Aftermath Part 1: Economics

Three million immigrants and their children come out of the shadows and start to build their own America.

ADVISORY - This episode contains stories and language about assault that can be traumatic or uncomfortable for some people. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi listeners just a quick heads up out of the
shadows tell stories of people fleeing and living in sometimes
violent environments. Shortly after receiving Urca, Barney Santos, his mom

(00:21):
Sonia started a new tradition, taking him to for his birthday.
A fading photo from one of those trips shows his
family sitting on the stoop in front of a weathered
concrete wall. It could be evening. Sonya seated wearing a
sporty striped shirt and a bright red Fannie Pack, casual

(00:44):
but cute outfit very early nineties, leaning against her as
a baby, bottle of milk in its mouth, staring straight
at the camera. Behind her, Varney's aunt and cousins sitting
in a wooden doors frame. Just too Sonia's left is Barney,
sitting a little tentively on the edge of the stoop.

(01:09):
He's got a boy's regular haircut, wearing shorts and a
navy blue tshirt with U s a strown across it
twice and red, white and blue letters. Barney says he
packed the shirt without even thinking about it. He wasn't
trying to make a show of it to his cousin's

(01:31):
It was after all, just a shirt, but it's also
a proclamation that his home, heart, and life are on
the other side. The message is clear, Barney is American.
Barney was born and raised in Los Angeles. He built

(01:53):
his life there was a place he visited. He loves,
spending birth days there and taking in the rich Salvadoran culture. Still,
Los Angeles was his home, his community, his place of comfort.
But Los Angeles was never home for Sonia. For Sonia,

(02:16):
home will always be El Salvador. First generation Latino Americans
are torn by competing forces. Kids don't want to stick out,
They want a sense of normalcy. As a kid, Varney
resented his mom for buying him shoes from Payless toys

(02:39):
from Los Cajones in Santi Ali, But as he got older,
he wanted to love it Salvador the way his mother did.
This photo is a small window into that angst. Because Salvador,
amongst his family's roots, his mind and attention are still

(03:00):
concerned with his American ones. What Barney didn't know at
the time this picture was taken was all the hardship
and sacrifices his mom Sonia made to be sitting on
those steps. It wasn't until he was older that he
began to appreciate all his mom did to raise her family.

(03:23):
She is a survivor, a provider, and a resilient person
who wanted her children to be proud of where they
came from without living in fear. And why she couldn't
afford to give him name brand things, he soon realized
she gave him a priceless gift, a broader perspective of

(03:53):
I'm Patty Rodriguez and I'm Vera Lindo. And this is
out of the shadows children of any six and all
that immigrants and their children have long lived in the
shadows of America. Their destinies aren't just shaped by where
they come from, but by their particular place in history.
In the lives of millions of immigrants and their children

(04:14):
were changed by one lucky stroke of a pen by
an unlikely ally, President Ronald Regan. This podcast will examine
the ripple effects that Bill had on first generation kids
of immigrants who are navigating intergenerational mobility and transforming the
cultural landscape. This is an untold story of luck, timing, triumph, opportunity, survival,

(04:36):
and of course hope. The fact that Sonia could get
on a plane to travel back to a Salvador without

(04:59):
fear of deportation was revolutionary. My parents lives also changed
so much in the years right after Urka, and it
started with the basics, better jobs, more stability, a better
place to live. One of the first major things my
parents did after getting amnesty was moved out of East

(05:21):
La into a studio apartment in Lynnwood. I remember it
being so small, but I can still feel my family's
excitement to make it our own place, our home. We
no longer had to share space with my cousin's aunts
and uncles. We no longer had to sleep on the floor.

(05:41):
It was a studio, but even then we had a
little bit more privacy. The second place we moved to
was a back house on someone's property with one room.
There still wasn't much space, so we slept in bunk
beds with my parents. But I had a backyard, an
avocado tree, and a wabba tree, and to me, that

(06:04):
was everything. Eventually, my parents bought a small house that
didn't have a yard. I used to stare at our
neighbor's yard, dreaming of one day having the courage to
ask my neighbor if I could buy half of it.
For my family, for my mom, for a lot of

(06:26):
us children. Nobody six like me. The dreaming really started
because of our parents. Out of the Shadows will be
right back now, back to the show. Sonya Santos came

(06:53):
from humble beginnings. She grew up in a town about
thirty minutes away from the capital. My childhood was really, really,
really sad. We were really poor. I used to go
to school in the morning without eating, and I used
to come back at night without any food in my
stomach and getting home and trying to see how I

(07:15):
can get something. I used to go to the places
where they sell tortillas, and the lady who sell the
tortillas um all the tortillas that people don't want, and
she used to save it and give it to me.
With her mom always working, so you became a curcuit
caretaker to her four siblings, even though she was just
a kid herself. Until my mother come back from his work.

