Hes speaking Spanish but Carloss panicked phone call needs no translation.
His wife is headed back to the house and he doesnt want her to see the newspaper reporter seated at the kitchen table talking with her husband and 13-year-old daughter over water and vanilla cookies. Its not the scene that would be upsetting, its the story theyre telling. Carlos doesnt want to remind Susan of the past three years, the stress of moving from Mexico to Canada, of spending $12,000 to uproot their lives, of finding and losing work here, of his expired work permit and their tenuous existence in a basement suite in an anonymous corner of Vancouver.
He doesnt want her to think of any of those things, to be reminded of the stress he believes has made her ill.
Last year, she suddenly transformed from the athletic, outgoing, gregarious woman he met on a basketball team back in Guadalajara, to a foreign, fragile being. Shes been unable to work full-time, in and out of hospital, first in the neurology ward and then the psychiatric unit with bouts of depression, migraine headaches, impaired vision and memory loss.
Maybe I can tell her you are doing surveys, comes his heavily accented English after he hangs up.
***
In 2008 there were about 2,000 temporary foreign workers authorized to work construction in B.C. In the pre-Olympic boom, extra pairs of hands were ordered up to assemble the sporting facilities, Canada Line and athletes quarters in Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»and Whistler. The work was steady at first, and then the recession firmed its grip and loans defaulted, developers balked and construction companies hedged their bets. There was an all-hands-on-deck push right before Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»welcomed the world for two weeks in February 2010, and then nothing. The work was gone but some of the workers stayed, slipping off the radar and going underground.
***
Carlos is here now on a visitors visa working odd jobs for cash under the table and talking to me on the condition his surname is withheld. Hes talking to me because he wants a job needs a job, a work permit and an offer of sponsorship or enrolment in the Provincial Nominee Program, if he has any hope of achieving permanent resident status. Otherwise itll be back to Mexico, where the corruption and violence are only getting worse. There are gang shootings in Guadalajara in broad daylight now. He and Susan keep tabs on the situation on the Internet. He believes the prospect of going back there has added to her stress, maybe even triggered the relapse she suffered last week that landed her in the hospital again.
He asked his pastor to take her out for a little while today. They will talk, eat lunch, visit, pray.
All my family trust in God, says Carlos, his bright green T-shirt emblazoned with a white cross and the words Green Hills Baptist Youth Church. It looks like a thrift store find but the sentiment rings true.
With trust in God and a federally mandated Canadian immigration program the family left Mexico for a better life in Canada after all the companies Carlos had worked for packed up and moved away, leaving no work for a communications engineer, despite his university degree. They called on God to give them strength when they arrived in Canada in the middle of the night and spoke no English. The border guards told them they had to get back on a plane and go back to Phoenix, where their flight had departed, and wait for a month until their medical exams cleared. Carlos hadnt known they needed medical exams to enter Canada. Nor did he know he shouldnt have had to pay $3,500 for a work permit to a man he met on the Internet. He doesnt blame the guy though, it got him here. That was my decision, he says.
In the airport that first night, Carlos broke down in front of his daughter, then almost 10, and the immigration officials who kept them waiting for three hours. They made him feel like a thief.
He trusts in God. He found a community here with his church. But just in case, Carlos keeps a meticulous paper trail. His whole life story is stored in an old shoulder bag. On his university diploma, a much younger man wears a tuxedo and peers out from under a bushy haircut popular in the 1980s. His work history hangs from the letterhead of companies like Hitachi and Motorola. His Labour Market Opinion states that, for a time at least, he was welcome and wanted in Canada. ESL certificates from his church-sponsored program bear clip-art borders.
The eviction notice is just black and white. His landlord served him after his family got carbon monoxide poisoning in February and complained to the Residential Tenancy Branch. They won. He has that document too and a new monitor plugged into the ceiling.
I didnt come here to make trouble for anybody. I came here to be productive.
Like her father, Berenice has her affairs in order too. Only hers are brighter, bordered with rainbows and adorned with gold stickers: outstanding achievement in curling, volleyball, work habits, leadership, track and field, music, an elementary school diploma. If they can stay, shell start high school in the fall.
She is all smiles, spreading out the papers on the table, her little fingers reaching for a cookie, and then another and another. She pulls a framed Mothers Day letter off the wall, its in Spanish, thanking her for all that shes done, wishing her to get well. Theres one for Carlos, too, in English.
We all jump when the phone pierces the mood in the clean but cramped kitchen and father and daughter grow tense.
***
Outside on the street, its a beautiful day, sunny and warm and calm. The baseball diamond across the street is as empty as the sidewalk. There are no passersby to see the silver hatchback pull up outside the innocuous blue house. Or the woman, with jet-black hair in a pink T-shirt and jeans, labour to get out of the car and stand there gingerly, as if shes unsure where to go. Or the two figures rush through a gate to her side, each taking an arm with one hand and placing the other across her back. Or to watch them ease her to the house, around the corner and out of sight.
