has her passport, she would like to travel to Honduras. «Visiting,» she emphasizes. She dreams of finally standing at the grave of her deceased boyfriend Elvin again.
* A pseudonym was used for all persons in this article. The names are known to the editors.
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Publish date : 2024-12-20 00:14:00
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