Read this tearful narrative of (feel the sarcasm) the cruelty of it all:
The man, whose name is Mauricio and who is Salvadoran, zipped his jacket against the wind whipping across the dark, vacant parking lot as he walked out of the store toward a borrowed car.
That morning, his electricity had been cut off. The next day, he and 11-year-old Erica would be moving into the basement of a neighbor's house. On this night, they would make do with candles.
It was the latest blow in a year of calamities: In April, the interest rate on Mauricio's ill-advised mortgage suddenly spiked, more than doubling his monthly payments. In May, he lost his job as a house painter. In June, he had to sell his van. In July, his third child was born, and with no insurance, he started skipping mortgage payments to cover the hospital bills. In October, the bank began foreclosure proceedings. In November, he sent his wife and two U.S.-born children to El Salvador.
December brought the worst setback yet: Mauricio bounced a $460 check he had sent the Department of Homeland Security to renew his temporary legal status, transforming him from legal to illegal immigrant.
In January, he received notice to vacate his house. Two weeks ago, the water was cut off. A week ago, his Virginia driver's license expired, and without legal status, he can no longer renew it.
Mauricio and Erica turned onto a side street pocked with darkened, empty houses and pulled up to a brick house with mustard shutters. A plastic barrel stood under the gutter spout. Mauricio had been using it to collect rainwater to heat so Erica could take baths.(WaPo, March 27, 2008)
Maybe Mauricio should have taken his residency legality a little more seriously. Maybe instead of impregnating his wife (a macho imperative!) with another child he couldn't support, he should have been saving his money to pay for his legal residency in this country. Maybe instead of buying a house he couldn't afford, he & his family should have sucked it up and lived in an apartment that he could. Yet, nowhere in the article does it place the responsibility for Mauricio's "calamities" squarely where they belong: on his and his wife's head. The article only refers to an "ill-advised" mortgage - you know, like he just got some bum advice - not his fault!
I read this article with a sense of disgust (the bleeding heart stories) and glee (the laws are working). What we call this is "attrition" and "self-deportation." Yeah! And as other localities are flooded with the resulting "refugees" and find (various facets of) their areas overwhelmed, maybe they'll rethink the prudence of their sanctuary policies. One can only hope.
