The Shadow of the Law

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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."