In a national survey conducted last month by Marist Poll for National Public Radio and PBS News, 44 percent of registered voters said immigration was a deciding factor in whom they support for president. Another 43 percent said it was an important factor. In this series, we examine what draws Latino immigrants to the Highlands, the process they undergo to stay and the effect on local schools.
Joseph Biavati crossed the Tijuana border into California 32 years ago hiding in a hay truck. He said he did it because his family was starving in strife-torn Brazil. “We were down to one meal a day,” he said. “It was half of a chicken for me, my wife and my baby. And a bottle of water. That was it.”
After initially settling in Port Chester, he moved his family in 2004 to Philipstown for the same reason so many others come to the Highlands: the public schools.
When his son David was diagnosed with autism, a doctor told him that Haldane was well-equipped to help children with special needs. David, born in the U.S., didn’t speak until age 4 and exhibited curious behaviors like lining up his puzzle pieces in a row like a train. The therapists and teachers at Haldane made great strides with David, teaching him how to communicate and interact with others, his father said. “They were fantastic,” he said.
David graduated from Haldane three years ago as an honor roll student.
Biavati’s journey is similar to many undocumented immigrants who live in the Highlands but doesn’t conform to the hot-button and often racist rhetoric of the political season.
According to state data, recent immigrants from Central and South America have not brought crime to the region. Rather, except for their legal status, they are like new residents who migrate from other U.S. counties and states seeking a better life in the suburbs, affordable housing and quality schools. The difference is that undocumented immigrants usually fill the lowest-paying jobs.
A January report by the Immigration Research Initiative, a nonpartisan think tank, said the most common jobs for newly arrived immigrants are domestic workers, janitors, waiters, truck drivers, cashiers, couriers and messengers. After five or 10 years, the most common jobs are home health aide and retail sales.
An estimated 850,000 undocumented immigrants — meaning they do not have work permits or green cards — live in New York state, mostly in New York City, according to the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. How many have come to the Highlands is unknown. But if immigration court data is indicative, the numbers have risen dramatically over the past two decades. As of August, there were nearly 400 new immigration cases involving Putnam County residents, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University (TRAC). In 2004, there were 34 cases filed during the entire year.
The numbers for Dutchess are similar. As of August, there were 779 immigration cases. In 2004, there were 33. About 75 percent of those cases involve immigrants from Central and South America, according to TRAC.
At the same time, there has been a dramatic rise in the Latino population in Putnam and Dutchess counties. In Dutchess, Hispanics comprised 15 percent of the population in 2022 compared to 4 percent three decades earlier, according to U.S. Census data. Hispanics are 20 percent of the population in Beacon; in 1992 they were 14 percent.
In Putnam, the population was 19 percent Hispanic in 2022 compared to 3 percent in 1992. In the U.S., an estimated 13 percent of Latinos are undocumented, while 87 percent are U.S. citizens or legal residents.
Immigrants come to the Highlands and the Hudson Valley seeking “the good life,” said Allan Wernick, an attorney who founded CUNY Citizenship NOW, the nation’s largest university-based legal assistance program. “Undocumented immigrants are looking for the same thing that all of us are looking for, a safe place where the kids can get a good education and a place where they can find work.”
The good life was the reason Renato Saldaña immigrated from Cuenca, Ecuador, where he earned $300 a month in his chosen trade of embroidering clothing. In 2009 he paid “coyotes” (human smugglers) $12,500 and left his wife and two daughters to embark on a 2 1/2-month odyssey with stops in Panama, Honduras and Mexico. He crossed the border at McAllen, Texas, hiding in the sleeper of a tractor-trailer.
He wound his way to Philipstown, where he found a small apartment on Route 9D just north of the Appalachian Market. His first job was on a Peekskill garbage truck before finding work at a clothing manufacturer in Yorktown Heights. When his daughters arrived in 2017, he sent them to Haldane High School, where they graduated with honors. Living in Cortlandt, Saldaña is trying to start his own embroidery business.
How does he feel about moving to the U.S.? “It’s a good country,” said Saldaña, through a translator. “It would be better without the racism. But we also have problems in our own country. We are better off here.”
The Saldañas are among the thousands who have come to the area from Ecuador, Guatemala, El Salvador, Mexico and Honduras, the most common countries for immigrants to Putnam and Dutchess counties, according to TRAC. Non-Hispanic immigrants come to the area, as well, but not in nearly the same numbers.
What most of these immigrants do once they’re here is clear: low-paying work.
“They’re doing the jobs that no one else wants to do, that are the backbone of our economy,” said Brahvan Ranga, political director of Make the Road New York, which advocates for immigrants.
One of those low-paid workers was Delma Perera, who earned $8 an hour when she came to the U.S. in 2002 from Uruguay, overstaying a tourist visa. That was four times what she could make as a teacher back home, she said, adding that her original plan was to earn enough money to return to Uruguay and buy a home.
She settled in Ossining before moving to Peekskill and then Philipstown. What did she do to make money? “Anything,” she recalled. “If you wanted me to clean the pool, I would clean the pool. I would clean houses. I was a waiter at a graduation party.”
Perera, who recently moved to Wappingers Falls, is now a certified nurse assistant who works as a home health care aide. She earns $15 to $25 an hour.
While many take low-paying jobs, one thing immigrants don’t seem to do often is commit crimes. In Putnam, the number of recorded violent crimes has remained steady at four to six per 10,000 residents for 20 years, according to federal crime statistics. In Dutchess, they stayed at 20 to 22 per 10,000 residents.
“Immigrants make places safer,” said Joseph Lavetsky, an immigration attorney based in Beacon, because the last thing most immigrants want is to attract the attention of law enforcement. Criminal activity can get you deported, he said. Arrests for violent crime, drunk driving or even jumping subway turnstiles undermine attempts to get work permits and green cards, the first steps toward citizenship.
Meanwhile, many undocumented immigrants pay taxes. In 2022, undocumented immigrants paid $96.7 billion in federal, state and local taxes, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. New York State collects $3.1 billion in taxes from immigrants, with each paying an average of about $9,000, according to ITEP.
Renato Saldaña said he started paying taxes in 2014 after learning he could get what the IRS calls an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number. Indeed, attorneys routinely advise undocumented immigrants to pay their taxes and keep careful records as a way of documenting their good faith when they apply for work permits and green cards.
“I pay my taxes every single year,” said Perera, who has a work permit. “I follow the rules. But I cannot vote.”
The Current needs a new copy editor. He or she tolerates the nonsensical term “undocumented immigrant” for “illegal alien,” the correct term for persons lacking legal status to remain in the U.S. It’s ironic that one turns the page and finds an Out There column on invasive language, which was tolerated (or possibly applied) by your rogue copy editor in the previous article. I’m certain the editor would not use such invasive language. [via Instagram]
You may want to check The Associated Press Stylebook before you make bad-faith comments. [via Instagram]
My objection to “undocumented” is that there certainly are cases where documentation exists. It’s just that it could be yours or mine that’s being used.
There are many stories these days about how local journalism is dying. Anyone who thinks that hasn’t been reading Joey Asher’s superb series in The Current on immigrants, legal and otherwise, who live in the Highlands.
Asher’s series is well-reported and vivid enough to be published in our best national journals. They have the added advantage of introducing many of us to neighbors who often live invisibly in our midst. Asher tells us about some who came across the border hidden in vans and are now enriching our community.
It’s fair to infer from his reporting that if Donald Trump has his way and deports millions of these immigrants, we will all be infinitely poorer. Congratulations to The Current and Joey Asher for first-rate journalism.