(07:38):
I was like the mother for everybody. It was just
like it was really hard. My my life was really tough.
It was like it's like I always tell my son,
you know, I worked since I remember, hm, oh my life,
and but I was I was a happy girl. I was.
I was even though I was poor, and I was

(08:00):
always happy. But I think the happiness for me and
was now used to play soccer. That was the best
thing for me. It's so inspirational that even through all
the hardship she found joy showing you even had the
audacity to dream about a career as a nurse. But
in nineteen seventy nine, all those dreams were shattered. It

(08:25):
was a civil word. That means the gorillas want us
to join them, and then the government want us to
join them too. That I mean we were chasing from
both sides. They want all the young people too to
join well, and we don't want to do that. She
was desperate to get out of the war zone, but
so you didn't have the slightest idea how she was

(08:46):
going to manage that. She left her small town and
traveled to the big city, looking for work, trying to save,
trying to figure out an escape route. Then one day
she caught a break. A pair of twin sisters she
met in the city were leaving for America, and they

(09:07):
liked Sonia enough that they wanted her to come with them.
So they made this plan. They let me borrow the
money because I didn't have the money from us, and
then when I came here and I say the money
where I can pay them back. The first trip was unsuccessful.
When Sonya and the twins got to the Frontea, immigration

(09:27):
caught them and sent them back to All Salvador. We
did him and with the three of us, we we
worked the and the Emmi Rachel took us and they
reported reported us, the three of us. Then we went
back to the sens and the plane. The second time

(09:48):
was even more dangerous, not because of the trip itself,
but because of a terrifying running with some horrible men
who tried to sexually assault her. The was really, really,
really bad. One of the the guys who was taking us,
he wanted to rape me. And in the middle of

(10:09):
the night we were the three, the three of us,
we were sleeping in the floor and he was trying
to rape me. But one of the twins, she was
really bad, I mean she would you know? She she
I was really I was from little town. You know,
people from little town we're not the saying like the
people from the city. We don't know too much. One

(10:32):
of the twins offered herself to spare Sonia, and I
was crying and crying, and then one of them, she
saw that he wanted to rape me, and you know
what she did. She took him and she took him
outside to let him do it with her. Don't have
to do it to me. One of the painful things
about this show. He's hearing the pain and fear our

(10:58):
parents enjured in this particular pains just part of the
horrors many women face when crossing the border, and then
to have to carry on to make it across anyway.
It's heartbreaking for Sonia. The dangerous journey continued at the

(11:19):
bottom of a bus, where she was hiding in the
luggage compartment. Though the trip only took about three hours,
the feeling of the buses motor vibrating on her back
is forever ingrained into her psyche. They put me in
one of those buses, you know how under where they
put the luggage. They put me in there and down

(11:43):
when they put the luggage all the way to the end,
with all the luggage on the top of me, it
was so hot, maybe like three hours. It was really
really hot. I can feel the model on the bus
on my back. But that how I crossed that time
not have no problems. The three of us were crossed.

(12:07):
She first landed in Maywood, California, and subsisted on a
meager wage working factory jobs. All the money she made,
she sent it back home towards Salvador. I didn't have
a way to go anywhere, and all my money that
I used to make, I used to sell it to
my mom. I didn't have no money. I used to
just save a little bit, used to eat whatever I
need to eat. Sonia saved up enough to buy fake documents.

