Blue Collars & White Coats: Immigrants earn a living in the Ozarks

At 5 a.m. on a hot day in May, Cobayashi waded through chin-deep water in the flowing Rio Grande River and entered the United States at El Paso, Texas. He came with nothing but the clothes on his back, which he put in a plastic bag and held above his head so they wouldn’t get wet crossing the Rio Grande.

A nearly four-day journey across the desert was over. He jumped on a cargo train to escape border patrol and began a new life.

Cobayashi said he, like an estimated 12 million other Mexican immigrants who’ve entered the United States illegally, was “just looking for a better life, looking for the American dream.”

He got it.

Cobayashi secured a green card in 1999 and now owns his own mechanic shop, Luis Co. Service at 600 S. Scenic Ave. His wife drives a new Cadillac, the fruit of his labor. Cobayashi hopes to take his citizenship test within a year.

Plan A

Dr. J. Humberto Hernandez took a very different path to the United States.

Hernandez, 50, is a family practitioner at the St. John’s clinic in Cassville.

The Guadalajara, Mexico, native was legally admitted to the United States in 1979 and became a citizen in 1997.

Hernandez said he was fortunate to be able to immigrate legally, aided by his medical degree and his marriage to an American. He understands that most Mexicans don’t have those advantages.

“The doors were wide open for me to come back legally,” he said. “But in the back of my mind, I had plan B.”

Plan B, he said, was Cobayashi’s path: illegal immigration.

Green card is key

Cobayashi is a long way from the $4 a day he earned making bricks for 10 hours a day in Mexico. As he looks back, he appreciates the chances that he received when he left everyone and everything in his homeland behind.

He quickly landed his first job. Two days after breaching America’s borders he was erecting barbed-wire fence on a ranch in Big Spring, Texas.

“I knocked on somebody’s door, asking for help,” he said. “They fed me, gave me a shower and clothes.”

Six months later, Cobayashi bought a fake Social Security card for $100 from a Mexican-American man in Longview, Texas, who was selling them from the back of a small convenience store. Those days are long gone, but Cobayashi’s work ethic remains. He works 12-hour days, six days a week in his shop.

Cobayashi moved to Springfield in 1995. After he received his green card – 13 years after he first applied for it – he bought his first house in 2000 and a year later started his business with the help of a friend, Martin Zuniga.

He said getting his green card was a defining moment in his life. He stopped feeling like a fugitive and started feeling like a productive member of American society. Now, he’s a typical Springfield small-business owner, married for 21 years with two sons and a daughter.

“We were fearing that we would get kicked out, so we never bought a house,” he said. “All these people who don’t have documents, once they have documents, they’ll be willing to buy a house, pay taxes and comply with the law.”

Hernandez received his green card after getting married to an American. The couple met in New York on Hernandez’s first trip to the United States.

After the encounter, he returned to Mexico, then came back to the states to get married but returned to Mexico without his bride. Meanwhile, his wife petitioned the Immigration & Naturalization Service to issue Hernandez a green card.

No matter what, Hernandez said, he was coming to the United States. He said Mexico’s economy is so bad that he has medical school classmates who are still working in factories.