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The Price of Citizenship

Josephine Woolington

In the small town of Jose Pedro Varela, Uruguay in 1965, 10-year-old Beatriz Santiago

left for school, unknowing it was the last time she would see her mother. Santiago remembers the

purple sky and the haze that decorated the Uruguayan countryside that morning. Santiago lived

with her mother, father, brother and sister, in a rural area of the Department of Lavalleja in

Uruguay. Her mother, Maria, worked as a housekeeper, while her father, Israel, was a gaucho, a

farmer. During Santiago’s lunch break at school that day, missionaries from the Evangelical

Mission to Uruguay (now known as the Evangelical Mission to the Unreached International)

approached Santiago, took her back to her home to gather her belongings, and forced her to go

with them to the capital, Montevideo. The missionaries assured Santiago that her mother

permitted them to take her and her siblings to the capital, but Santiago later found out, her

parents had no idea where she went.

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Santiago, now age 55, tells her story in the lobby of Ethos Music Center, where she

currently works. Santiago works full-time as the building manager at Ethos. She wears a tie-dye

Ethos T- shirt everyday to work—the only employee at Ethos to do so. She is proud of her work

she has done at Ethos in the past five years. From making an old apartment building look like a

welcoming music school, to decorating the walls with her own artwork, Santiago gives insight to

how working-class immigrants find their place and leave their mark in the United States.

The Missionaries

Santiago writes the names Fred and Seva Dabold down on a piece of paper when asked

who took her and her siblings to Montevideo. She points to pictures of the couple on the

Evangelical Mission to

Uruguay’s website. In 1946,

Dr. Fred Dabold and his wife

Seva founded the mission

(“EMU International…”).The

mission established churches

in the capital and brought

Santiago to stay at a church

to learn Christian doctrine.

The mission, which began in

Uruguay, now has established churches in Chile, Croatia, China, Cambodia, Peru, Mexico, the

United States and France (“EMU International…”). The mission believes in the “evangelicalism

of the world” and strives to “train nationals to evangelize their own people” (“EMU

Santiago (center) pictured with her siblings, Ismael (left) and

Mariazul (right), with Fred and Seva Dabold.

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International…”). But from Santiago’s perspective, the missionaries’ accomplishments seem

more like colonialism than salvation. Santiago says that while in Montevideo, a missionary,

Ursula Thiessan, taught her and her siblings English and forbid them from speaking Spanish,

their native language. Santiago recalls feeling “locked up” in a basement with missionary Alicia

Rossi, who forced her to study the Bible. The missionaries, Santiago explains, assumed her

mother was a single parent and unable to care for three children. But her father, whose job

required him to be away for long periods of time, still lived at home with his family. The mission

had “nothing to do with God,” Santiago says. She laughs when asked if she is a Christian, and

refers to the religion as “just a business.”

The Dabolds took Santiago and her siblings to the United

States in 1965. For the first few months, they stayed in motels

until they began renting a small house in Fort Pierce, Florida. In

Florida, Santiago attended public school. She worked numerous

jobs at retirement homes, did house cleaning, and was a live-in

nurse aide in Vero Beach, Florida. Santiago says she loved the United States and identified with

the nation’s culture and politics more than Uruguay’s. In 1973, when Santiago was 18 years old,

the missionaries sent her back to Uruguay because she applied for U.S. citizenship and was

pregnant. Santiago says she never heard back from the U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services

and did not graduate from high school. Santiago had her first child, Pablo Daniel, in Uruguay.

As a teen, Santiago had hoped to attend medical school while she was in the United

States. But after having a child at 18 and being a single mother in Uruguay, Santiago says she

had nothing. When she returned to Uruguay in 1973, Santiago says she did not know enough

Spanish to communicate with locals and felt that there were no job opportunities for her in

She laughs when

asked if she is a

Christian, and refers

to the religion as

“just a business.”

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Uruguay. For 16 years, she took jobs as a maid in Uruguay until she decided to return to the

United States in 1989 to reconnect with her siblings and find a better life.

Santiago speaks casually about her past. From being taken away from her home in Jose

Pedro Varela in 1965 by the “devil people,” as she calls the missionaries, Santiago has not

returned to Uruguay since coming back to the United States in 1989. “There’s nothing there for

me,” she says, “I am

more American than I

am Uruguayan.”

