OXNARD : Center for Immigrants Starts to Grow

Growing up in Oxnard’s La Colonia district, Jesus Rocha often saw first hand the hardships that immigrants face in a new country.

Rocha and his wife, Luann, have been helping farm workers, children and families of La Colonia understand the system and use it to their benefit for slightly more than a year now through El Centrito De La Colonia.

“There is a lot of abuse and exploitation of immigrants here because people assume they won’t understand the system and they won’t fight back.”

The social services center, which operates in La Colonia three nights a week, recently received several grants to expand its offerings, and the Rochas say they are just beginning to grow.

“Ideally we would like to expand to be a full-time agency,” Luann Rocha said. She runs the financial side of the nonprofit center and said she would need to raise $150,000 to open full time.

The services now offered at the center include information about immigration, unemployment and disability benefits, as well as legal and accounting advice, art classes, folk-dance classes and a newly funded drunk driving prevention program.

Jesus Rocha recently recalled one of his early cases.

“This man was moving out of his apartment and his landlord wouldn’t give him his deposit back,” Rocha recalls. “He came to us, very upset, thinking the situation was hopeless. We took him down the street so he could file an application to small claims court.”

The landlord backed down, once he realized “he couldn’t intimidate the man,” Rocha said. Jesus Rocha said the wide range of programs is one of the great benefits of their program.

“Often people will come in saying they want help filling out a form, and when we talk to them, they reveal more serious problems,” he said. “They had things they wanted to talk about, but were afraid to approach someone.”

Rocha said it has long been his goal to bring help to his neighborhood.

“I couldn’t just abandon the place where I came from,” he said. “I had to give back to my community. That’s the philosophy I’ve grown up with.”