The Illegals

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The scene is played out in the San Jacinto Plaza of El Paso, Texas (pop. 381,500), in the dawn hours of most Mondays. Sedans cruise slowly around the square, their drivers eying clusters of young women. Every so often, one of the women is beckoned from the sidelines. Deals are struck and the cars pull away.

The object of this ritual is not prostitution and the women are not harlots. They are illegal immigrants (known euphemistically these days as "undocumented aliens") who have crossed the Rio Grande from neighboring Juarez, Mexico, looking for work as maids. Their usual rate: around $25 a week. Because of its proximity to Ju?z, El Paso is the second largest crossing point for undocumented aliens in the U.S. The largest is Chula Vista, Calif., which shares part of its sewerage system with neighboring Tijuana. Aliens have been known to crawl through the common drainage pipes to reach the U.S.

Undocumented aliens are the most shadowy portion of the Hispanic community. By federal estimates, there are 8.2 million of them in the U.S. Other estimates range from as low as 3 million to as high as 12 million. As many as 90% of the total are Hispanics. A million more are suspected of joining them every year.

Whatever the exact numbers, there is little doubt that the tide of undocumented Hispanic aliens has reached flood stage. Many thousands have come from Central and South American countries like Guatemala, Colombia and Ecuador, but about 90% are Mexican. On foot, by air or in autos, they filter across the 2,000-mile-long southern U.S. border. Last year nearly 1 million illegal entrants were apprehended and deported by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. But, admits Los Angeles Police Officer Antonio Amador, "the only way we're going to stop them is to build a Berlin Wall."

Behind the mass influx are some stark economic figures: half of Mexico's 18 million-member labor force is unemployed; a devalued peso has sent prices there spiraling; the country's 3.5% population growth is one of the world's highest. Says Border Patrolman Michael S. Williams: "They're starving to death down there."

Typical of them is Jos?., 33, who as a tenant farmer in an isolated area of Mexico's Jalisco state could earn no more than $500 in a good year. Now he works in a metals factory near Los Angeles and brings home $160 a week, counting overtime pay. In six years he has saved $2,000. Says Jos?"I love Mexico. It is very beautiful, but you can't live there. Coming to the U.S. was a question of economics."

After crossing the border three times near Yuma, Ariz., and being apprehended each time, Jos?aid a "coyote" (smuggler) $200 to ferry him across. After a year in Los Angeles, he paid another coyote $400 to smuggle in his wife and three of their six children. Eight months later he sent for the other three, at a cost of $250. Now the family?including two children born in the U.S.?occupies a sweltering one-bedroom barrio apartment, in which every available piece of furniture doubles as a bed. Even such cramped quarters are an improvement over what would be available in Mexico. Pointing at his twelve-year-old daughter, Jos?ays: "If we were in Mexico, she would be working in the fields by now."