Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 13, 1995 TAG: 9503130094
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Medium
Alejandro Soriano was working as a TV news researcher in Peru when he decided to move to New York, hoping to land a job in television production. But with limited English and a lack of connections, he ended up cleaning air shafts in public housing for $4.50 an hour.
After five rough months, he moved to San Francisco to try his luck there. He lasted only a few weeks, two spent as a fast-food cook.
``One morning I said, `This is enough. I'm leaving,''' Soriano said by phone from Mexico City, where he lives now with relatives. ``I came with a lot of illusions, expecting to improve my quality of life ... The picture I have now for the United States is not that attractive.''
Despite America's still vivid image as a golden land of opportunity - with millions clamoring to get in - Soriano's decision to leave is hardly unusual.
Much has been made of the 8.7 million legal immigrants who arrived in the 1980s, but less attention has been paid to the nearly 2 million who left during that decade, according to a new government study.
Some get fed up or disillusioned with America, or they miss their families and the ``old country.'' Many go home to stretch their retirement dollars. Still others came only to study, learn a trade or earn enough money for a house or piece of land back home, never intending to settle here permanently.
And the outward exodus may even increase as anti-immigrant fever spreads in the United States. Proposition 187, which would deny public social services to illegal aliens, passed last fall in California and is now in the courts. The new Republican leaders in Congress are considering a plan to deny welfare benefits to most legal immigrants as well.
``No one wants to be in a place where they're constantly being told that they're not wanted, despite the fact that they're working very hard and often at jobs that others won't do,'' said Saramaria Archila, executive director of the Latin American Integration Center in New York City.
Technology also has had an impact. The telecommunications revolution has made staying in touch with family and friends a continent away easier, and jet travel has made moving less of an ordeal.
The result is that immigration doesn't have ``the same feel of permanence that it had in the past,'' says Paul Finnegan, executive director of the Emerald Isle Immigration Center in Queens. New arrivals ``don't feel cut off from their old country and settle in as they did in the past.''
by CNB