(12:31):
She worked during the day and used her bogus credit
shows to enroll a night school. Just like my mom.
I buy my my faith idea and my faith grink
car and everything. They didn't ask you for anything. They
just asked you for that. And then I was working.
And then I started working and working, and I to
the high school, to the Huntington Park High School. I

(12:53):
used to work from Maywood at night every night to
go from Park Yeah, to learn, and I really dark
about now you o'clock we used to get off from school,
and that's the time that I used to go back
by myself. In three she had her firstborn, Barney. One
of the nurses was also from my Salvador and encouraged

(13:15):
her to apply for a job, and she did. Sonia
worked in at the hospital for years until the crackdown
on undocumented workers in they discover everybody who was a
document in the hospital. We were thirteen nurses with no papers.

(13:35):
And then my supervisor she she was crying because she said, Sonya,
I'm gonna have to let you go. And then she said,
let me tell you one thing. I'm gonna say your
position for one year. I want you to go there
and find the papers and come back. And I promised
you I'm gonna keep your position. I'm not gonna give

(13:56):
it to anybody. About a year later, a friend called
and told her to turn on the TV. Somebody called me.
I didn't even know. And then she said, Sonya, just
what And she told me who the TV is? In
channel thirty four they're talking about I'll put it the TV.
And then I turned the TV and I saw it.

(14:17):
I started crying when they started giving you the list
of the qualifications. If you have this and this and
this and this, you can qualify Irka through Sonia a lifeline.
I was crying, crying and crying. I cried. I was
one of the first ones that I got it from
the county. And then when I got my papers, I

(14:40):
went back to the hospital and I gave it to
Dr Cleveland. She put it on a picture and she said,
you got it. You got your position. She saved it
for me, and I got it. I went back to
the same department with the same position. Everything cracked open,
getting a green card, mental possibility of getting her job back.

(15:02):
I can't believe in myself. I was, I was grateful,
I was crying. I was I remember, I want to
meet President Ring. I want to go see him. I
want to say him. But more importantly, it meant she
could plant roots in this country. It's a big different,

(15:25):
it's a big opportunities. It's just it's like they opened
a door for you. Everything is hoping for you. You
can apply for anything, you can go to school. So
your Santos path after Irka is deeply personal but not uncommon.
It may seem obvious, but the bill's biggest impact on

(15:46):
the immigrants too received amnesty was economic mobility. There are
a bunch of stats on this. We looked at that data.
That's Marty Powers. She was part of a government commission
study of irka's impact and found that the history of
the undocumented immigrants roots not so different from the history
of most immigrants who have come to this country over time.

(16:09):
It's not just one government study either, Across several studies
a slew of economic data from the Bush Institute to
you see, Davis findings consistently show getting legal status impacts
economic status. The lessons we learned from it is that
the legalized, undocumented or illegal immigrants improve their status the

(16:35):
same way every other immigrant did in the United States,
at least after after legalization. Certainly he did, being maybe
not past the middle but up towards areas where they
afford better housing. Uh, their children go to school. Even
though Barney Santos was one of those kids of immigrants

(16:57):
who got to go to college thanks to IRKA, his
mom had a much tougher road moving upwardly. I used
to sell anything you can put in front of me,
I used to sell it. Sonya Santos has always been
a hustler because she got her education on the streets
of Cohotel back. That's what Barney's like that because I
used to take him with me all the time to Damntown.

(17:19):
But I used to sell everything. I even used to
do fashion shows in my house to sell clothes. I
used to go to downtown every Saturday and sell persons
that Bell's silver Goal, anything I can name it, I
used to sell it to collect money. That's how I

(17:40):
raised my kids. And after getting Arka, her hustle and
drive help Sonya secure the future for her family. After
years of struggle, surviving the war assault being smuggled on
a bus, Sonya finally was able to buy a how
Sin Downey, a k a. The Mexican Beverly Hills, the

(18:04):
fancy Latino suburb in southeast Los Angeles where my family
also moved to after Urica, and I can after that
they have a good life. She came to this country
with almost nothing, escaping an almost impossible circumstance, but getting
her green card was a game changer, and her son, Barney,

(18:25):
is really proud of that. My mom was always somebody
who just took care of everyone around her, you know,
like at one point, not even one point, Like we
lived to Downey, my grandma lived with us, my aunt,
my aunts, her sister, my cousin, my sister. Obviously, we
had a like a living nanny. Um so the house

(18:48):
was always full, always full, no matter what, with people
just kind of living there or staying there. Sometimes my
sister had friends and my mama let them stay at
the house too, So it just was a constant like
open door. My I've just always been that way, you know.
I think everybody looked at my mom and saw like, oh,
like my mom, somebody who's got it together, out of

