The Immigration Issue Through the Eyes of a Child

Seven times she tried to cross the border, and seven times the Border Patrol stopped her. One agent apprehended Carmen Segoviano three times. You need to get a better coyote, he told her.

Carmen is able to laugh as she tells the story, for the eighth time was the charm. She waded a river, hiked through mountains, dashed across the interstates. She is 35 now and has lived in the United States for 13 years. She had come alone, captivated by a dream of America’s promise that she learned in grade school.

Carmen was still an illegal resident when Brenda, now 10, was born as a U.S. citizen. A few years later, Carmen, who was working in electronics assembly, qualified for amnesty under legislation that was that decade’s model for immigration reform. The next year, Jessica was born. When Carmen’s husband, who didn’t qualify for amnesty, was deported, it was decided that Carmen would stay and raise the children. She went on welfare.

Now another baby is due. This is why Carmen Segoviano, with Brenda and Jessica in tow, dropped by the Pacoima Health Center on Wednesday.

It’s too bad that Gov. Pete Wilson didn’t drop by the Pacoima Health Center to promote his plan for turning back the tides of illegal immigrants. It would have been interesting to see him debate Carmen’s daughter Brenda.

Would he have told her to go back where she came from?

*

If Wilson had his druthers, America wouldn’t have kids like Brenda in the future. No doubt alarmed by low ratings in the polls, Wilson two weeks ago transformed himself into a hawk on illegal immigration, arguing that the promise of health care, education and the prospect of citizenship for their children has lured immigrants to the United States. Wilson contends that we should change the law--”close the loophole,” some would say--that enabled Brenda to be a U.S. citizen despite her mother’s illegal status.

It’s a complicated issue and many Californians are sure to embrace the simplicity of Wilson’s answers. In issuing his manifesto and delivering his kiss-my-rear news conference, Wilson seems determined to shed his old conservative-with-a-conscience image as politically uncool.

Instead of going to a place where unborn Americans--loophole fetuses, you might say--might be found, the governor staged a news conference Tuesday in a DMV parking lot in Van Nuys.

There he announced his support for bills that would bar illegal immigrants from obtaining driver’s licenses and allow police to cooperate with federal officials as part of his newfound get-tough stance on immigration.

A lot full of automobiles doesn’t evoke compassion like a Spartan clinic full of children and pregnant women. This facility was threatened with closure Sept. 1 because of a $101-million budget cut to the county Department of Health Services, but a transfer of tobacco tax money is expected to save it.

Sandy Tilsen, the center’s nursing supervisor, won’t hazard a guess at how many of the clinic’s clients are illegal residents, but some certainly are.

Or maybe Wilson, that tough guy, would prefer to hide a soft truth. Before he adopted a hard line against illegal immigration, Wilson was good for low-income moms, regardless of their citizenship status, health officials say.

“Gov. Wilson has been extremely supportive of providing services for low-income mothers and infants--and we’ve benefited from that,” says Dr. Irwin Silberman, the county’s director of family health programs. “Money has been focused to areas that didn’t exist before.”

Now, this could be defended as smart economics, not compassion. A state study, after all, has found that every dollar spent on prenatal care saves two dollars in intensive care for sick babies. Of course, if he really wanted to get tough, we wouldn’t care for the sick babies.

*

Carmen Segoviano, for one, would have told Wilson that she didn’t enter the United States illegally with thoughts of becoming a welfare mom. She came for work, but things change. Between welfare and a little money she picks up baby-sitting, her income is about $740 per month, $400 of which goes toward rent.

The fact that her children would be native-born U.S. citizens, she says, didn’t motivate her to come. But it seems obvious that it is one reason she has stayed.

Maybe Wilson’s handlers realized the TV cameras would have found a kid like Brenda Segoviano irresistible.

Brenda, who will be starting fifth grade at Noble Avenue School in Panorama City, is as sharp as a tack and has all the charisma that Wilson lacks. Illegal immigrants, Brenda says, “come to this country to work and to steal the benefits of Americans, because some Mexicans work harder than Americans.”

Brenda gets As and Bs. And when she grows up, Brenda plans to be President of the United States.