n increasing numbers, Hispanic immigrants are putting down roots in the Roanoke Valley. They're pouring concrete, opening hair salons and filling classrooms. Some employers, meanwhile, are attributing their success to this new labor pool. In this occasional series, The Roanoke Times explores the local impact of the national debate about immigration.
During a busy Friday night dinner waiter Jesus Malaga serves an armload of food to their Anglo customers. Malaga came to America four years ago from Mexico and, like many Mexican immigrants in Roanoke, first landed a job at El Rodeo.
Abandoned by both parents
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Brayan de la Cruz, 8, (center) was abandoned by both of his parents, who left years ago for the U.S. He’s lived with his grandmother, who picks vegetables in the fields and suffers from diabetes. While many of Sauta's children have lost one parent to the U.S., scores of children have lost both.Shortly after the 10-year-old committed suicide, elementary school teacher Manuel Mangera Viera asked the 26 kids in his class if anyone else had entertained suicidal thoughts. Nine hands went up. More than half of the 279 children in his school have parents living in the United States, and not just their fathers.
“The biggest problem we have is the children who’ve been abandoned by both parents,” says Viera, who was working double time at the school — teaching and, between the morning and afternoon sessions, painting its exterior. Many students live with elderly grandmothers, some of whom are sick, and haven’t seen their parents in three or four years.
“If more of our parents could go to work legally as guest workers, our students would do better; they’d stay in school longer,” Viera adds. “They wouldn’t worry so much about when their parents are coming back.”
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Karla Benitez, 14, cries as she tells the story of how she ended up in Sauta, Mexico. An American citizen born in Los Angeles, she was sent back to live with step-grandparents in Sauta. A victim of incest, Benitez has moved in with a friend and hopes to move to the U.S., but doesn't know how or where to move to. Her drug-addict mother was last seen sleeping on a Los Angeles park bench, she says.As Viera talks, 8-year-old Brayan de la Cruz walks up, asking for a paintbrush. He attends school during the afternoon shift but has been arriving early to help the teachers paint. The principal pays him out of his own pocket — by buying him a bottle of Coke. At the Nov. 20 Revolution Day parade, Brayan was the only kid in his group who wasn’t wearing a $6 school-uniform shirt.
Brayan’s parents left when he was a baby, and he said he doesn’t know which state they’re in now. He lives with his grandmother, who works in the bean fields. “They send money for clothes and things sometimes,” he says.
“Last year, they came for a visit and took my brother back with them, but they didn’t take me. They keep saying they’ll come back for me, but then they don’t come.”
Ask Brayan what he wants to be when he grows up, and he gives what the teachers say is the typical response: “I want to go to the U.S.”
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