A Future in the

United States

When Santiago

returned to the United

States, she was detained

by Florida border patrol

and brought before a judge who gave her a date by which she must leave the country. But she

didn’t leave. Her sister, Mariazul, who lived in Orlando at the time, allowed Santiago to live with

her and her husband. In 1995, Santiago married Daniel Santiago in Florida and the two had their

first child together, Daniel Jr., before they moved to Portland, Oregon with Santiago’s sister. In

Portland, Santiago began working at retirement homes, cleaning services and worked as a

babysitter—anything she could do for money. She began volunteering at local organizations such

as Ethos Music Center, a non-profit organization in North Portland designed to help low-income

children receive music education (“Mission & History”). Santiago said she didn’t have many

Santiago (second row, right), pictured here with the staff at Ethos Music

Center in front of the IFCC. Santiago’s son, Daniel, who also works for

Ethos, is standing in front of her.

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expectations for finding work as an illegal immigrant—she knew she would only find low-

paying jobs and that she would continue living her life paycheck to paycheck.

In 2005, after living in the

United States illegally for 16 years,

Santiago obtained her permanent

resident card, known as a “Green

Card.” Before she became a

permanent resident, Santiago says

she felt as if she “didn’t exist”—she

could not find a steady job, could

not get a driver’s license or

identification, and did not have a

Social Security number. She says

she felt the constant need to hide

while she was an illegal immigrant.

Now, according to the U.S.

Citizenship and Immigration

Services as a permanent resident,

Santiago has the right to live permanently in the United States, the right to work, and have

protection of U.S. law (“Rights and Responsibilities…”). In 2006, after a year of volunteering,

Ethos Music Center hired Santiago, providing her with her first legal job in the United States.

Santiago says she was the “happiest person in the world” to be a staff member at Ethos.

Santiago (right) above the eco-roof she constructed at

Ethos’ headquarters.

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Within a few months of working at Ethos, Santiago fell off of a ladder and broke her heel

bone. She was unable to work for a year, which she says, “took a toll on her family”

economically. A year later, in 2007, Santiago’s husband died of heart failure. She moved to a

new apartment in North Portland because she was unable to pay the rent at her previous home

without her husband’s income. She continues to work at Ethos to support her and her son,

Daniel, 15.

After working at Ethos for four years, Santiago is now the building manager. She

maintains and supervises Ethos’ headquarters and the Interstate Firehouse Cultural Center

(IFCC) that Ethos recently acquired. Santiago currently makes $12 an hour and earns about

$1,500 a month, about half as much as native-born workers, who earn an average of $3,044 a

month, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (“Foreign-Born Workers…”). Santiago also

supervises Luis Romero, 23, who helps her with tasks such as heavy-lifting or building. Santiago

says her job has made her the happiest she’s ever been and she is very satisfied with her wage.

She lives with her son in a two-bedroom apartment in North Portland. She calls the North

Portland community her “little heaven.” Daniel, who was home schooled, is now taking classes

at Portland Community College to receive his high school diploma. “It’s hard,” she says about

paying for Daniel’s tuition, “but it’s worth it.” Santiago is able to receive financial aid for

Daniel’s school, but tuition still takes up a large portion of her income. Santiago is dedicated to

making sure her son graduates from high school and goes on to college. He volunteers at Ethos

as a multimedia producer and works as a café barista.

Because of her injury, Santiago is able to determine the amount of work she can

physically do. This is among the reasons why she expects to work at Ethos until she is able to

retire. Santiago is able to garden and maintain the backyard of Ethos’ headquarters. She enjoys

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painting in her spare time. Her pictures of butterflies and paintings of flowers hang on the walls

at Ethos. Santiago says being around music so often has inspired her to learn the accordion. If

she was in Uruguay, she says that she would probably still be a maid. She loves the faculty and

staff at Ethos and enjoys working in an “uplifting atmosphere” among the younger generation.

Having a job at an organization like Ethos, is the reason why she came to the United States.

Immigrants in the United States

Santiago’s story is one

out of the millions of

immigrants trying to make a

better living for themselves in

the United States. From its

founding, the United States

has been a nation of

immigrants. Immigrants add

cultural diversity and allow

for new ideas and innovations

to develop in the United

States. Immigrants are also an important element of the American workforce. Of the 155 million

workers in the United States, 24 million (16 percent) are foreign-born (“Foreign-Born

Workers…”). Two-thirds of foreign-born workers are professionals, entrepreneurs or other high-

wage workers, while the remaining third constitute low-wage workers in agricultural,

manufacturing, and construction jobs (“Foreign-Born Workers…”). Immigrants such as Jerry

Yang, who immigrated to San Jose, California from Taiwan, founded Yahoo! Inc., and has

The garden that Santiago created and maintains for faculty and

staff to enjoy at Ethos.

