A Filipino's tortured path to legal alien status

By FLORIAN TARCELO-BALMES, GMA News Research This project was sponsored by the Philippine-American Educational Foundation as part of a Fulbright scholarship awarded to the author. The beginning of the journey It’s March 1, 1984, Alberto’s 33rd birthday. He starts the day early, puts on a crisply ironed long-sleeved shirt and wonders if this day would be a turning point in his life. At 8 a.m., Alberto arrives at the United States Embassy in Manila, Philippines. It is a compound of low, white buildings ringed at the gates by a relentless line of people all ardently hopeful they would gain entry into the land of opportunities. Alberto takes a number, finds a seat and looks at the rows of people ahead of him. He scans their faces for clues that may help him when it’s his turn to walk up to the numbered glass windows. For three hours more, he sits, nursing a churning stomach. When at last his number is called, his knees go weak but Alberto pulls himself up face the U.S. consul behind the window. An American voice sounds from the small hole carved into the glass: “What is the purpose of your trip?" Alberto pulls a deep breath and recites a memorized answer: “I want to see the summer Olympics in L.A." The consul rifles through his papers. A businessman? Alberto nods, and furtively eyes the sheaf of papers that certify he supposedly has the wherewithal to travel for pleasure: land titles, bank accounts, business certificates, all the works. Alberto paid 2,500 pesos – a hefty sum at that time – to an underground network to prepare those papers. It’s true he has a business. What he doesn’t say is that the business will soon close shop. Twenty minutes later, Alberto knows he couldn’t have asked for a better birthday gift: a multiple-entry, 10-year tourist visa to the U.S. For a decade, he can come and go as he pleases, for up to six months at each turn. Promptly, he visits an airline to buy a round-trip ticket. With just a tourist visa, the traveler must secure a return ticket. He calls friends and relatives in the U.S; it will be good to have a network of people he can ask for help. In April, a month after he receives his visa, Alberto embraces his four kids, the eldest barely 5 years old, and his wife then pregnant with their fifth child. The couple knows full well how uncertain this goodbye is. Alberto walks away with no idea when he’ll return home. In April 1984, Alberto boards a plane and starts his journey across the Pacific to what he had hoped would be a better life. But when he decides to stay as an undocumented immigrant, he knows his journey will have no road maps, no landmarks. He has to beat his own path as he takes the road less traveled. Alberto, the tourist, stays past six months – in fact, he lingered four more years – as an undocumented immigrant in America. To his fellow Filipinos, he has earned the unique immigration status of a TNT, or short for “tago nang tago." In the vernacular, it is the moniker for a person who is “always hiding." Pinoy network His family network in Chicago is huge and Alberto spends the first few weeks simply hopping from one get-together to another, mingling and chatting with aunts, uncles and cousins he hasn’t seen in years. But amid the loud chatter and clinking beer bottles, Alberto nurses in his mind a nagging thought: He should really buckle down and start doing what he came to America for – to get a job to earn greenbacks to feed his young brood. An uncle had promised early on to help him find work, but hasn’t since said one word about real job prospects since his nephew came. Alberto twiddles his thumbs for a few more days, trying to find the right moment pop the query. “What’s the rush?" his uncle asks. “Enjoy yourself. When you start working, you won’t have time for yourself." But Alberto rarely leaves his uncle’s house. In fact, he only goes out when his uncle takes him to Filipino gatherings on weekends. He has all of $11 to his name, and no way of getting around town. As the days drag into weeks, and into months, a sense of helplessness overcomes Alberto. He has neither job nor money nor car. He has only nowhere to go. He cleans, cooks, does the laundry, and looks after his uncle’s kids. He bathes the family’s dog and car. His journey to affluence in America has seemingly come to full stop inside the four walls of his uncle’s house. One day, he strides out the driveway, looks down the road in front of the house and asks his uncle, “Can I walk down this road? Can I take the bus from here?" His uncle says, “There are no buses here. You need a car." “How can I look for a job then?" “That will come," his uncle hedges. “And besides, you need an SS card to get work." A social security card. Now, Alberto thinks he’s getting somewhere. “How do I get that, then?" Piqued, his uncle says, “It’s not the time. You have to wait. A lot of people are getting caught." The fear of getting involved in something illegal has made his uncle reluctant to help Alberto find a job. With his temporary tourist visa, Alberto is not authorized to work – and his uncle refuses to lift a finger to help Alberto break the law. Dead end He seemed to have reached a dead end, Alberto could not think of anything more but go home. Yet without any money, he