Paying the Price: The Impact of Immigration Raids on America's Children

Author(s): Randolph Capps, Rosa Maria Castaneda, Ajay Chaudry, Robert Santos

Other Availability: PDF | Printer-Friendly Page
Posted to Web: October 31, 2007

Permanent Link: http://www.urban.org/url.cfm?ID=411566

The nonpartisan Urban Institute publishes studies, reports, and books on timely topics worthy of public consideration. The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.

The text below is an excerpt from the complete document. Read the full paper in PDF format.

Abstract

Over the past year, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has intensified immigration enforcement activities by conducting several large-scale worksite raids across the country. From an in-depth study of three communities—Greeley, CO, Grand Island, NE and New Bedford, MA—this report details the impact of these worksite raids on the well-being of children. The report provides detailed recommendations to a variety of stakeholders to help mitigate the harmful effects of worksite raids on children.


Introduction

There are approximately five million U.S. children with at least one undocumented parent. The recent intensification of immigration enforcement activities by the federal government has increasingly put these children at risk of family separation, economic hardship, and psychological trauma. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the interior enforcement arm of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the federal agency charged with enforcing immigration laws, has markedly increased the pace of worksite raids in the past few years to apprehend undocumented immigrants: the number of undocumented immigrants arrested at workplaces increased more than sevenfold from 500 to 3,600 between 2002 and 2006. These actions are part of intensified enforcement activities, including deportation of immigrants who have committed crimes; door-to-door operations to arrest immigrants with deportation orders; and large-scale raids of suspected undocumented immigrants’ worksites. With the collapse of comprehensive immigration reform in Congress, and the all but certain appropriation of additional enforcement resources to ICE, it is likely that the number of worksite actions will continue to increase.

The primary goal of this paper is to go beyond the human interest stories reported in the media and provide a factual basis for discussing the impact of worksite enforcement operations on children with undocumented parents. The study focuses on children because they have strong claims to the protection of society, especially when they are citizens and integrated into their schools and communities, and the United States is the only country they have known and consider home. They also warrant our attention because they are emotionally, financially, and developmentally dependent on their parents’ care, protection, and earnings.

The findings discussed in this report are based on a study of three communities that experienced large-scale worksite raids within the past year: Greeley, Colorado; Grand Island, Nebraska; and New Bedford, Massachusetts. In each location Urban Institute staff met with employers, lawyers, religious leaders, public social service agencies, nonprofit agencies, community leaders, and others to discuss the immediate aftermath of the raids, as well as the potential longer-term impact on children. Parents, including some released from ICE detention, and other caregivers of affected children were interviewed individually.

Greeley and Grand Island were two of the six sites in which Swift & Company meatpacking plants were raided. New Bedford was the site of a raid on Michael Bianco, Inc., a textile manufacturing facility that makes backpacks for the U.S. military. In all three sites the vast majority of workers arrested were from Mexico, Guatemala, or other Latin American countries. The findings in this report, however, may also be applicable to children with undocumented parents from other regions of the world, as about 22% of all undocumented immigrants in the nation come from regions other than Latin America.

(End of excerpt. The entire paper is available in PDF format.)

Illegal immigrants not U.S. health care burden: study

Undocumented Not the Burden Anti-Immigrant Advocates Make Them Out to Be

Anti-immigrant advocates are going to need a new line because, according to a new study, saying that undocumented immigrants are a strain on the health care system just isn't true. Yesterday researchers from the University of California's School of Public Health released findings that demonstrated that most undocumented immigrants don't have a primary care provider but that they also, contrary to popular belief, don't visit emergency rooms any more often than U.S born Latinos.


CHICAGO (Reuters) - Illegal Latino immigrants do not cause a drag on the U.S. health care system as some critics have contended and in fact get less care than Latinos in the country legally, researchers said on Monday.

Such immigrants tend not to have a regular doctor or other health-care provider yet do not visit emergency rooms -- often a last resort in such cases -- with any more frequency than Latinos born in the United States, according to the report from the University of California's School of Public Health.

The finding from Alexander Ortega and colleagues at the school was based on a 2003 telephone survey of thousands of California residents, including 1,317 undocumented Mexicans, 2,851 citizens with Mexican immigrant parents, 271 undocumented Latinos from countries other than Mexico and 852 non-Mexican Latinos born in the United States.

About 8.4 million of the 10.3 million illegal aliens in the United States are Latino, of which 5.9 million are from Mexico, the report said.

