Reaching for Legitimacy in the Immigrant Economy
Networks Help Illegal Workers Find Jobs, Housing
By S. Mitra Kalita
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 10, 2006; A01
Moments before stepping out of a shadowy illegal economy into the light of a more lawful existence, Edy Diaz practiced what he would say.
" Cambiar is 'to change,' right?" he asked, pausing outside his white delivery van. Then he walked into a Wachovia bank and showed his new Social Security card to the branch manager. Slowly and carefully, he explained: "The number you have is wrong."
For more than a decade, Diaz, who was born in Guatemala, had been using a bogus Social Security number, nine digits purchased on a corner in Columbia Heights. He had carried a hand-me-down cellphone, still in the original owner's name. He had "bought" a home in Beltsville by having a cousin put his name on the loan.
Now, on that sunny morning in July, he looked forward to making new financial footprints -- finally, his own.
An estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants live in the United States, creating what is described as an underground or illicit economy. Their finances elude easy classification. They deal with street criminals and with mortgage lenders. They pay taxes. Their vast yet intimate networks help them find jobs, housing, schools and shopper's discount cards.
Each has his own story, or her own system. As a national debate wages over the future of people like Edy Diaz, he and his family illustrate a strategy they have used to survive in the United States, one that allowed him to live in suburban Washington and work illegally for a decade.
A New Identity for $80 That young Edy would emigrate to the United States was something not so much discussed in the Diaz family as it was taken for granted. The third of 11 brothers and sisters, he saw little future on the family farm about 100 miles from Guatemala City. He left school after the sixth grade to work in the corn and coffee fields, and by his 17th birthday the family had saved the $3,500 needed to pay a human smuggler, called a coyote, for his journey to America. They made it clear that, once there, Edy should find work and keep it. "I don't want to hear you got fired because you were lazy," his father said.
Edy Diaz walked for 40 days in a group of 180 people, praying that his sneakers would last. When he arrived in Los Angeles in April 1995, Diaz called his brother, living in Hyattsville, to tell him he'd made it -- and to ask him to wire enough cash for his flight to Washington.
From a relative, Diaz got the name of a person who could take his picture and put it on a fake green card for about $80. They met on a corner in Columbia Heights in Northwest Washington, and the price included an equally fake Social Security card. Diaz took the first job he found: $5.50 an hour to pot plants at a nursery.
Three years into his job, a young Guatemalan at the nursery caught Diaz's eye. She turned to him with questions, like where to find carne asada and fresh produce, and would ask him for rides. She asked everyone to call her Rosie, even though she filled in a different name on her job application. Nobody asked why.
Like about half the illegal immigrants in the United States, Rosa Guzman arrived in the United States legally, on a tourist visa. Her parents were successful restaurateurs on an island off Guatemala's coast, and a friend of theirs pulled some strings to get her the visa, which would expire in six months. Overeducated for her job handing out maps at a tourism center, Guzman was eager for an adventure.
When she got to Washington, Guzman, like Diaz, bought fake papers -- delivered to her at a McDonald's in Adams Morgan. Not wanting to use her real name on phony documents, she picked one she knew she wouldn't forget -- her cousin's -- and she became her for $75.
Within a couple of years of meeting Diaz, they had moved in together. In 2000, Rosa Guzman gave birth to Edy Jose, and the newborn U.S. citizen suddenly gave her and Edy a new connection to this land. Increasingly, the couple began to reconsider their vague hope of returning someday to Guatemala. They questioned what the family would do there. Did Diaz want young Edy Jose to work in the fields? No, he realized, he didn't even want him to work in the plant nursery.
" No hay nada aqui ," Rosa Guzman's parents reminded her in their weekly phone calls from Guatemala. "There is nothing here."
They realized they wanted to stay.
Seeking Legal Status From the time he began working, Edy Diaz understood he should file tax returns. It would help him achieve legal status if he wanted to remain in this country. Most of the 1 million immigrants in the Washington region, regardless of legal status, pay taxes, according to a study conducted by the Urban Institute -- with undocumented immigrants paying about half what the legal immigrants do.
