Legal, Illegal: Jewish and Latino Immigration

Abstract

When Rosario,¹ a young, outspoken Latina woman of 19, traveled 1387 miles from Zacatecas, Mexico to Colorado, it was to pursue a better life for herself. As with so many young immigrants, life in her hometown had become a dead end with no promise and she wanted more. In 1999, her cousin told her he was going to make the cross, and it took no time for her to decide to join him. They made it into the country. It was in Colorado that she met her husband, also from Zacatecas, who had arrived in the state as a teenager. He had graduated from high school and attained his US citizenship. From Colorado, Rosario and her husband moved to Minnesota and then, in 2006, they finally settled in Bozeman, Montana. Her husband, who works in construction, was drawn to the economic housing boom in the southwest—a boom that had caused the second largest wave of Hispanic migration to the state. The first, which began around 1915, occurred when the Great Western Sugar Company began actively recruiting Mexican agricultural laborers to work in the sugar beet fields. Rosario has four small children, all US citizens. Her immediate nuclear family enjoys US citizenship; she does not.