Illegal, Yes, but He Dislikes the Label

In my Sunday column, a business owner in Fullerton laid out her case against illegal immigration, saying it drives wages down, overwhelms schools and hospitals, and costs us all in the end.

When I left her printing shop, I drove to the two-bedroom Whittier apartment of an illegal immigrant. Carlos, 30, lives with his wife, who’s also illegal, and their three children, who are citizens because they were born in the U.S.

I visited Carlos because I couldn’t possibly not. It isn’t every day you get an e-mail from an illegal immigrant. Especially one who defends his cause, but also thinks the country needs tougher immigration laws.

“Some of them risk their lives to come here and then mess around and do nothing,” Carlos carped in his well-appointed living room, which has a stereo, a big-screen TV and one of the family’s two computers. “People who aren’t productive shouldn’t be here.”

Carlos, a welder by day and a night watchman after dinner, earns $30,000 to $40,000 a year. He said he reads the L.A. Times every day and watches C-SPAN. When I asked what he was doing with textbooks on trigonometry, technical drawing and geography, he seemed insulted.

“Enriching myself,” he said.

Immigrants who don’t learn the language get under his skin, Carlos said, because they end up being a drag on society and inviting the stereotypes all immigrants suffer under. But he thinks the vast majority of illegal immigrants break their backs, help drive the economy, and barely eke out a living.

Carlos, for his part, doesn’t like being called “illegal.” After 13 years in the U.S., he said, he’s made enough of a contribution to earn a little respect.

I told him I don’t see any point in sugarcoating it. He is what he is.

His 7-year-old daughter told me she wants to be a doctor and police officer. Why the latter? So that if she pulls over her father, she’ll know not to ask him for a driver’s license, because he doesn’t have one.

“I’m un-doc-umented,” Carlos argued. Not illegal.

I rolled my eyes.

“Look, it’s wrong,” Carlos said. “I know it’s wrong. But do you think I want to be in the United States? I love this country, and I have a better life than if I still lived in Mexico. But if the better jobs were in China, I’d be in China.”

The United States has used globalization to monopolize wealth, Carlos argued, often at the expense of other countries.

True, though Mexico has created many of its own problems, thanks to institutionalized corruption and an elite class that pays to keep it that way.

Subsidies to American and European agribusiness interests have helped put Third World farmers out of business, sending some of them to the U.S., argued Carlos, who may be the first illegal immigrant who’s watched too much C-SPAN. “They can’t compete,” he said. “When you have big winners, you have big losers.”

Feeling a need to prove his worth, Carlos retrieved a manila envelope and opened it to show me several years’ worth of tax returns.

“So you pay taxes?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. “A lot of undocumented people pay taxes.”

In fact, Carlos said he prepares tax returns for other illegals, charging them $20.

“I learned how to do it on the Internet,” he said.

His boss either doesn’t know Carlos is illegal or doesn’t care, so Carlos pays the same payroll taxes as the other employees. I went through the returns, which indicate that he has paid several thousand dollars a year.

Next Carlos showed me a series of annual letters from the Social Security Administration informing him his number does not match his name, so his deductions will not be applied to his retirement. The Social Security number he uses is a fake he bought at MacArthur Park, where I recently found that it was relatively simple to buy my own fake driver’s license.

The government happily pockets his Social Security deductions -- more than $1,000 each year, but Carlos will never see any of it.

“I’m paying for your retirement,” he said, elbowing me as we sat on his couch.

Maybe, but let’s factor in the cost of educating his children, who wouldn’t be here if he hadn’t crossed the border illegally. And his medical plan at work doesn’t cover his kids or his wife, although Carlos claims he pays cash when they see a doctor.

They’ll finish school, though, Carlos argued, and make their own contribution one day.

“And if there’s a war when they get older,” he said, “they’ll go to war.”

I looked again at his Social Security and IRS files and realized the government has to be on to him.

“They know,” Carlos agreed. “They know!”

Then why don’t they do something about it?

Carlos grinned. Maybe they want him here, he said.

Or maybe they’re too inept to ask the obvious.

His brother-in-law came in while we were talking. Carlos said he lives in a garage and comes by to use the bathroom.

“He’s a welder too,” Carlos said. “But they work him overtime and don’t pay. They take advantage because they know he doesn’t have papers. I’m thinking of calling the IRS.”

Would they even care? Maybe they’re in on the big lie, along with agribusiness, hotel and restaurant operators, household employers and the politicians who produce immigration policies so hypocritical and dishonest, they’re perfectly meaningless.

As Carlos led me out to my car, he said that even after 13 years, he lives in fear he’ll be found out. To beat the stress, he’s developed a sense of humor.

He offered me proof:

Four heads of state are on an airplane, he told me: Fidel Castro, Vladimir Putin, Vicente Fox and George W. Bush.

Up in the clouds, Castro opens the window and tosses out a handful of cigars. When the others ask what’s up, Castro says his country has way too many cigars.

Next Putin opens the window and throws out several bottles of vodka. My country has way too many bottles of vodka, he tells the others.

Fox looks at Bush. Bush looks at Fox. Then Bush opens the window and throws Fox out.

“What are you doing?” Castro and Putin ask.

“My country has way too many Mexicans,” says Bush.