At first, Diaz didn't file. Every week, his employer deducted an appropriate percentage of his wages for federal taxes, Social Security and workers' compensation -- thousands of dollars, as years went by. But because he was using a fake Social Security number, Diaz didn't expect he'd ever get a dime back in benefits.
In 1999, around the time he met Rosa, he decided to start filing, motivated mostly by his hopes of becoming a legal resident. He approached a notario -- someone who provides such services as legal advice, translation and typing services, largely to Spanish speakers. Diaz's notario was a Dominican with a useful background: He had once worked at the Internal Revenue Service.
With his guidance, Diaz did what millions of undocumented immigrants had done before him: He applied to the IRS for an individual taxpayer identification number, or ITIN, which the agency issues to foreign nationals and others ineligible for Social Security numbers. The agency does not verify an applicant's identity and says the document is only for tax-filing purposes. Critics, such as the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates tighter borders, call the ITIN a "backdoor way" for millions of illegal aliens to receive U.S. government-issued identity numbers.
The IRS counters that the ITIN merely enables the government to collect money from workers who have "responsibilities under the Internal Revenue Code." Internal Revenue Commissioner Mark W. Everson testified to Congress in July: "Our function is tax administration. . . . If someone is working without authorization in this country, he/she is not absolved of tax liability."
Since 1998, Diaz says, he has filled out a 1040 form under his ITIN number every year, even though the W-2 attached to it bears his fake Social Security number. An accountant does the filing for him, and Diaz said nobody has ever asked any questions. In fact, every year he counts on a refund of at least a few thousand dollars.
Diaz said he has also used the ITIN to open bank accounts. For employer-sponsored health insurance, he used the fake Social Security number -- again with no problem. A spokesman for the Social Security Administration said that letters are sent to holders of Social Security numbers suspected of being misused, but if the letters are ignored, the agency has no enforcement power.
For years, Diaz had no idea who was behind the Social Security number, whether it was even a real person's or some arbitrary sequence of digits. It was only in 2000, when he applied for a loan to buy an Acura Integra, that the dealer ran a credit check and told him that the person whose number Diaz had given him was dead.
"But still, I can do something," the dealer said, and went on to process the loan. Diaz asked no questions. He just bought the car.
Diaz asks few questions -- that much he has learned after a decade in this murky economic reality. He says he doesn't like to challenge authority and that people like his lawyer often can't be bothered to explain things, at least in a way he understands.
His memory is fuzzy, he says, on some of the details of the past 11 years. How did he get a driver's license? He's not sure but knows it was easier then than it would be now, with increased scrutiny of illegal immigrants. His wife, Rosa, meanwhile, used her state of Maryland identification and, after shopping around motor vehicle offices, found one outside Baltimore where nobody asked her for a Social Security number.
A Home of Their Own For years, Diaz and his brothers and many other relatives in this country have turned to the same person for advice and help: Edy's cousin Dimas Diaz.
Dimas, a local organizer with the Service Employees International Union-32BJ, studied English intensely when he arrived in the United States in 1991 and later became a U.S. citizen. He married an American woman he met in Arlington, and they bought a big, modern house in Prince William County.
In early 2004, Edy Diaz came to him with a plea: He and Rosa were married and had had a second child, Gabriela. They were tired of living in a basement and needed more space. He had found a three-bedroom house with a basement apartment in Beltsville -- but he didn't know how to get a mortgage with no legal papers. "It's an amazing deal," he assured Dimas. "I promise I will always pay the mortgage. I just need your name."
Dimas said he'd think about it and talked to his wife. "No," Catherine Diaz said immediately. "He is the most caring and honest of your cousins, but it's too risky."
Everyone else Dimas Diaz asked had the same advice. About to turn Edy down, Dimas was out one day with another cousin, also undocumented. A street beggar approached them. Though bedraggled and apparently homeless, he was obviously native-born.
"I would do anything to be him," the cousin said. "To be a citizen. To speak his English. To have a Social Security number." Moved almost to tears, Dimas decided to give his cousin Edy a taste of the American dream.
