[Excerpt]
Ana Chavarin knows what it’s like to be cheated and dismissed as an immigrant without legal status in this country.
It happened repeatedly after she and her then-husband and three young children relocated to Tucson, Arizona, in 2003 from the border town of Agua Prieta, Mexico, for work.
Chavarin, now a legal permanent resident, recalled how an employer failed to pay her for all the hours she worked cleaning rooms at one of Tucson’s top-end hotels. The boss threatened to report her to immigration officials if she complained too much.
It happened to her husband in his job, too.
At home, when she asked the landlord to fix a leaky faucet, her request was ignored.
Such situations were frustrating, Chavarin said, because being stifled from addressing injustice was not something to which she was accustomed....
Once Cheated, Community Leader Now Helps Others Speak with United Voice, Catholic News Service [pdf]