(19:12):
the shadows will be right back now back to the show.
For Alberto Vidal Orca cleared the way for a practical
purchase's ans and pick up ven lo lovely car, blue car, lovely,

(19:41):
we love it like blue me leel and my wife
his family needed a way to get around, you know,
divery thing we think he won't. We got the the
green car is to buy a car, you know, because

(20:03):
with a new car, because for the transportation before we
were just using you know, uh the second card and
uh you know, but we we needed for my wife,
we needed to have a you know, a good transportation,
you know, for at least five years everything. Getting a
green card made it easier to get a car and

(20:24):
eventually a house. And after that we change. No, we
we've had things, you know, and when we we bought
the house. You know, was the main thing that people
want to get a house. So you know Lena in
that year was like was seven and then comes the

(20:45):
upkeep which is expensive. With a green card, Alberto could
apply for a loan for renovations on the home he
worked so hard to buy. I remember they give you
like a fifteen thou dollars day and you have power.
But we use you used to the house to torch

(21:07):
the house. Because if I use in a different way,
because I have many many friends when he happened this
this situations that you spend in a different way. So
we improve in the house. We learned a lot of
things from this country. You you can have nine things,
but you know you need to work hard and we
change everything. You know, floor painting, you know its carpet,

(21:31):
you know, furniture, everything, So we renovated the teaching and everything.
We paint again a lot of things. You know, that
green card helped Alberto's family create a legacy in this country,
something he does not take for granted. But this this country.
A loves this country because to give me the chances

(21:53):
to have my family here, to have my my daughter here,
to have my grandkids in here and part of that
legacy Alberto created was the generational wealth he gave his
daughter Lena, who got to witness her family's ascent firsthand,
driving from street to street to street to street to
find a house that was perfect. And we just happened

(22:16):
to be driving by the house and they were just
about to put up the first sale sign, and so
my mom gets out of the car all excited and
she's like, oh my, you know, we're looking for a house,
and somehow just everything clicked. It wasn't perfect, but it
was theirs and renovating the place with that loner parents
got it's still a fond memory. It was nice because
it turned into a family project and everybody was together

(22:40):
and so and that I want to say because of that,
I got really I got to know a lot of
my family. Right. We are a reflection of our parents dreams.
Varney Santos, the kid in that photo at the top
of the show, is one of those people. In the
first episode we talked about both of our market Manabello, California.

(23:02):
It is a community space for Latinos owned and operated
by black and brown entrepreneurs like me, and it was
all Barney's vision. I just I learned so much from
my mom just watching her, Like, I have so much
respect for what she went through, and it's something he
couldn't have been able to do without the battles his

(23:22):
mom's Sonia fought like my mom talked a lot about
right now the struggle of kind of coming here, but
she's not even touching on just the struggle of being
in this country, raising a family on her own with
a thought. My father wasn't in the picture, and you
saw she's the matriarch of their entire family. I wouldn't
be who I am today if it wasn't for her

(23:44):
Sonya believed it was important for Barney to understand and
appreciate his Salvadoran culture. It was important to have that perspective.
I used to take Himo to celebrate his birthday with
the boss and everything all that went into opening Boulevard Market. Well,

(24:05):
it might seem like a small detail, it meant everything
that Barney could be proud of being Central American without
the fear of persecution. I think a lot of times
when when if there's there, there's families who are living
in fear, and then they have kids, and then the
kids only see that fear in their parents, and so

(24:26):
they sort of take on those things and then they
live in fear right, and then they and then they're
not able to be the best versions of themselves or
go to the best schools, or do the best businesses,
or have the best careers because there's something in the
back of their head that's saying live in fear. Amnesty
gave Sonia their renewed confidence to inspire her son to

(24:49):
reach for the stars. She basically told me every single day,
you can do anything you want, you can be anyone
you want. Don't be afraid to do what ever. And
I always believed her. But without that piece of paper,
like how could she even say that, she wouldn't even
believe herself something as simple as not living in fear

(25:11):
means everything without that weight crushing her self esteem, his psyche,
his aspirations. I used to sleep next to him, and
he in the bed, but right next to the bear,
just thinking about where were happening. If they take me,
I mean, and you and you hear so many stories,

