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By Scott Moyers ~ Southeast Missourian

A woman sneaks across the Mexican border into the United States just to give birth to a son who someday may want to live in the land of the free.

A Turkish man comes to this country for a college education, but when his 5-year-old visa expires, he decides to take his chances here rather than return to a country where he will be sent to jail.

A 14-year-old son of Mexican farmers walks right past the border patrol into the United States, blessed with the ignorance of youth as well as a fake green card that he bought for $1,200.

They represent the face of immigration in Southeast Missouri.

It is a face difficult to look upon for some, especially in a post Sept. 11 world that has rekindled anti-immigration sentiments and tightened borders.

Not to mention that it is a face that has violated the law. These people and members of their family have spent time in this country illegally, along with the other 6 million to 11 million illegal aliens that are in the United States presently, a figure that changes depending on who you ask.

Along with the 1 million immigrants who enter the country legally each year, illegal aliens come to work, start businesses, get educated or raise families in a place they consider better than the land of their birth.

They want to take advantage of luxuries provided to citizens of the U.S., itself a nation of immigrants.

"In America, they will give a man like me a chance," said Daniel Alvarez, 35, whose parents paid for the fake documents that got him into America when he was 14. "In Mexico, it's hard to get financing. But here, if you have fair credit, and are willing to work hard, you can start a business."

Alvarez, who got his green card years ago, now owns the El Torero Mexican restaurant on William Street and two others in Perryville and Jackson, Mo. He is now in the process of applying for U.S. citizenship.

"I've lived here longer than Mexico," he said by way of explanation. "This is my home now."

And while most immigrants -- both legal and illegal -- go to places like Florida, Texas, California and Arizona, some of them choose Southeast Missouri.

"These people are living right here," said Nathan Cooper, an immigration lawyer in Jackson. "There are a lot of illegals here, hundreds and hundreds, though there's no way to know exactly."

The reason they come is for the work or for freedom, he said.

"We have good jobs here, and they're taking jobs that Americans don't want," Cooper said. "Why stay in a country where you get paid 50 cents an hour, and that's only if you can find work at all? Most of these people are wonderful people who are just looking for a better life."

Others don't see it that way.

"California today is Missouri tomorrow," said David Ray, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a Washington-based group dedicated to reducing legal immigration and stopping illegal immigration.

"First and foremost, the United States is a country of law," Ray said. "Illegal aliens haven't followed that law. We don't know who they are or why they're here. If the American dream is going to be open to everyone, everyone has to play by the rules. It's that simple."

Local connection

Illegal immigration is a problem that goes mostly unnoticed in Southeast Missouri, which is far from places like Los Angeles, Orlando, Phoenix and Dallas and their large alien populations.

But the issue was brought to light locally on May 17. According to police reports, Cape Girardeau officer Rick Price was dispatched to the 300 block of Siemers to "stop five Mexican males" who had fled the scene after an accident on nearby Interstate 55. They were in a van, which slammed into the back of a pickup stopped in a traffic jam.

A highway patrol officer caught up to them first, and 10 minutes later, the men were arrested along with the Mexican driver of the car. None had identification.

"None of them spoke English and none of us spoke Spanish, not enough to communicate anyway," Price said. "My Spanish gets rough after 'hola.'"

He learned through a translator the group was here to work. "They were humble. They didn't give us any trouble," Price said.

The men -- Marc Perez, Dainer Martinez, Bersain Santiso, Roberto Robledo, Rolando Sanchez and Pedro Perez, all in their late teens and 20s -- were booked and then sent to the Mississippi County Jail.

The jail in Charleston is one of several locations in Missouri that has contracts to house illegal aliens while they undergo Immigration and Naturalization Service hearings. A spokesman with the jail said the number of detainees varies and can run anywhere between five and 50.

Such situations may seem uncommon, but Chester Moyer, the INS officer in charge in St. Louis, said illegal aliens are traveling up and down I-55 all the time.

"You'd be surprised how many are heading somewhere and using our highways in Missouri," said Moyer, whose area encompasses all of the eastern half of the state. "It's an everyday thing, a couple of times a day, without any doubt."

Moyer said the majority of illegal aliens are Mexican, estimating them at about 3 million of the 6 million illegals that INS believes are in the United States. Others, including Ray's group, Cooper and various researchers, put the number of illegal aliens closer to 11 million.

But why they come here is often difficult to discern.

"We don't know, often, whether they're on their way to Arizona or California or if they have the intention of coming to this area," Moyer said. "We don't always get the true story."

He said I-55 can be a way to get to the Bootheel and its farming and manufacturing jobs, or a means to Louisiana or I-10 and on to Florida. Immigrants follow the work.

Four of the men in the Cape Girardeau incident have been deported, and one was taken to a hospital for minor injuries and released. Moyer said he's not sure what happened to the man who was released.

He said many aliens don't have driver's licenses and the vehicles often don't have insurance.

"We don't have a way to figure it out unless they have prior immigration records," Moyer said. "You're basically just putting together their story with what they have on them, and that usually isn't much. We're almost dealing with a ghost identity."

He said there are a number of federal charges that can be brought against illegal aliens. But, if they haven't committed crimes, then often charges aren't brought against them.