"One recurrent theme in the debate over immigration has been the use of public services, including health care," Ortega's team wrote in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

"Proponents of restrictive policies have argued that immigrants overuse services, placing an unreasonable burden on the public. Despite a scarcity of well-designed research ... use of resources continues to be a part of the public debate," they said.

The researchers said illegal Mexican immigrants had 1.6 fewer visits to doctors over the course of a year than people born in the country to Mexican immigrants. Other undocumented Latinos had 2.1 fewer physician visits than their U.S.-born counterparts, they said.

"Low rates of use of health-care services by Mexican immigrants and similar trends among other Latinos do not support public concern about immigrants' overuse of the health care system," the researchers wrote.

"Undocumented individuals demonstrate less use of health care than U.S.-born citizens and have more negative experiences with the health care that they have received," they said.

(Reporting by Michael Conlon; Editing by Maggie Fox and Bill Trott)

Beverly--Your post of Dec 1 on Latino gangs planned ethnic cleansing of blacks and the Atzlan conspiricy is far out. Where did this stuff come from? Looks to me as if someone wants to fan the fire of hatred and racism of the rednecks of the world. It will give those of the Lou Dobbs and Tom Tancredo kind more drivel to include in their diatribes.

Immigration: Bane or Boon?

"To the Editor: Re “7-Year Immigration Rate Is Highest in U.S. History; Study Focuses on Public Costs of the Influx” (news article, Nov. 29): My grandparents were unskilled immigrants in the 1920s, when the percentage of the foreign-born population in the United States was higher than it is now. They never spoke proper English. They worked on menial jobs. They went on welfare during the Depression. My grandparents arrived as aliens, but they had a pathway to citizenship. Their grand- children and great-grandchildren today are doctors, lawyers, professors, nurses, accountants, engineers, counselors, corporate executives, artists, musicians, writers and students at top colleges and universities. There may be some initial “costs” of immigration, but the benefits are immeasurably positive over time. Lance Compa, Ithaca, N.Y., Nov. 29, 2007."

ARIZONA, PHOENIX

‘Coyote’ wars move to Valley

Mike Branom, Tribune

Rival gangs of human smugglers no longer battle for supremacy on busy freeways. The fight has come to quiet residential streets.

Like any trade involving illicit contraband, violence always has surrounded the trade of smuggling illegal immigrants into the United States. With “coyotes” continually scheming to eliminate competitors and steal their lucrative cargo, the crackle of gunfire often broke the silence of the desert.

But after successful interdiction efforts on Arizona’s highways, police and prosecutors say they now are seeing more crimes committed in the Valley.

“If you’re an innocent person living in a neighborhood where there’s a drop house, you have reason to be concerned,” said Arizona Department of Public Safety Lt. Fred Zumbo, an immigration enforcement expert.

Phoenix police recently touted a successful investigation into kidnappings and extortion attempts stemming from human smuggling. In this instance, the crime scenes were single-family homes.

According to authorities, smuggler Luis Armando Camacho-Pasos showed patience in destroying a rival gang.

He went to Mexico, approached a coyote and posed as an illegal immigrant needing help to cross the border. Once stashed in a west Phoenix drop house in June, Pasos told the smugglers to meet his wife nearby, where she would pay the remainder of his fee.

But there was no wife, and there certainly wasn’t any money. Instead, Pasos’ armed gang jumped the other smugglers, seizing the competing ring’s “cargo,” taking their captive immigrants to their own drop house and then extorting money from them.

In 2006, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Arizona investigated 100 calls in which migrants were held hostage, usually while coyotes were squeezing them for more money.

But ICE spokesman Vinnie Picard said the agency does not track how many cases specifically relate to one group of smugglers overtaking another.

Pasos was brought to justice after an illegal immigrant escaped and called police. Last month, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison for kidnapping and weapons violations.

“These are very dangerous crimes taking place within our community,” Phoenix police spokesman Sgt. Joel Tranter said. He estimated that city’s authorities respond to smuggling-related kidnapping calls on a weekly basis.

Why these incidents are taking place within the Valley can be found in the wreckage of two bullet-riddled and blood-drenched vehicles along Interstate 10.

On the same day in November 2003, coincidentally, that Mexico’s president visited Phoenix, a group of bajadores — bandits ripping off other smugglers — commandeered a pickup filled with illegal immigrants northwest of Tucson. But one of the original smugglers escaped and called his compatriots in Phoenix, who came to his aid.

