Land of Opportunity

The Roanoke Times

In 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.
Recent Roanoke Times stories on Hispanic immigration have included:
gallery-immigrantsDuring 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.

December 31, 2006

As Congress wrestles with what to do about the estimated 12 million illegal Hispanic immigrants, friends and relatives keep showing up on the Roanoke doorsteps of those already settled here. The Roanoke Times documents the people behind the debate in this series of occasional articles titled “Land of Opportunity.”

Though some subjects were reluctant to have their names used and photographs taken out of fear of being deported, many believed that telling their stories would put a human face on a growing population that is still largely invisible — but which openly co-exists — in our community. In most cases, the newspaper has not pinpointed where the immigrants live or where they are employed.

Beth Macy

Beth Macy has been a features writer at The Roanoke Times since 1989. Macy gravitates toward stories that feature real-life struggles of ordinary people, with profile articles that have garnered national feature-writing awards and Virginia Press Association honors. She has published freelance articles in salon.com, The Christian Science Monitor and The Chronicle of Higher Education, and taught literary journalism at Hollins University.

Josh Meltzer

Josh Meltzer has been a photographer at The Roanoke Times since 1999. Earlier this year, Meltzer was named Photographer of the Year (Under 115,000 Circulation) by the National Press Photographers Association. Meltzer previously was a staff photographer at the Duluth (Minn.) News-Tribune for four years. In addition to his still photography, Meltzer has photographed, recorded, edited and produced more than two dozen video, audio and multimedia online presentations that have received awards from the Virgininia News Photographers Association and the Society for News Design.

In 2005, Macy and Meltzer teamed up to produce "An Unlikely Refuge," a multimedia series documenting the resettlement of Somali Bantu refugees in Roanoke. Their work won several national awards, including the 2006 Digital Edge Award for multimedia storytelling and the Associated Press Managing Editors award for online convergence.

Evelio Contreras

Evelio Contreras has been a reporter at The Roanoke Times since June 2005. He began as an editorial assistant in Metro and is now the community sports writer for the New River Valley Current, Neighbors and Sports. Contreras hopes to write narrative stories with a photographer's eye for detail. Before moving to Roanoke, Contreras was a desk assistant at The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer on PBS and worked as a sports editor of The News Gram in Eagle Pass, Texas. He graduated in June 2004 with journalism and philosophy degrees at Northwestern University.

Reporters: Beth Macy, Evelio Contreras

Photographer/multimedia: Josh Meltzer

Online designer: Amanda Hicks

Online producer: Jordan Fifer

Editor: Carole Tarrant

Multimedia editor: Seth Gitner

Print designer: Terri Macklin

Photo editor: Michael Stowe

Graphics: Grant Jedlinsky, Rob Lunsford

Copy editor: Alison Weaver

December 24, 2006

Homecoming

By Beth Macy

SAUTA, MEXICO – The moment Adrian Castellon steps out of a taxi and onto the bumpy, stone-studded road in front of his house, he is no longer a Franklin County tobacco picker.

After a three-day bus ride from Franklin County to his Mexican village of Sauta, Adrian Castellon sweeps up his 5-year-old daughter, Maria Elena, as he walks in the front door. For the past 17 years, Adrian has left in the spring for work on a Franklin County tobacco farm and returned to his family in November.
Audio gallery Open After a three-day bus ride from Franklin County to his Mexican village of Sauta, Adrian Castellon sweeps up his 5-year-old daughter, Maria Elena, as he walks in the front door. For the past 17 years, Adrian has left in the spring for work on a Franklin County tobacco farm and returned to his family in November.
For the next four months, he will not live crammed into a cinderblock bunkhouse with seven other Mexican field hands.

Here in this dusty town in western Mexico, Adrian is part of the village gentry, a respected family man with one of the largest homes.

But his elevated status comes with a price: The 36-year-old has just spent eight months apart from his wife and daughter.

He has never seen his infant son, who was born Oct. 25, three weeks ago to the day.

“Hola, Mommy!” Adrian says, embracing his wife.

“Hola, baby,” he whispers, slipping his finger inside the infant’s hand. “Have you been good while I was away?”

The morning after his return from Franklin County to his home in Sauta, Mexico, Adrian Castellon gets to know his 2-week-old son, Adrian, while his wife, Gloria (right), shows him how to keep his son's head upright. He saw his son for the first time on Nov. 15, the night before.
The morning after his return from Franklin County to his home in Sauta, Mexico, Adrian Castellon gets to know his 2-week-old son, Adrian, while his wife, Gloria (right), shows him how to keep his son's head upright. He saw his son for the first time on Nov. 15, the night before.
In a place where old women ride to the fields in the backs of pickup trucks, Adrian’s 30-year-old wife is a stay-at-home mom.

In a place where children wear secondhand shoes and sleep on dirt floors, Adrian’s 5-year-old daughter can line the new shoes her daddy gives her from one end of her queen-sized bed to the other— her Dora the Explorer cowboy boots, her Chuck Taylor tennis shoes, her patent-leather Mary Janes.

But the most coveted treasure Adrian has is a card that says he can legally return to El Norte — the North — next year.

In his home in Mexico, Adrian Castellon watches as his five-year-old daughter, Maria Elena, inspects a box full of new clothes brought to her from Franklin County, where he has been working on a tobacco farm since April. Unlike most children in the small western Mexican village of Sauta, Maria Elena will have nearly a dozen pairs of shoes and new clothes to wear to school this year.
In his home in Mexico, Adrian Castellon watches as his five-year-old daughter, Maria Elena, inspects a box full of new clothes brought to her from Franklin County, where he has been working on a tobacco farm since April. Unlike most children in the small western Mexican village of Sauta, Maria Elena will have nearly a dozen pairs of shoes and new clothes to wear to school this year.
Every spring for 17 years, that document has allowed him to migrate to a Franklin County tobacco farm under a little-known federal guest-worker program called H-2A. Next year, Congress will likely revive legislation to overhaul the country’s guest-worker programs, in part to address the estimated 11 million illegal Hispanic immigrants living year-round in the United States.

Adrian launches his little girl above his head and tells her she is too skinny and too tall. He points to the cardboard box he brought with him on the three-day bus ride from Virginia, full of gifts he bought at Wal-Mart in Rocky Mount.

Later, Maria Elena, who’s 5, will tear through the package to find the eight pairs of new shoes, the new outfits, the talking doll her dad hopes will teach her English.

But for now, she wants to snuggle with her dad on the couch. When he goes to the bathroom, she waits for him outside the door.

More than the presents, she wants him to give her the one thing he can’t — a promise that he won’t leave home again.

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