The closing was held on their lunch hours. Dimas signed and initialed paper after paper. Edy sat silently beside him. And so Dimas Diaz bought the house on Bellevue Street in Beltsville for $320,000, in name only. It would really be home to Edy, Rosa, Edy Jose and baby Gabriela.
It would also be home, it was soon clear, to many others. To pay the $2,100 monthly mortgage, Edy Diaz had to rent the basement out to a few cousins and his aunt for $1,000. Recent arrivals from Guatemala seemed to flock to them, seeking a place to stay, a few dollars, advice on how to make it. Still, the aunt in the basement meant child care for little Gabriela that was loving and always available.
While many of the immigrants around them dwell on lives left back home -- remittances to Latin America top $13 billion annually -- the Diazes say they send money only on holidays. They're trying to save money for a future here, and their lifestyle reflects that. Alongside floral-patterned couches, family pictures line the shelves in their home, next to knickknacks that exude a sabor that is much more americano than latino. They shop at Costco and Sam's Club. Edy Diaz speaks quite a bit of English, albeit heavily accented, and has been after his wife to learn the language.
Neither has been back home since they left Guatemala -- afraid they might not be allowed to return -- and neither has met the other's parents.
'What a Country We Live In' In 2001, after Edy had been working at the nursery for six years, his employer agreed to sponsor his green card, which would grant him permanent residence in the United States and the right to live and work here freely. Under a law passed by Congress in late 2000, undocumented immigrants or immigrants who had overstayed visas could apply for green cards if a family member or employer sponsored them -- but they had to do it by April 2001. The result was a surge of green card applications and a backlog of half a million applications, meaning it has not been unusual for applicants to wait for their papers for several years. So, like so many others, Edy Diaz and his family continued living and working on the fringes of the illicit world they knew too well.
One day, in late June, a thin official envelope came in the mail, among the bills and the Fourth of July circulars. Eleven years and two months after walking into the United States, Edy Diaz got his work permit.
He wasted no time applying for a new Social Security number. At the local office in Wheaton, the processor mentioned something that astounded him: Diaz could roll over his earnings and history associated with the old Social Security number into the new one. "What a country we live in, no?" Diaz asked.
Days later, nine new digits arrived.
"These are my fortuna ," Diaz said excitedly, waving the cards and slipping into Spanglish. "Do you know what is fortuna ? It means all my opportunity is right here."
He began the task of cleaning up his finances, shocked at how easy it was. From business to business, Diaz walked in and asked to be recorded under his new ID. At most places, few questions were asked and he was finished in seconds.
"Congratulations," said the man at his Langley Park insurance office, with a knowing look. "Now -- can I interest you in a homeowner's policy to bundle with your car insurance?"
"I'll come back," Edy said.
The Next Step: Citizenship As Edy Diaz spent this past summer becoming legal, Rosa Guzman waited for her turn. She spent most of her days cleaning houses because of the flexibility it gave her to be home with the children. Her green card application was linked to Edy Diaz's, and she'd been told to expect the work permit by Labor Day. Now she watched enviously as her husband suddenly exuded a certain ease and confidence. He inquired about applying for credit cards, talked about buying a new flat-screen television and a new house.
On the day after Labor Day, it finally arrived: a work permit bearing her real name and photo. Guzman had been anticipating the day for so long that she didn't feel joy as she opened the envelope. Just relief.
Still, she understood how the document changed everything, the giddiness it inspired to plan, to spend, to want. More than her right to work, it represented a future, a fortuna , as her husband had said.
This week, Rosa Guzman begins English classes through a free program offered in Anne Arundel County; she is tired of relying on her husband to navigate life in America. Edy Jose is in first grade now, and Rosa has bought him an electronic English-Spanish translator for $125 to help with his homework. She hopes the device will help her learn, too.
Her goals remain simple: Visit Guatemala, learn enough English to converse freely with her son, find a job cleaning at an embassy, maybe. Edy Diaz's goals, on the other hand, seem limitless: He wants a new house, a big five-bedroom.
They have one goal in common. Both want to become citizens.