The first group eventually caught up with the bajadores near Casa Grande and opened fire.

The toll: four dead, five wounded and four arrested.

A similar incident took place in rural Pima County earlier this year, with three killed.

In response to the mayhem, DPS fought back earlier this year with “Operation Full Court Press,” which Zumbo described as a thorough interdiction effort along the border and on major traffic arteries heading into the state. Scores of arrests followed.

“But it’s like a big chess match, in that we do something and then they counter it,” Zumbo said. “So, they’ve countered it by not using the main highways.”

WASHINGTON, YAKIMA

Wash. Growers Focus on Labor Needs

(AP) YAKIMA, Wash. - High-tech robots that could prune trees or pick fruit are often discussed at the annual meetings of Washington’s tree fruit growers, along with other proposals for reducing the need for farm workers.

Labor issues will again be the overarching theme of the tree fruit growers’ annual meeting Monday, which is being held in Wenatchee. Participants will talk about technology, farm worker housing, and a federal guestworker program.

"In the last five to 10 years, we are truly at a critical juncture for the tree fruit industry, and it is at a number of levels," said Jim Hazen, executive director of the Washington State Horticultural Association. "It’s all about labor supply and the issues associated with supply _ productivity, efficiency and cost."

An immigration crackdown and the availability of better jobs for farm workers are largely blamed for a labor shortage in the fields. State labor officials documented dozens of unfilled agricultural jobs across the state in this year alone.

As a result, more growers have turned to a federal program to get farm workers from other countries. Under the so-called H2A program, growers can import foreign farm workers if they can show the local labor force is inadequate.

Three years ago, only a couple of farmers used the program to bring in workers. This year, 21 growers filed applications for workers.

"We feel exposed," said Mike Gempler, executive director of the Washington Growers League. "There’s uncertainty in how we’re going to secure a legal work force, and that’s the problem everybody is examining."

McDougall and Sons Inc., a family-owned tree fruit operation based in Wenatchee, completed the paperwork this year to bring in 20 farmworkers from outside the United States, but then didn’t have the required housing for them when it was promised to local workers.

The company now is putting in manufactured homes to create 114 new beds for farm workers, at a cost of about $1 million, and plans to apply to bring in up to 60 farm workers next year, said Brent Milne, assistant manager of the company’s apple, pear and cherry orchards.

Milne put together an "H2A survival guide" program for growers attending the convention that will examine the costs of the program and requirements for growers, as well as potential legal hurdles.

"While we weren’t ultimately successful, I’d say we were close enough to get a bird’s-eye view of what’s going to be required with the program," he said.

U.S. Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., also will address the status of immigration reform bills in Congress, where they have stalled for months. In the meantime, several proposals have been floated to streamline the H2A process for farmers, a move Hastings supports.

Among them: Agricultural employers would no longer be required to place ads for available jobs with print and broadcast media outside of where they plan to use the workers.

Advocates for farm workers say the change violates federal law requiring employers to look for U.S. workers before importing foreign workers.

Farmers need more flexibility to use the H2A program, Hastings said.

"Part of the issue is timing. When you need workers, you need them right now. You don’t have the luxury of waiting a week or 10 days when the fruit is ripe," he said.

Hastings also said administrative changes to the H2A program are imperative given the likelihood that immigration reform will flounder in an election year.

"Really, none of the presidential campaigns have taken this issue on this year, at least with a solution," he said.

Labor problems tend to be cyclical for Washington farmers. A short labor supply was the primary push toward creating the Washington Tree Fruit Research Commission in the 1960s.

According to the state Employment Security Department, 1,240 certified H2A workers labored in Washington fields and orchards this year.

"That is an exponential increase over all previous years, and yet it’s just a sliver of what the industry really requires to do the seasonal work," Hazen said.

IMMIGRATION DAILY FROM ILW.COM

December 4, 2007

Headlines:
1. Comment: FBI Name Checks Latest

1. COMMENT

FBI Name Checks Latest

Immigration Daily's recent comment (11/30/07 ID) on the status of
FBI name check delays resulted in the following response from
USCIS Office of Communications Bill Wright:

Immigration Daily's 11/30/07 comment, "FBI Delays to End," is not
telling the entire story. USCIS and the FBI are working together
to process name checks as quickly as possible without
compromising security or public safety. To this end, we have
examined the existing name check system and acted to address the
problem through two strategies: (1) first, USCIS and the FBI
conducted a joint risk assessment which resulted in process
improvements that permit us to focus on cases of concern (2)
second, USCIS and FBI have allocated additional resources to the
process. Over the next year, USCIS is planning to commit a total
of $15.5 million to address the backlog of FBI name checks.
Please note, however, USCIS continues to require FBI name checks
for the same categories of applications and no case will be
approved without a cleared name check. We will continue to work
with the FBI to reduce waiting times; but, not at the expense of
national security and public safety.

