Hope and Desperation From Sea to Shining Sea

ATLANTA

Marching for ‘Great Impact’

Feliciano Tavira was set to build a front porch on an $800,000 home Monday.

Tavira would have earned $180, but he turned it down.

Instead, he ate ham sandwiches with his girlfriend and two daughters before they drove to Georgia’s Capitol to march with thousands of countrymen.

The decision weighed on him. An illegal immigrant from Mexico, Tavira, 27, needs every dollar he can earn for car insurance, groceries and the rent on his mobile home, soon to go up to $665 a month. But his boss encouraged him to take the day off. Tavira decided he could make up the money by working past dinner the rest of the week, and maybe on Sunday as well.

“We need the money, but we need to get something done about immigration,” he said. “I hope it will have great impact.”

As he maneuvered the stroller through downtown, Tavira heard a chant go up from a huge crowd in white T-shirts: “Si, se puede! Si, se puede!” (Yes, we can!)

He would have been installing the porch cornice about then. Smiling, Tavira pushed the stroller closer.

Jenny Jarvie

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MIAMI

‘I Wish Them Luck’

Stanislav Fridman got from Soviet Ukraine to South Florida the legal way, with a visa -- and enough hustle to rise to manager of a small taxi fleet.

But Fridman, 43, doesn’t begrudge those who climb fences and swim rivers in pursuit of their share of the American Dream. He met many illegal immigrants in his first job as a busboy; he came to admire their work ethic and to sympathize with their anxiety about fake IDs and immigration raids.

“I wish them luck,” he said.

His sense of solidarity only goes so far, however. Fridman keeps his cabs running around the clock, seven days a week -- and he was not about to lose a day’s income to participate in the rallies.

Instead, he shuttled about town throughout the day, juggling cellphones, cursing at the traffic, keeping the meter clicking.

“We [immigrants] all understand each other. But we’re not united,” Fridman said. “Everyone is out for himself.”

Carol J. Williams

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DENVER

‘We Can’t Stay in the Shadows’

Jeanette Blanco-Wellers owns a roofing company with 35 employees and $3 million a year in sales.

But when she opened her office door at 6:30 a.m. Monday, she was thinking of her past: Picking grapes. Cleaning cotton. Sorting tomatoes.

As a teenager newly -- and illegally -- arrived from El Salvador in the early 1980s, Blanco-Wellers spent her spare time in the fields of Central California, sweating and stooping to help her mom make the $150-a-month rent on their tiny house.

The amnesty of the mid1980s gave Blanco-Wellers permanent residency status. She became an American citizen -- and a conservative Republican. She moved to Colorado, founded Silvercool roofing in Commerce City and bought a luxurious suburban home. She has done well.

That’s why she left work early for the rally in downtown Denver. “I want people to see that immigrants are not just people who clean toilets. When they say that we don’t pay taxes, that we drain money from the economy, I’m proof that’s not true,” said Blanco-Wellers, 36. “We need to come out and speak: ‘This is who we are.’ We can’t stay in the shadows anymore.”

Stephanie Simon

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NEW YORK

Nannies Afraid to Skip Work

In a sun-dappled playground in Central Park, children tumbled over each other in the sandbox while their nannies sat on benches telling stories. There was the story about the pregnant nanny who was forced to work until her contractions began. There was the story about a nanny who -- refused a day off -- dropped dead on the job.

Donna Brown, who is Jamaican, quieted a baby. Her story was about her first employers, who promised to sponsor her for a green card. A year passed before she realized it wasn’t going to happen. She had left her own two children in Jamaica. It would be nine years before she would see them again.

Brown, 44, says she works for a “very kind, very loving family” now, and with their assistance, she has applied for a green card. But she is still angry.

So are the other nannies -- immigrants from Trinidad and Grenada and the Philippines who push fair-haired children around the west side of Manhattan in $200 strollers. They are angry about 12-hour shifts and years that pass without raises.

As undocumented workers, they can do little to challenge their employers. Several said they wouldn’t dare ask for a day off to join the protests.

Ellen Barry

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PHOENIX

‘I Feel Like I’m From Nowhere’

Maria Ambriz has been living in the U.S. illegally for 15 years and feels the law closing in.

She was fired last year from a longtime bookkeeping job when her boss realized she’d given a fake Social Security number. It was the latest in a string of jobs she had lost because she didn’t have proper papers.

In the past, Ambriz said, she always felt sure she would land on her feet. In today’s climate, she fears she won’t find another job. She no longer feels Mexican, but she’s afraid America doesn’t want her. “I feel like I’m from nowhere,” she said.

So she came out Monday to march for her future.

She and her husband, Augustin, stood for hours outside a Home Depot, holding umbrellas to shade their two young children from the brutal midday sun. There were about 200 demonstrators at this location, one of four small rallies in Phoenix.

“I’ve been living here 15 years,” said Ambriz, 32. “The only thing I’m asking for is permission to work.”

Nicholas Riccardi

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SEATTLE

‘I’ve Just Got to Get By’

Aden Bilaal would not have had to miss work to join the immigration rally here. His shift as a parking garage attendant ended at 3 p.m., before the protest began.

He planned to skip the rally anyway.

Bilaal, 24, came to this country from Somalia five years ago, but he does not feel part of the immigration debate. That seems to him a matter for Latinos, and for people with the luxury of time to spend on politics.

His life is about taking tickets, making change. It’s about getting ahead, saving enough so he can one day bring his brother and two sisters here from Africa. Boycotts? Marches? He can’t see the point.

“I’ve just got to get by,” Bilaal said. “I don’t really feel it’s got to do with me.”

Lynn Marshall