American dream turns into nightmare for undocumented immigrants

Perris / AFP

Every weekday, year-round, Esteban Yanez rises at the crack of dawn and heads to his job as a construction worker near the largely Hispanic desert town of Perris, south of Los Angeles.
On weekends, he does odd jobs to complement his salary.
Though the 49-year-old father of four pays income tax and social security, he has no annual vacation, no health insurance and no work benefits.
Yanez, who is Mexican, is among the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States at the heart of a contentious debate that has stirred up passions and become a defining issue in the presidential race.
Donald Trump, the billionaire businessman and presumptive Republican nominee, has made deporting America’s entire illegal immigrant population and building a wall on the US border with Mexico a centerpiece of his campaign. His inflamed rhetoric, constantly hammered home at campaign appearances, has resonated with a large part of the US electorate, but has also enraged many, including people like Yanez who call America home. “I came here 16 years ago in search of the American dream and to offer my kids a better future,” Yanez said during a recent meeting at the end of his 12-hour workday.
“And I do the kind of backbreaking work that only immigrants are willing to do. Others don’t want to get their hands dirty with this kind of job.”

‘They’re here to stay’
According to the Public Policy Institute of California, almost a quarter (2.67 million) of the nation’s undocumented immigrants live in California, where they make up slightly more than six percent of the state’s population of nearly 40 million.
The majority hail from Mexico and work in farming, construction, housekeeping, elderly care, landscaping or for moving and transport companies.
“We work, we pay our dues, we take no handouts and we are not hurting anyone,” sighed Maria Delosangeles, 52, who arrived in the US from Mexico 18 years ago and works as a housekeeper in the Los Angeles area. “How does it adversely affect Trump for us to be here?” Nationwide, undocumented immigrants collectively pay almost $12 billion a year in state and local taxes, with more than $3.1 billion coming from California alone, according to The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Advocates emphasize that they reap no benefits from their contributions.
“These people are as much a part of our landscape and culture as anyone else that’s here,” said Harold McClarty, a farmer in central California—a region known as “America’s salad bowl”—and head of the California Fresh Fruit Association.“We need to recognize that they’re here to stay and that it’s ridiculous to say we’re going to send them back because that’s beyond not practical—it’s immoral,” he added.
America would
go hungry
McClarty and other immigration reform advocates emphasize that were millions of undocumented farmworkers kicked out, as Trump would have it, America would essentially go hungry. They point, as an example, to the state of Georgia, where an immigration crackdown in 2011 backfired, leading to crops rotting in fields and the agriculture industry losing tens of millions of dollars for lack of other “legal” laborers willing to take on such work.
“The country’s economy would basically collapse if we didn’t have undocumented workers,” said Los Angeles-based Jose Antonio Vargas, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist-turned-activist, who came out as an undocumented immigrant several years ago.