Separately, Immigration Daily has learned that USCIS expects a 40%
reduction in FBI name check delays by year-end. This reduction will
be achieved largely through the allocation of additional resources
and a more streamlined process. This information supports DHS
Secretary Chertoff's earlier statement that applications that
were previously ensnared in the name check delays will be cleared
quickly. However, he cautioned that a small number of checks will
still be delayed by investigations.

We welcome readers to share their opinion and ideas with us by
writing to mailto:editor@ilw.com.

Misery crosses border with human traffickers

Burlington Free Press
Published: Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Targeting those who exploit people desperate for a better life and willing to pay smugglers to get them into this country is a humanitarian effort that also enhances the security of our borders.

It's a familiar scenario often associated with illegal immigration from Mexico or undocumented workers in big cities. U.S. and Canadian authorities say human trafficking takes place on Vermont's northern border.

Federal prosecutors announced last week the arrest of nine people in connection with two groups charged with arranging to bring people illegally into this country from Canada, calling the operations among the largest smuggling rings to operate along the northern border.

Targeting smuggling ring is a more effective means of slowing the flow of illegal border crossings than to check the trunks of every car that comes through a checkpoint. As U.S. Attorney for Vermont Thomas Anderson told the Free Press, "We should be focusing on dismantling these organizations, not just nipping at the edges."

In a perversion of the underground railroad that led slaves north to Canada and to freedom, the feds say foreigners paid smugglers as much as $10,000 to get to Canada and travel south through Vermont and New York, often toward a life of near enslavement to payoff their debt. These are people Anderson described as "extremely vulnerable."

Anderson said smugglers "don't care if it's a family looking for a better life or a terrorist looking to harm America" as long as they get paid. Even if terrorism weren't a threat, reducing the misery that comes with human trafficking is reason enough to target illegal immigration rings.

Smuggling immigrants is a business distinct from the human cargo that is their stock in trade. It is a business that profits from suffering. The word needs to get out to the people desperate for the promise of America that smugglers don't offer a path to opportunity.

National Correspondent for New York Times Speaks About Illegal Immigration’s Social Impact on Mexico

Published On Tuesday, December 04, 2007 1:17 AM
By MARION LIU

To illustrate the human toll of the immigration debate, New York Times reporter Julia Preston described devastating raids on meatpacking plants in Marshalltown, Iowa that ended with the deportation of hundreds of workers back to Mexico.

Preston, who is the national immigration correspondent for The Times, spoke yesterday afternoon about policy concerns with illegal immigration and its social impact as part of “¡México Hoy!”, a David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies series on U.S.-Mexico relations.

Titled “Where There Are Mexicans, There Is Mexico: Mexican Immigrants in the United States,” Preston’s talk emphasized the significance of the Mexican immigrant community.

“It is very different when you have one country, one foreign language, and so many illegal immigrants,” she said.

Preston acknowledged that “the word ‘legal’ is a very hard sound byte to address,” making it harder for the government to explore legalization policies.

Preston later said that while immigration is a civil issue, it is often thought of as a criminal matter.

“The words criminal and alien have gotten into the debate in a very inappropriate way,” she said.

The problem of illegal immigrants has been a powerful political issue in recent years because of conflicts over services, especially the increased burden on local schools and hospitals, Preston said.

While this new population is helping to meet the demand for labor, “how those people are incorporated into American society will have a enormous impact on the tenure of American society,” Preston said in an interview after the event.

According to President of Fuerza Latina Juan S. Arias ’09, the topic of immigration on campus has died down since the protest against a House bill in 2006 which would have classified illegal immigrants and anyone who abetted them as felons.

“I am, and I think a couple of the group members are, following the immigration debate,” he said. “But it just hasn’t been that big. The candidates haven’t made too big a deal about it.”

Preston ended her talk by expressing optimism.

“Our society has had tremendous capability of turning new immigrants into assets in the past,” she said.