(25:33):
oh the kids, because he's from here, they're gonna take
it to the system, and they're gonna send you to
nobody has a glue what kind of feeling is that
it's really really is to me, it's a trauma leaving
that fair every night thinking about that it can't happen.
And the funny thing is Barney didn't even know his

(25:55):
mom was on her recipient. But I had no idea
until you texted me about the amnesty. Think I've never
really got to even ask you know what I'm saying
because you think, like about these high level political moves
and the macro and micro economic like implications of it
in this country, right like if that never happened, like

(26:18):
I would not be doing what I do, You wouldn't
be doing what you do? How many jobs have we created?
How many millions of dollars of sales tax revenue for
cities and for the state that we've created? How much
you know, how much of the economic impact just you
and I have made right in this country? Like let
alone the millions of people and millions of kids who
have benefited from you know, amnesty, like all over this country,

(26:41):
Like that one political act has created ripple effects of
massive wave of change in this country. And that I
think it's interesting and I don't hear from too many people,
right like it's that's kind of nuts. I'm very proud
of my son. I told him my same you know
me go now I can die in peace because I

(27:02):
know you guys doing well. He's where He made me
more happy than he. I am so proud of him.
It's just amazing. I pray for him every night, and
I asked God to protect him in He's a good
kids and my daughter too. You know. Hearing Barney and

(27:26):
his mom's sonya story makes me cry tears of joy.
It also reminds me of something our parents fought hard
to get us to America and to build as a home.
They were visionaries. I mean to think that my dad
and mom grew up with nothing on the Rancho and
wound up raising their kids in the southeast Los Angeles

(27:47):
suburb is revolutionary. Growing up in Linwood, where my family
moved after my parents got Irka, was formative to who
I am today. Even though we had limited space, we
still had these huge dreams and aspirations. I later bought
my first home for my mom in Lynnwood because it's

(28:08):
where I found my community. It's where I learned to
dream of a better future. Well, there were many times
that I wanted to leave and I eventually did. Lynwood
will always be my home. Beyond the economic mobility and
stability gave our parents, there are some big psychological effects too.

(28:31):
Some are good. The children of the Woods to legalized
whose parents have been able to come out of the
shadows so to speak, as that terms often used, UH
did very well. Not having to worry about deportation changed
all of our lives. And to be honest, not having
to grow up in a place with wars like the

(28:51):
ones America backed in Al Salvador or the American backed
war on drugs and Sinaloa where my parents fled, was
an incredib able gift our parents gave us. We are
forever grateful to them. But that didn't magically make the
trauma of growing up between two worlds just go away.
It was internalized by a generation of kids who grew

(29:14):
up under this duality like me. So in terms of
physical effects, this often leads to eating and sleeping disturbances
for children. That's on the next episode of Out of
the Shadows Children of eighty six. If you love this podcast,

(29:44):
please help us get the word out by following, rating, reviewing,
and sharing it with your friends. Out of the Shadows
is written by Caesar Hernandez. It's also written, edited, posted,
an executive produced by Patty Rodriguez and Eric Galindo. It's
produced by Bezzicardanas, Karen Lopez and Gabby Watts. It's sound

(30:07):
design mixed and mastered by Jesse Nice Longer. Our studio
engineer is Clay Hillenburg. Karen Garcia That's Me is our announcer.
Out of the Shadows is the production of Seeing Me,
Other Productions and School of Humans in partnership with I
Hearts Michael Tura Podcast Network. The podcast is also executive

(30:31):
produced by Giselle Banzes, Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and Chad Crowley.
Our marketing and our team is led by Jasmine Mahia.
Original music by a Arenas and if you loved his
cover of Los Caminos a la viva this podcast theme song,
you can listen to it on all music platforms. Historical

(30:53):
audio for Out of the Shadows comes from the Reagan
Presidential Library and the National Archives's Special thanks to Ian Vargas,
Alex and Ali, Caitlin Becker, bab Chabran, Daisy Church, Angel
Lopez Glendo, Julianna Gamiz, Ryan Gordon, Brian Matheson, Claudia Marti, Corna,

(31:19):
Oscar Ramidez, John Rodriguez, Juan Rodriguez, Joshua Sandoval, Eric Sclar,
Tony Sorrentino, and Megan tan