Interview Transcript
Martha Martinez
Q: How much does it really cost when people want to become legal?
A: To become a U.S. citizen, immigration is charging now, $315 to become a U.S. citizen.
Q: And you have to have your documents?
A: You have to be a legal resident minimum five years before you can become a U.S. citizen.
Q: What is the demand for that? Are you busy? Has it quieted down?
A: There is a few. It has quieted down a little bit after immigration raised the rate from $95 to $315. It's a big difference.
Q: If you don't have the right visa or the documents to come in and file for those papers, you can't do it?
A: First, you have to become a resident alien, then you can apply for citizenship. You cannot apply for a U.S. citizen unless you are a resident alien.
Q: Are most of the people around town legal or illegal?
A: At this rate, you can say there is 50-50, maybe.
Q: What does it cost to have a notary do the paperwork as opposed to going to the INS?
A: A notary, we can set our fees on what we want to charge and depending on the notary. You don't have to be a notary to do the immigration papers. There are a lot of people out there that do immigration papers and they are not a notary. They all vary on the fees.
Q: Is it cheaper to do it with a notary than an attorney?
A: An attorney, of course, always charges more, because they have a bigger title, so they always charge more.
Q: We talked to an attorney who charges $1,500 to do the paperwork. To do the same paperwork, what would you charge?
A: About $150 and that's top dollar.
Q: And if you do it by the forms?
A: If you do them by the forms, my forms, I start charging between 10 . . . depending on the forms that you fill out. If you are going to just renew a work permit, let's say, or renew the ten year resident alien card which there are a lot expiring at this time, $15 is the fee for that.
Q: That's a lot cheaper, isn't it?
A: Yes, so it just depends on the forms that you are filing for immigration, is the fee. So I can either go by form or just the flat rate, but if I do just the flat rate for the complete package to become a legal U.S. resident, the highest I go is $150 and that is with everything translated and notarized.
Q: What's it like to deal with the INS?
A: INS is very hard, they are very demanding. They want everything in a certain order and sometimes, even when you have everything in order, they could still say no when you want something else. But immigration is hard to deal with, it's not an easy thing.
Q: They're starting to fix things up along Wells Avenue. Is that going to work?
A: It will make it much nicer. The street needs a lot of repair and the buildings, a lot of them they are really rundown, so it will be nice. But they are planning on doing the little square, strong things in the middle of the street, that will make it slower which is good because everybody speeds like a highway up on Wells. They speed like if you would be on a highway. It's ridiculous.
Q: What about the shops? Does everyone seem to get along and work together?
A: Yeah, we all kind of use our services for . . . if it's not one, it's the other one. We always recommend "Go down the street, such and such is there, or it's better if you go to the other one, they will give you a better break, or whatever."
Q: Do see if the Hispanic population, does it work better together here as a whole unit? Rose Ann seems to think there are a lot of factions, nobody seems to be working together towards the same goal?
A: Not really. Here, it's pretty much everybody for their own. Like I said, there is a lot of competition. If I close my office here todatomorrowrow it will somebody doing the same thing of what I am doing and they will tell you "Martha left the country" or "Martha is dead." That's how they will react, they will say.
Q: Well, that's not very family-like?
A: No, no, and that has been done before. Like I said, there is a lot of jealousy within certain kinds of businesses and when they know that you are well-established, like I have been catering almost 19 years to the Hispanic community here. And you will know and a lot of people will say that. If they say "Do you know where she is" they could say, "No, she left" or "She left the country" or "She moved out of state" or something. And this is how Reno and Sparks work. You open up a business, you close it and somebody else will come and take your place, and they will open the same business that you did have there before. They won't put in a different kind of business, they will do the same thing as you did. And that's when they tell you "No, they are no longer in business." or they closed down or whatever. They don't say, "Oh, they moved down the road or to another location." So that is why I said a lot of people are out for their own.
Q: You've been doing this for 19 years. You must have seen trends change with the Hispanic population growing.
A: The Hispanic population has really grown. There is a lot of Spanish businesses out there and now you can find just about anything from bakeries to bridal stores to doing what I do, people doing what I do. You find everything from the Hispanics nowadays.
Q: And isn't there a quite big demand for translating?
A: There is a demand, there is a lot of demand.
Q: Who do you translate for? Do you do it for kids in school or parents?
A: No, mostly it's for immigration or for birth certificates or marriage certificates or just certificates. I think it's mostly for immigration, that's what I usually translate for, mostly immigration.
View the interview
You will need the RealPlayer to view this video as well as the other clips on this site.
|