Measures would target birthright citizenship

By Paul Davenport
ASSOCIATED PRESS

3:56 p.m. December 3, 2007

PHOENIX – Arizona voters may be asked to decide whether to prohibit the state from issuing birth certificates to children of non-U.S. citizens and require hospitals to check the citizenship of parents of newborns.
Those are key provisions of a proposed initiative filed Friday for possible inclusion on the November 2008 ballot, and a leading legislative critic of illegal immigration says he plans similar but separate legislation to take the issue to voters.

Della Montgomery, the woman who filed the proposed initiative with the Secretary of State's Office, did not immediately return a call for comment Monday, but the proposed “Birthright Citizenship Alignment Act” appears to be aimed at illegal immigration.
“They are awarding the full privileges of United States citizenship of all persons born in the state without regard for the clear and equal requirements of federal law that a person born in the United States, shall citizenship be bestowed, shall not be subject to any foreign power and owe direct and immediate allegiance to the United States,” the proposed initiative's declaration of purpose states.

Some critics of illegal immigration contend that the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment has been misapplied and was never intended to automatically grant citizenship to babies of illegal immigrants.

The constitutional provision was enacted after the Civil War and was meant to apply to former slaves, said Rep. Russell Pearce, R-Mesa. “It has nothing to do with aliens.”

Supporters of the proposed initiative would need to submit signatures of at least 153,365 voters by July 3 to qualify the measure for the ballot, while legislative approval alone would be enough to put a referendum being drafted by Pearce on the ballot.

While generally banning issuance of birth certificates to non-citizens, the measure would permit one to be issued to a child whose mother is a foreign citizen and whose father is a U.S. citizen if the father formally acknowledges parentage and agrees in writing to financially support the child until adulthood.

The initiative also would require that hospitals submit “certified documentation of the parents' United States legal status” to local registrars with birth certificates for newborns.

Arizona Hospital and Healthcare Association officials did not immediately return a call for comment.

Pearce said he has no involvement with the initiative campaign other than to twice speak on the phone with the applicant, Della Montgomery, to review her proposed wording.

“I helped tweak it a little bit,” he said. “What she gave me looked pretty good.”

Woman Talks About Life As An Illegal Immigrant, While Experts Address Issue

Hatzel Vela, Live 5 News

South Carolina's immigrant population grew faster than any other state between 2004 and 2005.

And part of the population boom is illegal immigration that some say needs to end.

But for one local woman, who did not want to be identified, the issue is very personal.

The 24 year old has been living in this country undocumented for 10 years.

When asked what she thought when she heard the word immigration, she said, “A hard life for the Hispanic people. We come here because we have to work, but we have to work more than the legal people here."

Jobs were only one of many topics discussed at an immigration roundtable hosted by the Charleston's League of Women Voters at a North Charleston church.

Crime, language barriers, health care and the economy were other topics panelists from different areas of expertise talked about.

The opinions varied, but all panelists agreed something needs to be done and the issue needs to be discussed more.

"There needs to be consensus in making these decisions,” said Judge Victor Rawl, who moderated the event. “The bereft of the discussion and the issue is a **** of a lot greater than most politicians have discussed."

No matter what you think, it’s an issue that affects folks who are here legally and the millions of people like this 24-year old, which are living in the shadows.

“If we can't get a good job, we just can't survive in this country,” she said.
"You know we just want work and have a better future for our families, for everybody just one chance, one opportunity."

© 2007 WCSC, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

COMMUNITY: New web portal to help immigrants adapt to life in Alberta

AlbertaIndex, December 3, Monday

A new web portal, www.alberta-canada.com/immigration, has been launched to provide complete information on opportunities, the immigration process and life in Alberta with the goal of attracting migrants.

The provincial government said the site provides a one-stop information destination to help new arrivals make a smoother transition in settling in their new home.

The portal brings together information on securing work, finding a place to live, improving English skills and accessing everyday services like health care, transportation and education.

It also provides vital links to the federal government, local immigrant serving agencies and other resources for newcomers. A variety of stakeholders, including immigrant serving agencies, were consulted during the portal’s development and provided advice on priority resources and on the overall usability of the portal.

The provincial government will continue to expand and improve the portal over the coming years, supported by a three-year $1.2-million funding agreement from Citizenship and Immigration Canada. The agreement allows for the development of more content, tools and services promoting the province as a destination and helping immigrants integrate once they arrive, both socially and economically once they arrive.

