Report chronicles immigrants' hardships

Amazing stories of the hard life undocumented workers put up with to live here. I think they have to be given a way to live here legally if they have been working and are not in any legal trouble. DP

By Lornet Turnbull, Seattle Times staff reporter
The Seattle Times: They tell stories of job-related exploitation — of being cheated out of rightful pay for work done.

They speak of not having health coverage or money to send their children to college.

In a report about the experiences of immigrants in the Northwest, some 230 interviewed reveal what lured them to the U.S. in the first place: economic opportunities, a desire to join family here, the spread of war and death in their home countries.

One 40-year-old man explained that he attempted seven times to cross into the U.S. from Mexico: "You don't just go back to your house and say, 'Well, I'll try again later,' " he said. "Our home was far away, so we had to live in the street near the border and keep trying with different people until we made it."

The report, "In Our Own Words: Immigrants' Experiences in the Northwest," released Tuesday by the Northwest Federation of Community Organizations, chronicles the lives of 230 of the region's most vulnerable immigrants — two-thirds of them undocumented — living in Washington, Oregon and Idaho.

"I read this report and am reminded of the stories of my own family coming from Mexico and the hardship that they endured as farmers ... ," said Magdeleno Rose-Avila, executive director of the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, one of the organizations that participated in the report.

"We hear the stories of these people every day in our offices," he said. "Once you meet immigrants — whether they're from Somalia, Eritrea, Mexico ... Haiti, you understand why we must protect their rights."
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