could not. Much as he wanted to, he could not even send goodies or corned beef to his wife and kids, when a cousin who was visiting the Philippines asked if he wanted to. Alberto has nothing to send. He takes out his return ticket, thinks briefly of what he’s about to do, and sends it home to his wife. She can use the money from the ticket refund. When Alberto hands over the ticket, he lets go of the ties that bound him to home. That ticket gave him a choice, a way out if things didn’t work out. Now there’s no other way for him to go but to make things work in America. After months of being cooped up in his uncle’s house, Alberto’s hope starts to fade fast. He wants to give up, to pack and leave. It’s just too tempting, too easy to do, easier than sitting through weeks and not knowing what exactly he’s waiting for. He can get a loan from one of his relatives for airfare, but then, from which hand of God will he get the money to pay for it? An uneasy thought darts through his mind: deportation. He can turn himself in to the authorities and they’d surely put him on the next plane home. But Alberto cringes at the mere thought. To escape and surrender – that’s what people do when they have given up on themselves. At that point, Alberto feels he was slipping into that dark tunnel. He lives, but remains completely dependent on his relatives. The situation sapped his energy and drained his self-respect. He keeps silent, drowning in frustration and despair. Alberto hasn’t spoken to his family since he arrived in the U.S. He has been reluctant to use the phone, painfully aware of how much it costs to call home. He doesn’t want to impose more than he already has on his uncle’s family. It will take Alberto seven months, almost 30 weeks, more than 200 days – before he will get to hear his wife’s voice again. The first paycheck When his sister finally comes to Chicago for a funeral, Alberto begs her to take him with her, to let him try his luck in New York. In New York, Alberto sneaks in and out of his sister’s dorm. He combs the classifieds each day and walks the streets all day. He pops his head into shops and restaurants, asking people if there’s any work, anything, he can do for them. But there isn’t. He crumples his pride, shoves it into his pocket and returns to his relatives in Chicago. In November, seven months since he came to the U.S., Alberto’s luck changes. He lands his first job at a fast food chain. Another uncle in Chicago, a doctor, has gotten him the job through a friend. The day Alberto reports for work, he wears his crew uniform and a name plate which says, “Hi, I’m Martin Gomez." His uncle, the doctor, has given him a Social Security card of a certain Martin Gomez. Alberto doesn’t mind, doesn’t care. They can call him any name as long as he can work. Martin Gomez takes charge of the salad bar from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. He spends many of his work hours in tears, sitting in the kitchen, peeling a sack of onions. He chops vegetables, makes sandwiches and mops the kitchen floor. The pay is $3.15 per hour – a paltry amount but Alberto a.k.a. Martin Gomez is extremely grateful. When the first paycheck comes, Alberto was beside himself in glee. He did not know what to do with it. He can’t deposit it to his account because he doesn’t have any. So he signs the check over to his cousin, who in turn gives him the cash. When the second paycheck comes, Alberto marches to the bank, shows his SS card, and opens an account for Martin Gomez. Alberto works hard, scrimps and saves. He doesn’t have any illusions of earning much from his job. Without the papers, though, he can’t do much else. He already has gone beyond his legal stay and has no idea how he can become a legal immigrant. He keeps his fingers crossed, his mouth shut and his ears open. Moving to the Big Apple Alberto stays at his fast food job in Chicago for a year, and then he gets a chance to move permanently to New York. He gets a tip that a Filipino supervisor at an advertising agency is not too finicky about papers. He applies and gets a job as a word processor, and the pay is a tad better than when he was peeling onions. Alberto is now an office guy wearing a dress shirt and a tie in Manhattan. Every day he scans the newspapers for better-paying jobs. During breaks, he goes out for interviews. He starts putting together his “portfolio", starting with his own SS card. Here is where Mario’s genius comes in. Mario is a Filipino who works at the ad agency’s printing press. Alberto discovers the magic Mario can wield with paper and ink. Alberto asks him if he can print an SS card for him. Sure, Mario says, and he prints Alberto his very own SS card. The card bears Alberto’s name and a fake number. When asked for identification, Alberto readily whips out his newly printed SS card. Alberto figures it wouldn’t hurt to have an ID as well. Again he asks Mario to print him an official-looking employee ID. Next comes the certificate of citizenship. Through his network of Filipinos, Alberto asks a friend to filch his father-in-law’s certificate of citizenship. Alberto photocopies the original and gives it back. Mario changes the name on the photocopy and pastes Alberto’s picture over the friend’s unsuspecting father-in-law. Mario then makes