“Alberta has so much to offer. This is a beautiful province, full of opportunity and blessed with great quality of life,” said Minister of Employment, Immigration and Industry Iris Evans. “We want newcomers to choose Alberta and we want to make it easier for them to navigate the immigration process. This portal provides a single window into information about coming to Alberta.”

“The government of Canada recognizes the importance of helping immigrant families succeed and we are committed to helping newcomers settle and prosper in Canada,” said Diane Finley, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration. “With each region of our country having its own unique characteristics and opportunities, Alberta’s online resources will help immigrants as they arrive and settle in the province.”

The need for the Immigrate to Alberta web portal was identified through the province’s Made-in-Alberta immigration strategy. The strategy, launched in 2005, sets a number of goals for the province including increasing support for settlement services and improving international recruitment initiatives.

Elisabeth Borges, left, her daughter, Marianna, husband, Jose Osvandir Borges, seated, and son, Thiago, right, with Jose Silva, a family friend.

Brazilians Giving Up Their American Dream

By NINA BERNSTEIN and ELIZABETH DWOSKIN
Published: December 4, 2007
Like hundreds of thousands of middle-class Brazilians who moved to the United States over the last two decades, Jose Osvandir Borges and his wife, Elisabeth, came on tourist visas and stayed as illegal immigrants, putting down roots in ways they never expected.

Sylwia Kapuscinski for The New York Times
Marianna Borges, 10, helping her mother, Elisabeth Borges, pack. They and Ms. Borges’s husband are returning to Brazil Tuesday.
After packing up their plasma-screen TV, scholastic trophies and other fruits of 12 prosperous years in the Ironbound in Newark, the couple and their American-born daughter, Marianna, 10, were scheduled to fly back to Brazil for good this morning. They expect their son, Thiago, 21, to follow in a year or two, despite his reluctance to leave the only land that feels like home.

“You can’t spend your entire life waiting to be legal,” said Mr. Borges, 42, reflecting on a hard decision born of lost hopes, new fears and changing economies in both countries since he arrived in 1996. By law, the couple faces a 10-year bar on re-entering the United States, even as visitors.

That decision — to give up on life in the United States — is being made by more and more Brazilians across the country, according to consular officials, travel agencies swamped by one-way ticket bookings, and community leaders in the neighborhoods that Brazilian immigrants have transformed, from Boston to Pompano Beach, Fla.

No one can say how many are leaving. But in the last half year, the reverse migration has become unmistakable among Brazilians in the United States, a population estimated at 1.1 million by Brazil’s government — four to five times the official census figures.

To explain an often wrenching decision to pull up stakes, homeward-bound Brazilians point to a rising fear of deportation and a slumping American economy. Many cite the expiration of driver’s licenses that can no longer be renewed under tougher rules, coupled with the steep drop in the value of the dollar against the currency of Brazil, where the economy has improved.

“You put it all together, and why should you stay in an environment like that if you have a place like Brazil, where there’s hope, a light at the end of the tunnel and it’s not a train to run you over?” said Pedro Coelho, a businessman in Mount Vernon, N.Y., who is known as the mayor of Brazilians in Westchester County. “Are they leaving? Yes, by the hundreds.”

In Massachusetts, says Fausto da Rocha, the founder of the Boston-area Brazilian Immigrant Center, his compatriots — many here illegally — are leaving by the thousands, some after losing homes in the subprime mortgage crisis. In New York and New Jersey, travel agents and others who sell airline seats say that one-way bookings to Brazil have more than doubled since last year, to about 150 daily from Kennedy International Airport, and that flights are sold out through February.

And at Brazil’s consulate in Miami, which serves Brazilians in five Southeastern states, officials said a recent survey of moving companies and travel agencies confirmed what they had already surmised from their foot traffic: More Brazilians are leaving the region than arriving — the reversal of an upward curve that seemed unstoppable as recently as 2005, when Brazilians unable to meet tightened visa requirements were sneaking across the United States-Mexico border in record numbers.

It is too soon to say whether the reverse migration of Brazilians puts them in the vanguard of a larger trend among immigrants, or underscores their distinctiveness. Like Mr. Borges, who said he was poorly paid as a university teacher of religious studies in his native city of Curitiba, they generally come from more urban and educated classes than other major groups of illegal immigrants from Latin America, studies show. Many returning now have been investing their American earnings in Brazilian property.

