“I only remember those days as pain. They used electricity; I was hung by my arms. There were no windows; I never knew whether it was day or night.”
We’ll call him Oybek. We can’t use his real name because, despite the fact that he recently won U.S. political asylum and is thousands of miles from Uzbekistan, he still lives in fear of retaliation against his family back in Tashkent.
Oybek represents a growing number of immigrants who are coming to Washington from all corners of the world—Africa, Southeast Asia, the Middle East—to escape political persecution. They are a small part of a tide of immigrants pouring into the state. For most, the incentive is economic mobility.
The largest group—and the one grabbing the most headlines—consists of Spanish-speaking newcomers. The state’s Hispanic population grew an astounding 28 percent between 2000 and 2006, and now makes up 8.9 percent of the state’s population, according to the state Office of Financial Management.
The vast majority of Hispanics in Washington come from Mexico, drawn by the strong magnet of plentiful and higher-paying jobs, so nearby geographically, but so distant in terms of standard of living.
Agricultural Franklin County, in the south–central part of the state, is the fastest-growing county in the Northwest and the first in the region to reach a majority-Hispanic population.
Immigrants are also streaming into metro Seattle, long one of the nation’s most homogeneous major cities. “King County reflects what’s happening nationally,” says Chandler Felt, a demographer with the county Office of Management and Budget. “[There’s] increasing diversity, increasing Latino population and, particularly in King County, an increase in the Asian population.”
The state has always had a sizable Asian community, going back to the mid-1800s, when Chinese—and later Japanese—immigrants came to work at canneries or on the railroad. And starting in 1975, a decade-long influx of Southeast Asians brought about 45,000 to Washington, mostly in King and Pierce counties. Today, Asians are Washington’s second-fastest-growing minority, climbing by 23.8 percent since 2000.
Testing tolerance
Not everyone is rolling out the welcome mat. Anti-immigrant forces have tried to get two initiatives on the state ballot to cut benefits to illegal immigrants; but in traditionally tolerant Washington, both failed to get enough signatures. And a proposed state law last year would have required proof of citizenship and photo ID to vote.
A few anti-immigration groups have sprung up, including Washington State Citizens for Immigration Control. The group’s former vice president, Richard Pelto of Kenmore, said in an April 2006 Seattle Post-Intelligencer story that free education and health care are luring illegal immigrants, whose cheap labor means lower paychecks for middle-class Americans. Pelto says: “The problem isn’t all the illegals who are here. The problem is all the incentives that are bringing them here.”
Immigration and Customs Enforcement has stepped up raids, and the airwaves are buzzing with anti-immigration voices, including those of Rush Limbaugh and CNN’s Lou Dobbs.
“There’s a chilling effect,” says Lorena González, president of the Latina/o Bar Association of Washington. “People, both documented and undocumented, in our [Latino] community are afraid to seek out the services they’re entitled to receive.”
Stereotype buster
Anti-immigrant sentiment often brings stereotypes of lazy newcomers who come to play the system. Manuel Mora-Moreno’s life flies in the face of this rhetoric. He’s willing to do almost anything to stay in this country, including serve in Iraq. But he’s been stymied by the system.
Mora-Moreno, 23, came to the United States seven years ago from Venezuela, where his father was a politician on the wrong side of President/strongman Hugo Chavez.
“[Mora-Moreno’s] family has a political legacy in Venezuela like the Kennedys or the Bushes,” says Manuel Rios, an immigration attorney with Rios Cantor in Seattle. “Chavez has no qualms about calling out who his enemies are.”
After threats of death and kidnapping, Mora-Moreno fled to the United States with his mother and sister, for whom he was the sole support for a few years. His father, estranged from his mom, went into hiding.
His mother married an American; but Mora-Moreno, at 19, was too old to benefit from her marriage. Despite now being a college student and financially dependent on her, he must pursue his asylum case on his own with the help of Rios.
Mora-Moreno attended community college, then Pacific Lutheran University (PLU), and is now a senior in philosophy and economics at prestigious Whitman College—the only institution, he says, that would give him financial aid regardless of his legal status. He plans to apply to Harvard Business School, where he completed a one-week mini-MBA program for college students over the summer, and potentially to law school.
With a sponsor, Mora-Moreno says he applied for an appointment to West Point, and was denied over his lack of permanent residency. He spent two years in ROTC at PLU, tried to join the National Guard, then tried to enlist in the Army but again was turned down due to his immigration status. He even applied to FEMA to work in New Orleans as a Hurricane Katrina relief worker, and again ended up being refused.
In late October, the Ninth Circuit Court ruled that Mora-Moreno had valid reason to fear returning to his homeland. Rios is almost certain that ruling will sway the lower court to give him the nod to stay here.
The promised land
Every immigrant faces challenges settling into a new homeland, though not every tale is as dramatic as Oybek’s. His story, although sad, has a happy ending.
Oybek’s father, a dissident activist since Soviet times, led the party opposing the present Uzbekistani government, a brutal regime accused in a U.N. report of using “systematic” torture.
Oybek, 27, was never involved in politics as a youngster. Never, that is, until he saw how entrepreneurial efforts were co-opted by corrupt local officials. He began collecting signatures in rural areas to get the opposition party on the ballot.
This got the attention of the government, and after Oybek stepped in to help a woman being molested on the street by government thugs, he was thrown into the local torture chamber. After a few days, his captors let him go, but he could barely walk and sustained injuries to his kidneys and legs.
A few months later, government troops fired on protesters demonstrating against the mass jailing of people charged with Islamic extremism. After that, dissenters were dealt with anew. Oybek says drugs were planted on his father’s property; his family was held on house arrest with no phone and the Internet blocked.
Oybek had applied months earlier for a volunteer job with Earth Corps, a cross-cultural Seattle-based environmental organization, and had obtained a visa. When he got word of his acceptance into the program, he managed to get on a plane to Seattle. After a few months doing park restoration, Oybek applied for asylum with the help of attorneys Jordan Wasserman and Chris Strawn of the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project (NWIRP), a local non-profit firm that provides legal services for low-income clients.
Each of NWIRP’s clients has a unique story. The firm, whose staff is augmented with pro bono help by the legal community, provides representation for those seeking political asylum, fighting deportation and applying for immigration.
The asylum case was straightforward: Oybek came from a country with a bad human-rights record, had been tortured and imprisoned, his family was in danger, and he could not go back. The only problem, says Wasserman, was bureaucratic. Oybek says he filed his asylum application on time but encountered a snafu that might have sunk someone with less education or poorer language skills. The government claimed it had no record of receiving his application in the prescribed year from the time he entered the country.
Oybek says he refiled it and the same thing happened. Fortunately, he had saved the postal receipts. “He’s well-educated and a good communicator,” says Wasserman. “Lots of our clients don’t have those skills, and their stories are not believed. [Many] have been tortured, are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, and some have a more difficult time articulating what happened to them and what they fear.”
Here in the promised land, Oybek, who once owned a travel agency, is a plumber. He’s happy but wants to be in business for himself again someday. Working on a master’s degree in business management at City University in Seattle, he’s on his way to making his dream a reality. L&P
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