The birthplace of Los Angeles bears little resemblance to the Mexican village where Esperanza Cabrera was born.
Here, at the bustling Olvera Street marketplace, she waits on tables to the harmonies of strolling musicians and the aroma of deep-fried pastry. There were no such amusements in Cabrera's Mexico, a poverty-choked farm town near Puerto Vallarta.
Yet she is bound to this place. Her Mexican ancestors were among the founders of present-day Los Angeles, near the start of what today is Sunset Boulevard.
From the historic plaza where the city was born, a cultural mosaic has unfolded across the region during the past 200 years. But perhaps no street better captures the immigrant experience than the one that stretches from the heart of Los Angeles to the Pacific Ocean.
Generations of newcomers have claimed Sunset Boulevard as their own.
Today, long stretches of the thoroughfare are dominated by business signs in Spanish, Chinese, Armenian. It is possible to hit breakfast bars and lunch counters along some sections of the 25-mile-long corridor and not hear a word of English.
The boulevard slices through some of the poorest pockets of the city and some of the richest. And all along the way, new chapters are being added to the lore of immigrant America.
Cabrera is among the thousands of legal immigrants drawn to Sunset Boulevard each day, a foreign-born laborer in the tradition of those who have helped forge the city--and the nation--with their muscle, know-how and work ethic.
Like the boulevard itself, she is an American success story.
She slipped into the country at age 11 and started working three years later. Her mother held three jobs. Churches helped feed her brothers and sisters, and thrift stores kept them clothed.
Now she is married and the mother of two. She's a homeowner and a taxpayer. And she is a legal resident.
"I think some people see me and they think I'm just one more illegal," said Cabrera, who despite her legal status says she feels the backlash of anti-immigrant sentiment sweeping the state.
"Not all of us ask for money to support our families. We never asked the government for anything," she said. "People have the right to their opinion, but I have a legal right to be here. This is my home, period."
An Urban Refuge
Los Angeles is home to tens of thousands of new legal immigrants each year. It is a crazy quilt of cultures from all over the planet, a haven for foreigners fleeing poverty and persecution.
It is the new Ellis Island, an urban refuge for modern-day masses yearning to breathe free.
Some immigrants, such as Cabrera, became legal residents under a 1986 law that has legalized more than 3 million previously undocumented immigrants. Many immigrants win entry to the country because their relatives petition for them to come. Some are imported because they possess special job skills. Still others arrive as political refugees.
Altogether, under a myriad of immigration programs, nearly 1 million immigrants won permanent residency last year nationwide. California took in one-third of them, and nearly 10% of the national total ended up in Los Angeles County.
But as the great American melting pot evolves into a red-hot pressure cooker, the line between legal and illegal immigration is growing more blurred.
A majority of Californians say they believe the state is being overrun and overburdened by waves of newcomers. Some fear that legal immigration could become a casualty in the battle to halt illegal immigration.
Fifty-two percent of Californians say legal immigration should be cut back, according to a September Los Angeles Times poll.
Seventy percent say they have a hard time distinguishing between legal and illegal residents, an indication that all immigrants, regardless of legal status, could face discrimination in the current anti-immigration mood.
Amid an emotional debate that demonstrates the depth of feeling over immigration issues, federal legislators last month delayed previously budgeted benefits to blind and disabled legal immigrants to help finance a plan to extend unemployment payments.
"Even if Congress tomorrow could stop the people who are coming in illegally, we would still have a big problem," said Dan Stein, executive director of FAIR--the Federation for American Immigration Reform. "There are limits and we are exceeding those. We will not be able to deliver the American dream to all of our children unless we take some kind of breather."
Boulevard of Dreams
If Los Angeles is the new Ellis Island, then Sunset Boulevard for many newcomers is the passageway to the land of opportunity. There are Mexicans and Central Americans in Echo Park. Armenians and Soviet Jews in Hollywood. There are Europeans and Asians in the upscale communities of Brentwood and Pacific Palisades.
And, of course, Chinese in Chinatown.
Sunset Boulevard cuts just south of the Chinese enclave. From the road, high-rise apartments hide the pagodas and ornamental arches associated with the area.