But their own explanation for the surge back to Brazil contradicts conventional wisdom on both sides of the immigration debate.

For years, advocates of giving people like the Borgeses a chance to earn legal status have argued that illegal immigrants will only be driven further underground by enforcement measures like raids or denying them driver’s licenses. Advocates of harsher restrictions and penalties have argued that illegal immigration is now growing independently of the ebb and flow of the American economy. Returning Brazilians defy both contentions.

Faced with diminishing rewards and rising expenses in the United States, long separated from aging relatives in Brazil, “people say, ‘Is this worth it, being illegal, being scared?’“ said Maxine L. Margolis, a professor of anthropology at the University of Florida in Gainesville who has written extensively on Brazilians in the United States.

There are regional variations, but the pattern is consistent. In South Florida, the expiration of a driver’s license is often a turning point for families already caught short by the slump in housing construction, said Sister Judi Clemens, a pastoral assistant with Our Lady Aparecida Mission, which serves five different Brazilian communities in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Miami. She noted that until seven years ago, Brazilians with tourist visas could get Florida licenses valid for eight years, but they are all expiring now and cannot be renewed.

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Go to City Room » “There’s no public transportation here in Florida, so people drive to work in fear and trembling,” worried that a traffic stop could mean months in immigration detention, she said. “A lot of people have just simply said, ‘I’ve had enough.’“

In Massachusetts, where there is more public transportation, a spate of high-profile immigration raids, coupled with home foreclosures, have played a key role in the exodus, said community leaders like Mr. da Rocha, a legal resident who came in 1989. “I believe we lost 5,000 Brazilians only this year,” he said. “The landlords are going to face a crisis soon.”

While Brazil does not yet offer the job opportunities of Ireland, which has drawn back emigrants in droves, neither is it an economically bleak or war-torn country. And like Italian immigrants early in the 20th century, who typically planned to return to Italy — half of them eventually doing so — many Brazilians arrived with the intention of going back as soon as they met their financial goals.

But like the Borges family, they soon changed their timetable.

“We came here to save enough money to buy a house” in Brazil, Mr. Borges said, recalling the early weeks when the family slept in a friend’s basement and he worked in construction for the first time. They expected to return to Brazil after two years.

Instead, he found his inner entrepreneur. He started a plumbing and construction business that soon employed upward of seven compatriots, paid taxes and helped build name-brand hotels in three states.

But in 2005, as the construction boom began to go bust, larger companies, prompted by labor unions, started to demand working papers, he said. And when his crew could not produce them, they were let go.

As the housing market faltered, weekly earnings in his business shrank from a high of $6,000 to barely $2,000, he said. Expenses like gas and rent rose, making it harder for him and Ms. Borges, who cleaned houses in New York, to pay off loans for the farm they were buying in Brazil.

The dollar, which once bought four Brazilian reals, dropped to a historic low of 1.7 reals in May. Then in June came their personal tipping point: the collapse of the bipartisan bill in Congress that would have offered them, and millions of other illegal residents, a path to legal status.

“After the law didn’t pass, it was like all the hope went away at once,” said Mr. Borges, who had traveled, with other members of St. James Catholic Church in Newark, to rallies supporting the bill in Trenton and Washington.

In past years, he allowed, he spent $26,000 on dubious and doomed efforts to secure a green card. Now, he hopes to make a living by processing sugar cane for ethanol on his Brazilian farm. “If we had papers, we’d stay forever,” said Ms. Borges, 41, who has been active in their children’s public schools. “We love this community.”

Proudly, they showed off the trophy that Marianna won in third grade in an anti-littering poster contest, for a design that is now featured in shop windows throughout the Ironbound.

It is in such neighborhoods, where Brazilians brought fresh bustle to faded storefronts or abandoned factories, that the departures are being felt most keenly.

“I’m scared,” said Francine Melo, the owner of the travel agency in Newark where Mr. Borges bought three one-way tickets for $1,708. “I make my living through these people.”

Another of her last-time customers, Norma dos Santos, a former house cleaner, said she felt she had no choice. Seven years after overstaying her visa, she said, she does not drive to work or pick up her children at school for fear that a traffic stop could put her in immigration detention.

“It’s just getting harder and harder to stay here without documents,” she said.

Still, she is uncertain that she is doing right by her American-born children, a newborn and a 2-year old boy.

“I’m worried they’ll grow up and ask me, ‘How could you have left America?’“ she said.