In the United States, the standard caricature of an “illegal immigrant” is that of a desperate human being who cannot make ends meet in his or her poverty-stricken homeland, and therefore sets off on a grueling expedition into an unknown and mystical land of dreams. The Hispanic immigrant is perceived as “fleeing” a bleak and arduous lifestyle for the opportunities and comforts of the “first world.” He is the miserable Polish family being greeted by the Statue of Liberty and its “Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” He is an indigent who chooses to migrate for the sake of his or her own survival. Why else would he cross deserts, dodge bullets, or be stuffed into suffocating cargo trucks?
The destitute immigrant image satisfies the needs of both the left and the right in the United States. For the left, it creates a sympathetic character entitled to the economic advantages found in the US; for the right, it is a pitiful image of misery that, like a disease, threatens to infect the sacred homeland.
The truth, however, is that the current wave of Hispanic immigrants may be not be so much like the wretched Eastern Europeans passing through Ellis Island, but more like the Northeastern Americans rushing to California during the mid-nineteenth century gold rush.
In Nicaragua, the term for traveling to the United States illegally is to go mojado, or “wet.” Rather than being destitute, the mojados I have spoken to, and the common Nicaraguan perception of a mojado, is that of an adventurous, ambitious lower-middle class entrepreneur. The mojados I have met tend to have stable, at times arduous, jobs that afford them a wage that is good enough to get by. The lower classes that struggle to maintain a healthy diet are far more preoccupied with their daily chores (and perhaps even satisfied by their life routine) to yearn and dream of other worlds. The struggling middle class, on the other hand, earn enough to survive comfortably, and, in general, comfort can lead only to bored, apathetic dissatisfaction or to an insatiable, ambitious drive. The mojado is the latter, part of the eager middle class, anxious to move up the income ladder at any cost.
Outside winning the lottery, going to the United States is quickest and surest get-rich-quick scheme in town. A typical working-class wage in Nicaragua (the salary of say a cashier, a teacher, a shopkeeper, or a bureaucrat) tends to round the US$200 a month mark. Certain factory jobs (slaughterhouses, textile plants) can pay as little as US$150, while the English-speaking, tech-savvy upper-middle class can find jobs at international call centers in the capital that pay upward of US$1000. (I am only describing the “middle class” and am not including rice and coffee plantation workers and subsistence farmers, many of whom earn less than US$100 a month, and some of whom are probably surviving on a dollar a day.)
The mojados understand that by traveling to the United States they can easily find a minimum wage job (or one that pays less than the minimum wage), and within a month’s time save as much money as they would ordinarily earn within that same time period in Nicaragua. In six-month’s time, the mojado can save enough to invest in a start-up business back home. In a year’s time, his savings are paying for his or her children’s university studies, or the renovation of the family’s house in Nicaragua. The point, in other words, is not to live like a king in the United States (the mojado is still in the same economic class in the United States as he was in Nicaragua, or worse off) but to carve out a kingdom back home.
The image of a migrant chasing riches rather than fleeing destitution, upends the arguments of both the right and the left in the United States. For the left, it challenges the idea that the immigrant has no other alternative but to break the law and cross the border. For the right, the new image becomes a much more sympathetic representation of the individualist, self-reliant, ambitious capitalist they idealize.
While it may not suit the established ideologies, the reality is infinitely more interesting than the earlier stereotype. The mojado is typically someone who is getting by well enough in their own country; and the risks of crossing the border are well known. Mojados pay coyotes between US$5,000 and US$7,000, for a shot at reaching the US. Throughout their journey the mojados are at the mercy of their traffickers, and the corrupt Mexican officials they come across along the way. In some cases, people get cheated, abused, or left to die. Others get caught by US Immigration, and spend months in detention centers before being sent back to Mexico. The question is: why do they do it? When I asked a friend who had made the journey in the past this question, he answered: “You will never get anywhere if you don’t take risks.” Those 49ers may have been asked the same question (why risk dysentery, disease, and tribal attacks?), and they might have given the same answer.
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