AURORA, Colo. — East Colfax Avenue was the best place to find a job. That’s what everyone told Sofia Roca.
Never mind the open drug use, the sex workers or the groups of other migrant women marching the sidewalks soliciting work at the very same Mexican restaurants and bakeries. On East Colfax in Aurora, Colorado, bosses would speak Spanish and might be willing to hire someone like Roca—a 49-year-old immigrant from Colombia—without legal authorization to work. That was the rationale for going back each morning, fruitless as it was.
“Do you know how to cook Mexican food?” asked one woman when Roca inquired about a kitchen position. Roca’s accent was a giveaway: not Mexican. “I can learn,” Roca replied in Spanish.
Responded the woman: “We’re not hiring.” As record numbers of South Americans attempt to cross the U.S.
southern border, many are landing in communities that are unprepared for them—and sometimes outright hostile. Women are leaving Colombia, and to a greater extent Venezuela, to escape starvation and violence, to provide for their children and to seek medical care. They represent some of the more than 42,000 migrants who have arrived in the Denver area over two years.
Many didn’t know anyone in Denver. But it was the closest city to which Texas was offering free bus rides, both to relieve pressure on its towns and to make a political point to liberal-leaning cities about immigration’s impact on the border. From Denver, untold numbers made.