Long before he arrived in the United States from Mexico six months ago, Andres Flores had heard stories about how many immigrants worked dawn to dusk at menial jobs, a lifestyle that often took its toll on their families.
“But it’s one thing to hear about it and another thing to put yourself in the same place as your countrymen,” said Flores, a 25-year-old minister and social worker from Mexico City.
Flores has put himself on the front lines of helping immigrants overcome the challenges of adapting to life in the U.S. He is leading efforts by the Elgin-based Centro de Informacion to bring its extensive social-service menu, including weekly job fairs, to Carpentersville.
Centro has opened three branches in the village where the Hispanic population has grown an estimated 54 percent in less than a decade, accelerating the need for the agency’s services.
The new branches offer virtually all of the same services available at the main Centro offices in downtown Elgin. Newcomers go to the United Way agency for everything from legal help with their immigration status to job placement and counseling for such social ills as domestic violence, gang activity and drug abuse.
One recent morning in Carpentersville, Flores deftly juggled the needs of job seekers and local employers. A woman asked for his help in filling out a tax document. Another left the office carrying a brown bag crammed with groceries.
Evangelina Ortega of Carpentersville, who rode a bicycle to the Centro office at the Morningside Center, wanted to discuss her family’s economic struggles. Hispanics from throughout the Fox Valley–especially those who do not speak English–rely on Centro, she said.
“We know we can come here with any question about how things work in this country,” Ortega said.
If the Centro staff can’t answer a question, said Ana Rodriguez of Carpentersville, clients are referred to someone who can. Rodriguez said an interpreter from Centro accompanied her brother to the Chicago offices of the Immigration and Naturalization Service when he was in the process of becoming a U.S. citizen.
Before the branches opened, Hispanics in Carpentersville had to go to Elgin for help from Centro. That often was no easy task.
“A lot of people don’t have cars, so they don’t have quick access all the way to Elgin, even though it’s just the next town over,” said Griselda Hernandez, the community outreach worker for the Carpentersville Police Department and a volunteer member of the village’s recently formed Hispanic Committee. “Centro is a great addition for Carpentersville.”
Flores said he works with about 100 clients a month at the three part-time locations in Carpentersville. He expects the number of clients to increase.
The 2000 census is expected to show substantial growth in the village’s Hispanic population during the past decade. Estimates in 1999 from the Center for Governmental Studies at Northern Illinois University show Hispanics comprise almost 6,000 of Carpentersville’s 28,000 residents.
In Carpentersville-based Community Unit School District 300, the number of students who need instruction in Spanish shot up 76 percent between 1995 and 1999. There were some 1,700 Spanish speakers in the district in 1999, according to the Illinois State Board of Education.
As many as 63 percent of the students at some schools in District 300 do not speak English, said Jane Schumacher, the district’s deputy superintendent.
In Carpentersville, as in other suburbs experiencing similarly dramatic demographic makeovers in recent years, social-service agencies are hard pressed to keep pace with the changing face of municipalities once uniformly white and middle class.
“Areas of what we call the new immigration have a significant shortage of social services,” said Rob Paral, a Chicago-based researcher for the National Center on Poverty Law. “Centro is a big exception. I would call it a standout.”
Even though the ongoing immigrant wave continues to wash over Carpentersville, the unemployment rate in the village is among the highest in the state, at around 10 percent. It is particularly acute among Hispanics, Flores said, in part because many don’t speak English and lack transportation and job skills.
Felix Sanchez, who came to Carpentersville from Jalapa, Mexico, three years ago, said he twice lost jobs when co-workers who provided rides quit. At the Morningside Center recently, Sanchez met Ernesto Reyes, a job recruiter from the United Parcel Service center in Palatine.
“Why don’t you come by around 6:30 a.m. and fill out an application, go through an interview,” said Reyes, a Cuban exile who came to the Chicago area in 1994.
A public bus runs through Elgin in the middle of the night, transporting workers to the UPS facility in Palatine. The bus service is one of many programs UPS offers to attract and retain immigrant workers.
“They really want to work and work hard,” Reyes said, “and I have work for them, believe me.”
The challenges facing Centro are more complex than matching eager immigrants with jobs. To improve their financial standing, many immigrants sacrifice time spent with their families, Flores said.
“Many of our people are content with earning their car, their house, good clothes,” he said. “The parents work so hard that they don’t have time to even ask their kids how they are doing in school or go over their homework with them.”
