The 21st century immigrant story

In March, Trino began working for Gould Construction — digging ditches for affordable housing in Aspen. The company didn’t know it, but Trino is an illegal immigrant.

Trino, illegal immigrant: My life has a change here, a big change. I just go to work and go back to my house. Sleep.

Although Trino admits breaking the law by crossing the border and using false documents to get hired, he says he couldn’t find a decent job in Mexico and didn’t think he had a chance of getting one of the 5,000 visas available to unskilled workers.

Tom Brokaw, NBC News:  How much did it cost you to get here?

Trino: Cost me like $1,500. If you’re going to go close to the border then you can just pay $800. If you’re going to go up to Montana, somewhere New York, 

Brokaw: They charge you more.

Trino: They charge you more like three thousand.

Brokaw: Do you send money home?

Trino: Yeah.

Brokaw: How much?

Trino: Like 300, 200 not that much.

Brokaw: How much do you make a week?

Trino: I make like 800, or after taxes, I take like 600.

To save money, Trino shares the $1,800 rent with his three brothers, other relatives and friends.

Brokaw: How many have a Social Security number?Brothers: No, No.  (laugh)

18 immigrants in all live in this 4-bedroom home which is zoned for a single family, but he and his brothers defend this living arrangement as just extended family. 

Geronimo: We are just a family. Like uncles, you know, sons and cousins.

Diana, who is two, is the only American citizen in the home since she was born here. Her mother, Maribel paid $750 dollars at the local clinic for pre-natal care, but nothing at the hospital where she gave birth.

Besides child birth, this family tries to avoid any trip to a clinic or to the hospital.

When the entire group got sick with a stomach flu, Trino’s brother Jesus bought penicillin without a prescription at a local meat market. That’s a common practice in Mexico, but it is against the law in the United States. Then he nervously estimated the injection dosage for everyone including his 2-year-old niece.

Jesus:  I feel nervous you know cause you look at her little cheek and here and oh no! I don’t want to hit the bone do something.

Everyone chips in for food and Maribel shops and cooks for the men. She also cuts everyone’s hair.

Brokaw: In America, we say “you pool your resources.” Everybody contributes.

Trino: Yeah.

They also believe they contribute their fair share to the State and U.S. government. Trino’s federal and state taxes are withheld by Gould Construction.

Trino: They take my taxes from my check and they take me.  Everything I go buy—if i buy a candy, a little candy, [I] pay taxes for it. How do you say “I don’t pay taxes”?

Jesus: See I did my taxes.

Although Trino doesn’t file his income taxes, his brother Jesus did - believing it would help his chances of becoming an American citizen.

Jesus: Those guys told me about - about if you do that taxes, those guys more easy to get papers for working.

So like, millions of other illegal immigrants nationwide, he filed income taxes under a special number given to him by the IRS.

In fact, over the last decade, itsestimated illegal immigrants have paid over 50 billion dollars to Social Security—money many of them are never likely to see.

Although many Americans find it offensive that these immigrants live so cheaply in such crowded conditions, Vanessa, the 6-year-old who lives in this house with her uncle Trino, doesn’t seem to mind.

Vanessa: We just have one bedroom.  But we sleep down at the down.  And down at the floor and my mom sleeps with my dad up.

Brokaw: So you sleep in the same room as your mom and dad?

Vanessa: (nods)

Brokaw: And you sleep on the floor?

Vanessa: (nods)

Vanessa attends kindergarten at Crystal River Elementary School. 

The school age population including Hispanics is exploding at such a rate that the school district hired Gould Construction to help expand the elementary and high school.

Even though the whole community is half Hispanic, the Carbondale schools are 80 per cent Hispanic.

Brokaw: Is it fair for the property owners in this valley to be paying the tab for a lot of Hispanic kids, many of whom probably have parents who came here illegally?

Mark Gould: Well I gotta start with the fact that we need—we need an economy that works here.  And the only way to have economy that works is to have employees.  And so, are the landowners getting value from their land because we have a prosperous economy?  And if you make that nexus, then you’d have to say they’re getting benefit from the fact that we have a prosperous economy and they’re able to pay their taxes.

Vanessa’s family pays $1,800 a year in property taxes—that is a small portion of what the state pays to educate her which is more than $5,000 a year.

All the children in Vanessa’s class are Hispanic except for two Anglo children. While she learns English, White children such as Spencer Ochko study Spanish.

Kim Ochko, resident: You know, Spencer knows a lot more Spanish than I do at this point. (chuckle)  He can count to 40.  He can do all of these things.  And I think it’s wonderful.