a template of the certificate and runs it through the printing press. Voila! Alberto has acquired American “citizenship". When he fills out application forms, Alberto says he’s a citizen. When asked for documentation, he smoothes out the certificate which is folded neatly in his wallet. Lucky for Alberto, the more discerning of his ruse don’t say anything – or they simply don’t call him for the job. Even with the “papers" in his wallet, Alberto still lives with the uncertainty of being an undocumented immigrant, an illegal, a pariah to people who don’t want to tangle with the law. He lives, but every day risks the possibility that he would be found out. He isn’t “always hiding" as many people think illegal immigrants do. He doesn’t sit in fear waiting for immigration officials to haul him onto a plane in the middle of the night. He doesn’t walk the streets looking over his shoulder to see if he is being followed. He is past the stage when fear paralyzes. Alberto now goes out and looks for work boldly, bravely. That’s what he came to do and that’s what he does in the U.S. Hearing from the Internal Revenue Service is another matter altogether. Alberto knows filing a tax return may call attention to his papers but he desperately needs the refund. He goes ahead and files anyway. He gets a check for the refund, and a few months later a letter from the IRS, asking him to fill out a questionnaire. One question asked: Did the Social Security office issue the SS number you are using? Alberto breaks out in cold sweat and runs to his friends, some of them undocumented like himself. They shake their heads and with mournful faces reserved for tragic news, they tell him to waste no time and move. The government is surely on to him, they say. But Alberto can’t afford to move. He can barely pay for a room in his sister’s hospital dorm. (He pays $150 to a nurse who isn’t using her room.) He thinks long and hard, weighing his chances, then figures immigration authorities will not waste their time looking for just one person. He holds his breath, stays put and hopes for the best – yet also waits to be picked up anytime. Days, weeks, months pass and nothing happens. Alberto plods quietly as usual. Every year, after he files his tax return, he gets the same letter from the IRS. And every year, he throws it into the trash without bothering to reply. TNT jobs Alberto lands a dream job as coordinator in a homecare. It pays $18,000 a year, on top of health care, insurance and other benefits. The supervisor, a Filipino, gives him three-month probation. Alberto breezes through the probation period. Just past his third month, Alberto’s supervisor says she is sending him to a seminar in Canada. She needs to have his passport to make travel arrangements. Alberto is certain his boss will find out his status if he shows his passport. He hedges, makes every excuse he can think of to avoid showing his papers, but his boss senses something is wrong. Painted into a corner, Alberto tells the truth, that he is not authorized to work. His supervisor gets upset: Doesn’t he know he could have gotten the company in trouble? Now without a job, Alberto roams the streets of New York. For days, he scours countless streets looking for work. “You have some work here? Any kind?" His litany, day in and day out. When he finds none, he goes back to his room. He has a bed, a floor lamp and a small TV to fill up the shoebox space. The bed is flushed against one side of the room. He sits on his bed, stares blankly at the walls, talks softly to himself. He looks at the shadows a lamp casts, from the corner of the room. Sometimes, he sees hint of a rope, a rope tied in a noose. He stands up, dazed, and reaches out. He is startled back to his senses; it is only the light – and his mind – shoring up his fears of shadows. On a good day, Alberto finds work at construction site where people don’t bother to ask for papers. Many of the workers are foreigners. Alberto does some odd jobs at the site, handing out tools, running errands. The foreman slips him $10 to $20 a day. If the foreman likes him enough, he stays for weeks until the project is done. When another project comes up, the foreman tells him to show up. Alberto becomes a regular tag-along in the city’s construction circle. Usually, the foreman tells him to show up at 5 a.m. in front of a McDonald’s outlet. Alberto gets there early, gets himself a cup of coffee and waits outside for the truck to pick him up. He hears a honk and jumps in, ready for a day’s hard work. Alberto is a quick study; he learns carpentry, plumbing and electrical wiring. He knows he’s doing a good job from the regular calls he gets to work at different construction sites. With some confidence, he starts asking for $50-$75 for a day’s work. As before, he spends little on himself. His only luxury is a cigarette after a backbreaking day at work. He sends the rest to pay for the private schools his children attend back home. Soon, Alberto forms a small group with his Filipino friends. They work on small contracts. The money is good but the work is tough. The work never stops until it’s done – not in the heat of summer when the sun burns his back, not in the cold of winter when his breath freezes before his eyes. One winter night, Alberto comes home