"Frankly, we don't have the money to process all of them," he said. "It cost $50 a day to detain somebody, and we just can't afford that. We can end up holding these people 30, 40 days."

He said they only have 20 people in their office, half of whom are investigators. On occasion, they've been called by the Cape Girardeau police about an illegal alien or two, but if the aliens aren't criminals, INS usually says to let them go.

But he said INS has done good work regardless of the financial and manpower constraints. There are currently 500 illegal aliens going through proceedings in this district, about 100 of whom are being detained. In 2001, there were 701 aliens deported from the eastern half of Missouri.

Illegal aliens who are caught go before immigration judges. Most of those end up leaving the United States, either by deportation or by their own means.

"Everyone has to be talked to and some kind of determinations made," Moyer said. "Once they're within the U.S., they have the protection of the Constitution."

Most came legally

More than half of the illegal aliens in the country are people who came legally on a visa of some sort -- student, work, visitor -- and then continued to stay after their visas expired.

That is the case with Suleyman Solak, a 30-year-old man from Burdur, Turkey, who came to Cape Girardeau 10 years ago to study computer science at Southeast Missouri State University.

"I could get a better education here than where I was," Solak said. "When I got here, it was hard, not knowing English. But Americans were very nice, very helpful."

But Solak's visa expired after five years, and he wanted to stay. Jobs in Turkey are hard to come by and in America, they're plentiful. Turkey's economy is in shambles.

Immigration told him he'd have to leave the country to get his visa renewed, but that presented a problem. He left Turkey without serving its mandatory two-year military service. If Solak went home, he'd either be forced to join the military or go to jail.

"I had no reason to go back," he said. "I thought, I'll just take my chances here."

He remained illegally in this country until he met Gina, whom he married last year. Now, Solak has applied for permanent residency and his lawyer, Cooper, said the interview will determine whether the marriage is valid and not a sham as well as whether or not he has the ability to support himself here. He hopes to be able to, because he has a new family, which includes four children from his wife's previous marriage.

"I hope I'll stay here," Solak said. "I come from a big family, and now I have a big family."

Alvarez, who owns El Torero, came to the country about 20 years ago. After his brothers moved away from the family farm, he decided to leave Mexico to come to the United States.

"I came by myself," he said. "I didn't really have a lot of knowledge. I didn't know why I wanted to do it, I just did. When you're at an age like that, you don't really think."

When he got to the border, he paid $1,200 to one of the many people in Mexico who can separate a young man from his money to get him into America.

"I walked right in," he said. "They just looked at my papers and I came through."

Alvarez made his way to Georgia, where he got a job at a Mexican restaurant and met his first wife, an American. That's when he got his permanent residency. In 1993, after years in the restaurant business, he got into his car and started driving, looking for a place to start his own restaurant.

Somehow, he happened upon Cape Girardeau.

"I've liked it here," he said. "It's been a good place to live."

Born in California

Then there's Mario Guevara, whose pregnant mother sneaked into California so he could be born an American citizen. She then took him back to Mexico, where most of her family lived. He remained in Mexico more than 30 years, working as an electrical mechanic.

But the money was not great, so he moved to Sikeston, Mo., as an American-born citizen a few years back. He got a good job as a construction worker.

"My mother did that thinking of my future," said Guevara, whose 11-year-old stepdaughter, Ana, was translating for him. "She didn't want any problems for me."

Guevara is taking English lessons at Southeast Missouri State University.

While these people go about their daily lives, the debate about immigration continues.

Some argue that these people could have gone through the process legally, but Cooper said it's not so easy. They often misunderstand how U.S. immigration works, and Mexico, for example, doesn't make the process simple.

"There's almost nothing you can apply for on your own, especially from Mexico," Cooper said. "You can apply for a visitor visa, but it's likely you'd be denied."

As far as getting a visitor visa, immigrants have to prove when and how they're going back home.

"The problem there is many of them don't want to go back home," Cooper said. "Some of them see coming in illegally as their only option."

Numbers problematic

But having so many illegal aliens is problematic, according to Ray, the Federation for American Immigration Reform spokesman.

Government has a responsibility to know who is coming in, why, and when they plan on going home. Not knowing the specifics is what led to the events of Sept. 11, he said.

"That there are 8 to 11 million illegal aliens is a huge security risk," he said. "If we can't enforce basic principals of immigration, then we've lost our ability to prevent another Sept. 11."

They also force down wages and even take jobs from Americans, Ray said. He doesn't buy that they're doing jobs Americans don't want.

He said it should be impossible to get a driver's license, Social Security card or a job with flimsy documentation.

"The INS should be focusing like a laser beam on enforcement," he said.

Mass immigration only adds to existing problems here, he said, like urban sprawl, government spending and the education system.

"None of those problems are solved by mass immigration," Ray said. "In fact, nearly every one of them are exacerbated by mass immigration."

The two vastly different positions have created a difficult situation for the INS, Moyer said.

"The country was founded on immigration," he said. "But we're suspicious, especially since 9-11. We're one of those agencies, that no matter what you do, you're wrong. æHumanitarians say it's not right to send them back, and people who are law-enforcement minded are saying the country's full and our sources are depleted.

"There's no way to win."

smoyers@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 137