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become one of the most successful American entrepreneurs. Physicist Albert Einstein and

Google co-founder Sergei Brin illustrate the innovations that immigrants bring to the United

States (Crane). At her job, Santiago is able to communicate with Spanish-speaking customers

and brings her artistic skills to making Ethos an inviting atmosphere. Santiago says that it is not

only the immigration policies in the United States that need to be reformed, but also Americans’

attitudes toward immigration. Although immigration continues to be a controversial political

topic, as states, such as Arizona, pass harsh laws restricting illegal immigration, some

economists encourage Americans to view immigration in a more favorable light (Cowen).

High-skilled immigrants are not the only foreign-born workers who are most valued to

the American workforce. According to professor of economics Giovanni Peri, of the University

of California, Davis, immigrants who are low-skilled “fill gaps in American labor markets” and

help businesses rather than “destroy jobs” (Cowen). Employers have found that the “high

productivity” of immigrant workers has helped their business, and has encouraged employers to

seek foreign-born workers (Preston). Native-born workers think

they have more skills to offer, so it is often times immigrant

workers who fill the vacuum of low-wage jobs (Preston).

As the national unemployment rate of nearly ten percent

continues to disillusion native-born workers, professor of

economics at George Mason University Tyler Cowen urges Americans who are worried about

unemployment to look at the larger “macroeconomic conditions,” instead of pointing fingers at

immigrants (Cowen. “Congress Must Extend…”). Cowen argues that more jobs have been lost

as a result of technological innovations than immigration. But like immigration, Cowen says that

“machines and computers do the economy far more good than harm” and have resulted in more

Now that Santiago

has a steady job, her

next step is to become

a U.S. citizen.

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job creation (Cowen). Perhaps with time, Americans will begin to view immigration as a benefit

to the economy, rather than a detriment. Cowen also points to the fact that immigrants consume

American products, which helps fuel job growth and supports American businesses (Cowen).

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services says that permanent residents are required to pay

income taxes and “support the democratic form of government” (“Rights and

Responsibilities…”). But only citizens of the United States are permitted to vote in national and

statewide elections, although some municipalities allow permanent residents to vote in state and

local elections (“Rights and Responsibilities…” Semple.). In a nation that prides itself regarding

its democracy, it seems ironic that permanent residents are required to contribute to American

democracy, but have no voice in choosing their representatives.

For immigrants like Santiago, the opportunities in the United States are largely a blessing

(Preston). And although wages are often times low for immigrants, they are in most cases better

than those they would have received in their native country (Preston). Santiago describes her job

as being “the best in the world” and says she cannot imagine working anywhere else. Now that

Santiago has a steady job, her next step is to become a U.S. citizen. But because of the $595

naturalization fee (“New Application…”), confusing procedures to apply for citizenship, and the

civics test she guarantees she will fail, Santiago has remained a permanent resident for five

years. But only when she has the right to vote will she feel that she is “a whole person,” she

explains. Santiago is among the millions of immigrants who come to the United States to seek a

better economic future. Immigrants like Santiago continue to provide the United States with a

bit of their own culture, skills, and their own story.

Santiago calls herself a survivor. And she is now close to completing her long journey

toward U.S. citizenship.

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Works Cited

“Congress Must Extend Unemployment Benefits.” The San Francisco Chronicle. 24 Nov. 2010.

27 Nov. 2010.

Cowen, Tyler. “How Immigrants Create More Jobs.” The New York Times. 20 Oct. 2010. 15

Nov. 2010. Web.

Crane, Mary. “Entrepreneurs: Out of China.” Forbes. 29 May 2007. 20 Nov. 2010. Web.

“EMU International Our History…” Evangelical Mission to the Unreached. 20 Nov. 2010. Web.

“Foreign-Born Workers: Labor Force Characteristics—2009.” Bureau of Labor Statistics U.S.

Department of Labor. 19 Mar. 2010. 20 Nov. 2010. Web.

“Mission & History.” Ethos Music Center: Building Community through Music. 20 Nov. 2010.

Web.

“New Application and Petition Fees Go Into Effect on Nov. 23, 2010.” U.S. Citizenship and

Immigration Services. U.S. Department of Homeland Security. 23 Nov. 2010. 25 Nov.

2010. Web.

Preston, Julia. “A Slippery Place in the U.S. Work Force.” The New York Times. 22 Mar. 2009.

22 Nov. 2010. Web.

“Rights and Responsibilities of a Green Card Holder (Permanent Resident).” U.S. Citizenships

and Immigration Services. U.S. Department of Homeland Security. 21 Nov. 2010. Web.

Santiago, Beatriz. Personal Interview. 20 Nov. 2010.

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Semple, Kirk. “For Some Immigrants, Voting is a Criminal Act.” The New York Times. 15 Oct.

2010. 18 Nov. 2010. Web.

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