THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, August 29, 1996 TAG: 9608290602
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A13 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TONY WHARTON, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: 70 lines
Pedro Jose, 26, came to the United States from Guatemala to escape conditions that make the political warfare in Chicago look mild.
``The guerrillas come out of the mountains and murder people, and the military can murder people too,'' was how Jose summarized the situation through an interpreter.
He and Jim Albright, 28, who works for the Catholic Diocese of Richmond, waited Wednesday in the Greyhound terminal on Brambleton Avenue for a bus that would take Jose to Florida.
People pass through the bus terminal, visiting relatives, looking for work, getting on with their lives. Bill Clinton is arriving in Chicago by train. Although what he says and does will surely affect them sooner or later, it's not always easy for them to see how.
Jose, an Eastern Shore farm worker, is heading south with the crops. He knows there's a campaign for president going on. What matters to him now is making enough money to bring his wife and two children here.
Albright worries that in the existing political climate neither party is very concerned about approximately 4,000 farm workers on the Eastern Shore and their families.
Both parties have debated at their conventions how to address immigration, both legal and illegal, and whether to continue allowing children of illegal immigrants to be citizens.
``The Statue of Liberty says give me your poor,'' Albright said. ``I don't know the exact quote, but it was an invitation then to Europeans from across the ocean. Now it's more like, we don't want immigrants if you're poor.
``But they're poor because of what they do for us. Food in the grocery store is more reasonably priced because of them. Other people make a profit out of them.''
He paused. ``I'm sorry, I guess you kind of pushed a button there.''
Across the aisle, Nicole Evans, 24, waited with her three sons for her little brother to arrive from Arkansas.
Cancer has hit Evans' family in recent years, first striking her brother and then her 5-year-old son, Michael. Both seem to be recovering, but medical bills linger.
``I just got off welfare, I'm working now, and I don't want to go back,'' Evans said. ``I don't want to go on Medicaid, either. But I don't think I can pay all the medical bills.''
Evans has watched some of the conventions and is listening to hear what the parties are going to do about health care or welfare reform. The themes Hillary Rodham Clinton sounded Tuesday night, particularly helping families and making the health care system work better, got Evans' attention.
``I think they should help improve families,'' she said. ``We need day care, that's what's important, so mothers can work.''
Joseph Butts, 84, came to the bus station to check out times and fares.
Butts figures he'll vote for Bob Dole. Like Dole, he was in World War II, a combat engineer in the South Pacific. Later, he contracted diabetes and talked doctors out of cutting off his legs. Now he's walking again.
Mario Cuomo called it a ``disaster'' if Bob Dole wins. Butts was more philosophical.
``I think it's time for a change,'' he said. ``I'm an old-time gambler anyway. We've made it under all kinds of presidents, we'll make it under the next one.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photos
Pedro Jose, 26
Jim Albright, 28
Nicole Evans, 24
Joseph Butts, 84
KEYWORDS: DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION 1996 CHICAGO by CNB