By Alexandra Vilchez

CHARLOTTE, North Carolina – The economic crisis and rising deportations of undocumented immigrants is forcing Hispanic moms in Charlotte to seek aid from the government to survive.

The husband of Mexican Arnulfa Pacheco was arrested by a Mecklenburg County sheriff’s deputy on June 2 as he was going to work as a gardener for not having a driver’s license.

He was processed under the 287g program, which identifies illegal aliens in jail, and the case for his deportation was immediately opened, since he had other fines pending for minor traffic violations.

Since the program went into effect in mid-April 2006, Mecklenburg County jail has opened deportation cases for 6,914 immigrants, of whom 2,091 were arrested for minor traffic infractions.

Pacheco, 36, was left alone with two children ages 4 and 6, and had no other choice but to sign up for food stamps and Medicaid.

“My husband was the only one who was working because I stayed home to take care of the kids. One of them is sick. Now without him everything is harder and I can’t cover our expenses. I had to ask for help since my kids are Americans,” Pacheco told Efe.

Another Mexican, Olga Margarita Aguilar, went last week to the Mi Casa Su Casa (My House is Your House) organization to get its help in filling out a form applying for Medicaid for her three children.

Aguilar told Efe that her husband doesn’t have much work in construction and every day it gets “more complicated” to pay for doctor’s visits and medicine.

“The economy is bad. Before we didn’t dare ask for aid and become a burden on the county, but now there’s no other way. The kids need it,” she said.

Tabitha Carnes, spokeswoman for the Social Services Department of Mecklenburg, says the number of Hispanics receiving food stamps increased from 5,061 to 10,830 between January 2007 and March 2009.

The number of Hispanic beneficiaries of Medicaid and the HealthChoice program of North Carolina increased from 11,947 in January 2007 to 18,850 in March 2009, an increase of 58 percent, according to Carnes.

“We can’t say for sure that the increase in applications for social services by Hispanics is a direct result of 287g, but the economic crisis the country is going through affects all families, not just Latinos,” Carnes told Efe.

For Cristina La Paz, director of Mi Casa Su Casa, more and more mothers are showing up at the organization who have been left on their own because their husbands have been deported and they have to look for other ways to support their children.

“They don’t know what to do or where to go, it’s a really desperate situation, and they don’t only go to the government but to institutions that offer help with food, rent and doctors,” she said.

Jorge Medina, director of United Hondurans of the Carolinas, believes there would be more cases of Hispanics seeking social services for their children but the lack of information inhibits them.

“They don’t want to become a burden on the government because they think that if there is (immigration) reform, it will go against them. That’s not true because their kids are Americans. In the end they do it out of necessity, since many parents feel overcome,” he said.

Shops like the San Jose Arellanos store on Charlotte’s Central Avenue have noted an increase in Hispanics cashing checks from the federal Women and Infant Children program.

“We’ve been selling WIC products for four years but since the end of the year we have increased the volume of merchandise. Now we sell 300 gallons of milk a week while before it was 100,” store manager Francisco Alberto Mina told Efe.

He said that most of these customers are women whose husbands have been deported and who have no money to buy food for their children.

“It’s sad because some were clients who paid cash,” he said. EFE