But at the same time I have fears.  You know, he’s very young, in kindergarten.  And I have fears that perhaps, you know, going into first grade when they kind of get a little more serious, that perhaps the time that should be spent on his learning may be diverted to those students that maybe only speak Spanish.

Spencer’s mother, Kim Ochko, is conflicted because she knows first-hand how valuable the immigrant workers are to the local economy — she’s a vice-president at Gould Construction.

Brokaw: You’ve lived around here for a long time. 

Ochko: Yes.

Brokaw: You like what’s happening?

Ochko: I haven’t really come to a set decision on what’s happening.  It frightens me a little bit.

Brokaw: What frightens you?

Ochko: Well, the fact that I’m becoming a minority and my children are a minority in the school system.  It’s a little daunting.

Brokaw: And what are the consequences of them becoming a minority?  What’s the downside?

Ochko: As of right now, i don’t see any large consequences.  He doesn’t notice any different.  But I’m afraid that down the road, there could be some consequences.

Brokaw: That the valley will become Hispanic—in its culture and in its ethos , in its faith, and everything else?

Ochko: Correct.  And I don’t necessarily have a problem with that.  But the cultures are—they’re very different.  And I wanna make sure that my children are comfortable, and they don’t feel really different.  And I want them to have every advantage that they would if the situation was different.

Standardized test scores in Colorado ARE significantly lower in schools that are predominantly Hispanic, but it is unclear how many of those children are American citizens.

Brokaw: Do you have to check a child when they come here—a young boy or girl and their parents’ legal status?

Karen Olson, principal of Crystal River Elementary School: Nope. We’re not the INS.

Karen Olsen, the principal of the Crystal River Elementary School in Carbondale believes the school would be more successful if more White parents would commit to sending their children here.

Olson: This particular area of the country has been very, very Anglo for a very long time.

Brokaw: So you have some parental flight, I mean?

Olson: We do.

Brokaw: Parents were choosing to put their kids in other schools, right?

Olson: We do have that.  They’re not saying it’s flight per se.  But I think it’s probably pretty safe to say.

Brokaw: What’s the long term effect of that on the school system?

Olson: I hope it’s not a long term effect actually.

But it was a situation that convinced Susan Tyndall to retire from the Crystal River Elementary School two years ago. She and her husband, who have lived in the valley for 40 years, are dismayed by changes that the influx of Hispanics have brought to this community and especially the schools.

Susan Tyndall, retired teacher: When I finished teaching, I had three Anglo students and like 16 Hispanics. Those three—I just felt so sorry for because they were alone.

Brokaw: Yeah, everybody else was speaking spanish for the most part?

Tyndall: Yeah, they’d go out to recess and they would revert to Spanish.  And the Spanish kids would play together and—the three little Anglo children would kind of huddle together too.

Brokaw: Is it fair to say that the school system is kind of overwhelmed by the problem?

Tyndall: Yeah.  They don’t know what to do, and rightly so.  I mean—

Brokaw: Hard to attract good teachers?

Tyndall: Right.  And they don’t stay.  I’ve had young teachers tell me, “I’m not gonna teach as long as you did, how could you do this for so long?” 

Brokaw: You have kind of a broken heart about your profession.

Tyndall: I do. I really do.  I loved it, I loved the kids.  And I had a wonderful time. 

In April, Gould Construction was going through a difficult passage as well. There were plenty of contracts for schools, vacation homes, hotels, bike trails—but not enough workers to complete the projects.

Brokaw: This site behind us is a portrait of Colorado, really.  I mean the state is under development.  What happens to a site like this if the really extreme opponents of immigration have their way and want to ship everybody back?

Mark Gould: Well, the cost of construction is gonna go up and so that’s a barrier to entry to people getting into their houses. 

The Hispanics were still lining up in the lobby of Gould—but many lacked the documentation they needed to get hired.

Gould worked out a deal with the sheriff’s office to use inmates at a halfway house. Since Gould picked them up and dropped them off,  these workers were reliable.

Later that month, it looked as if Gould’s  worker shortage might finally be addressed when five Hispanic men showed up looking for work. But then they had no papers on them, so Brett Gould turned them away.

Brett Gould: If you guys have your paperwork, I’d be willing to offer you a job.

The next day, two of these men returned with paperwork.

Brett called the supervisor at the Vail site and told him that help was on the way. Both men lived in Carbondale — and that was no coincidence. It was Trino’s younger brother Juan Carlos and he is another illegal immigrant.

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