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.
Law and order
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It's just after dawn and Leonardo is searching for change to pay for parking before starting a 10-hour day finishing drywall. He works six to seven days a week, hoping to save enough money by the end of 2008 to move back to Mexico. Leonardo arrives at the Roanoke City Courthouse about noon Friday.
He takes out his wallet and a white envelope filled with $20 bills — the week’s pay — and places it on a conveyor belt.
As he walks through the metal detector, a couple of bills fall onto the floor.
Leonardo doesn’t notice. He walks upstairs to the clerk’s office.
The clerk looks up his records and gives him a slip of paper with a brief description of the tickets he got in August last year: driving without a license, driving without insurance and driving without a registration sticker.
Leonardo can’t read the tickets. He wants to know how much they will cost.
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At just after 5 a.m., Leonardo's roommate Fernando (standing) makes his bed where he sleeps on the floor behind the couch. Another man sleeps on the couch, and will get up shortly for work. The men, all here illegally, keep a candle of the Virgin Mary burning in their apartment for safety and protection.As he hurries out the front door, a security guard yells for him to stop.
Leonardo turns around and walks back silently. He stands up straight.
“What could they do?” he thinks. Toss him in jail or deport him? He doesn’t know or want to know.
“You forgot your money,” the guard says. He hands Leonardo the $20 bills he dropped earlier.
Leonardo can’t believe it. He looks down at the money in his hands and thinks:
“This money is why I came to the United States. And here a guard returned money I didn’t know was missing.”
In Mexico, Leonardo said, the police would most likely have kept it. There, cops pull you over and let you go if you give them $5 or so as a small bribe.
But in the U.S., there is order and laws.
For the next half hour, Leonardo relives the memory, amazed at what just happened. He can’t let it go, won’t let it go.
His words are fast and his eyes, they are alight.
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