past midnight from one project on Staten Island in New York. His group has a contract to tile floors. Alberto spends the entire day half-sitting, half-standing, bent over as he lays rows and rows of tiles. The group has been working overtime for several days. Alberto’s back aches and his legs feel stiff with fatigue. Inside the train home, the muscles behind his legs start to bunch up. He puts his feet up on the rows of empty seats beside him and straightens his legs. When he gets off at his stop, he limps from the cramps in his legs. He limps one step at a time, one hand carrying his heavy carpentry tools, the other clutching his thigh to keep himself from falling. Halfway up the stairs, the cramps become so severe he has to stop. He falls and sits sprawled on the steps covered by several inches of snow. He tries to get up, wincing from the pain of his stiff legs. He can’t. He wraps his hands around his upper legs and squeezes, forcing the pain down. He looks frantically at the people getting off the train. “I need help," he cries. “Please help me." The commuters look at him, his hands clutching his leg in agony, then go on their way. They walk around him, hug their coats tightly about themselves, steps over his legs and go up the stairs. Alberto knows what those people see: a man in his dirty, faded clothes sprawled at a subway station. In their eyes, perhaps, a bum. A good-for-nothing bum. Alberto pulls a handkerchief from his pocket and wraps it tightly around his leg. He prays it would stop the pain. He sits in the snow for another half hour, massaging his stiff muscles, while a steady stream of people walk up and down the stairs, barely sparing him a glance. When his muscles ease a little, he tries to stand and grope his way up the stairs to the street. He limps for a few minutes then sits on the snow-covered sidewalk to rest. He limps and sits. If only my children knew... He limps… sits-- what I have had to go through. --limps and sits for a good hour, all the way to the six blocks to his place. The end of the journey In 1989, the solution to his dilemma comes with the Immigration Reform and Control Act. It’s nothing short of manna from heaven to undocumented workers. . Through friends, Alberto learns that the U.S. government is giving amnesty to certain types of workers, including agricultural workers. He doesn’t qualify, but according to the grapevine, a Filipino in California is selling certificates of agricultural employment at $6,000 apiece. Of course, Alberto doesn’t have that kind of money. Four days before the 1989 deadline to file an application, Alberto’s group gets an $18,000-contract. When they receive $2,000 as down payment, Alberto looks his friends in the eye and says, “I really need this money." And they let him have it. Alberto rushes to call the woman selling the certificates in California. He bargains hard and whittles down the amount to $3,500. He borrows additional money from friends and relatives for the plane ticket. In California, he goes straight from the airport to the “certificate mill." For his $3,500 and all his trouble, Alberto gets a photocopied piece of paper with a generic statement saying this person (a blank where he writes his name) worked on a farm within a certain period of time. Alberto is incredulous. This is worth $3,500? he asks. The woman, miffed that he’s getting the certificate for a bargain, says he can take it or leave it. Alberto pays up; he has no choice, already in debt after having spent time and effort to fly from New York to California. He has three more days to beat the deadline. Alberto frantically runs around town, getting fingerprinted, standing in lines for a medical certificate and a California driver’s license. His nerves frayed and his pockets deep in debt, Alberto files his application for legalization just hours before the deadline. Three months after, Alberto gets a notice for an interview. He feels the weight of all his struggle, disappointments and fears bearing down on him. He has to pass this interview. Alberto calls his wife and tells her when the interview will be. In California, Alberto sits before his interviewer, hoping for the best. In the Philippines, his wife and children kneel before God, praying for the end of his journey. The interview is brief. The government official merely asks Alberto to confirm what’s written on the certificate. In a few minutes, Alberto’s application for legalization is approved. He walks away in a daze, clutching his papers, then he makes a quick turn and goes back to the interviewer. Alberto asks the question that has been on his mind in five years: “Can I go home and come back?" The official is surprised: Of course, he can. It’s not a problem. “Are you sure?" he asks. Alberto hasn’t seen his family in five years. Can the official please scribble a small note saying he can go home and come back later? The official assures him there is no need for that. It has been nearly five years since Alberto came to America, yet it feels like a lifetime. He knows it is a lifetime. It is 1989. Alberto goes home to the Philippines. Alberto became an American citizen in 1997. His wife and five children now live in New York.GMANews.TV (Reporter’s note: Some names have been changed to protect the identity of the sources.)