Daughter Carries Her Family's Hope

By KAREN BRANCH-BRIOSO kbranch-brioso@tampatrib.com

Published: May 2, 2006

TAMPA - The moment he descended from his mother's Dodge van for Monday's immigrant rally, Geoffrey Loaiza was enlisted by a stranger to carry folding tables for a voter-registration drive.

At 22, Geoffrey has found there is no shortage of people who need him for heavy lifting. Despite having lived in the United States with no legal status since he was 3 years old, the Colombian citizen manages to get odd jobs hauling furniture, landscaping or putting down wood floors. His volunteer gig with the voter-registration tables was all the more ironic - because he can't legally vote.

It's just one more thing he hopes his presence at the rally will help change.

"I wish I could make a difference by voting, especially since I have a baby now and I'm raising a kid in America who's an American," said Geoffrey, whose girlfriend, Christine Feilner, 23, gave birth to daughter Nyobe five months ago.

They live with Geoffrey's mother, Amparo Franco, in a home near the University of South Florida. Franco's jobs cleaning homes pay most of the bills, but barely.

Now, nearly two decades after the night Franco illegally crossed a Tijuana beach into the United States with a toddler on each hip, she is tired of waiting for a better life for those boys, who are now men. She wants them to be Americans, like her daughter, Betsy, who was born here 15 years ago.

So on Monday, Franco cleaned the home of just one of her regular customers and drove Geoffrey and Betsy to the rally at noon.

"For me, it's very important to have some stability. Because if we were to return to Colombia - my kids grew up here, it's a country we don't know anymore," said Franco, 50, who has supported the children alone since a divorce from their father several years ago. "I don't even care if I do the same job. I love the people I work with. What matters to me is for my sons, so they could have a real job to help out at home, so they could have a more independent life, and I could work less and spend more time with my daughter."

Although Betsy is a U.S. citizen, she feels special pressures of living in a family whose other members are illegal immigrants.

"Most of the fights we have at home are because of this whole situation because my mom's yelling at my brothers, 'You have to find a job,' and they say, 'We can't. We don't have Social Security numbers.' And she said, 'Find a job with those Mexicans next door,'" said Betsy, who noted the pressure turns directly on her to stay out of trouble. Under immigration law, once U.S. citizen children turn 21, they may apply for legal status for their parents. Her mother knows this law well.

"Yeah, there's pressure to grow up: 'Yeah, we're waiting for you,'" Betsy said. "She's like, 'Don't do anything stupid. That's going to mess everything up.'"

At Monday's rally, Betsy did her part to help her brothers out. She picked up a thick list of blank petition forms and sought signatures from fellow protesters to ask members of Congress to pass the DREAM Act, or the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act.

The bill would help create a path to legalization for some of the estimated 65,000 undocumented students who graduate from U.S. high schools each year. It specifically would provide for people like the Loaiza brothers, those who entered the United States before age 16, have lived here at least five years, earned a high school degree and have no criminal record.

The DREAM Act would grant conditional legal status to such students so they could apply for student aid, study and work while they attend college. If they get a degree or have served in the armed forces for at least two years, they would be granted permanent legal status.

It's a dream Betsy's older brothers have long had, but long ago discarded.

On Monday, Geoffrey said the rally made him rethink the possibility.

"If this thing turns around, I might be able to go to school," he said, noting his illegal work status has frustrated him because employers frequently have not paid him for work, and he has little recourse against them. "I want to study X-ray machines, hospital equipment. I'd like to be a medical technician."

But his younger brother, Janio, 20, stayed home in his room Monday. He does that a lot. He can't work, at least not steadily. He will get a job as a waiter, filling in for someone for a few months. He can't drive, so he usually goes where his bicycle will take him - often to buy music to add to a collection of CDs replete with the dark and soulful lyrics of artists such as Leonard Cohen.

He was smart, taking honors classes in middle school and his freshman year at Wharton High School in New Tampa, he says. In his sophomore year, he got an inkling of what his life would become.

"I had driver's ed. I had to get out of the class after just a week or two," Janio said. "I had to make up an excuse, like, I couldn't find my birth certificate."

In 1999, Florida law began requiring driver's license applicants to provide proof of legal residence. Janio had his birth certificate; it just wouldn't get him a license. So he dropped out of driver's ed. And he dropped out of planning for his future, as well.

"I began realizing the truth of what was going to happen when I graduated. I started thinking, 'What's the point of this? Would it matter if I really did graduate?'" said Janio, who graduated nevertheless.

Now, the once-gregarious teen is introverted and sticks close to his room. He plays keyboards and guitar and writes lyrics - in English. It's the language he's most comfortable with.