What stands between thousands of El Pasoans and their way out of poverty are simple pieces of paper -- a U.S. birth certificate, a naturalization document or a work visa.

Undocumented immigrants are among the poorest groups in the nation because they don't have access to financial aid to go to college, can't get higher-paid legal assistance and are vulnerable to exploitation by employers because they live in fear of being reported to immigration officials and deported.

In El Paso County, 110,289 people, or 16 percent of the population, were not U.S. citizens in 2005, according to the American Community Survey, although it is not known how many were undocumented immigrants. The size of the undocumented population in the United States is estimated at between 10 million and 12 million people, or around 4 percent of the total population.

For those lacking work permits, opportunities for improving their lives are few, and poverty is passed from one generation to the next.

Alicia Acosta, an undocumented immigrant living in Montana Vista for 14 years, came to the United States hoping to give her five children a better life. But short of a change in immigration law, her children's lives will be very much like hers.

Her two oldest daughters are about to graduate from high school; one dreams of becoming a doctor, and the other wants to be an architect.

"But without Social Security numbers, these paths are closed," Acosta said. "What are they going to do? That's something that depresses them."

Acosta doesn't work. Her husband is an undocumented construction worker.

More than 200,000 El Pasoans, or 29 percent of the population, live in poverty, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The national poverty rate is 12.6 percent. According to the federal poverty guidelines, a poor family of four has $14.14 a day per family member to spend; single people living on the poverty line have $27.97 a day to spend.

An additional 100,000 El Pasoans are considered poor by federal standards because they make less than 150 percent of the poverty-level income.

Statistics indicate that immigrants tend to become richer the longer they stay in the United States, but that isn't so for immigrants without papers. They tend to get caught in a cycle of poverty.

Free labor

Immigrants, who don't qualify for most government assistance programs, work.

Eighty percent of the immigrants living in El Paso County have an income, but more than a third of them make less than $10,000. The median income for immigrants in El Paso County is $11,344, compared with the median income of $15,547 for all county residents.

Work is even tougher for those without work permits.

"They face an additional obstacle to be paid, even paid a minimum wage," said Iliana Holguin, the executive director of the Diocesan Migrant and Refugee Services. "Their employers know that they will be afraid to complain. Sometimes, they are not paid at all. We see that a lot in the construction industry. The worker will do the work, but not get paid."

Arcelia Garcia, 53, has spent the past 14 years cleaning houses and doing other jobs as an undocumented immigrant in El Paso.

"Once I took care of five elderly people in a nursing home for three months. I was going to get paid $100 a month. That's a lot of money. I was really excited that I would get $300 for my children. But after the three months, the lady kicked me out and said to leave or she would call la migra," Garcia recalled. "She didn't even give me bus fare to get home."

Workers can file wage claims with the Texas Workforce Commission even if they don't have work permits, but few undocumented immigrants know they can or dare to complain.

Garcia knew she had been cheated, she said, but she didn't know what to do about it.

Her adult children, also undocumented, work in menial jobs if they work at all. Her son, a construction worker, doesn't always get paid, she said.

The American dream

The foreign-born population in El Paso sits at two extremes -- the unskilled and the highly skilled. While 25 percent of immigrants in El Paso have been to college, 55.8 percent have less than a high-school diploma.

For the unskilled, undocumented population, advancement is all but impossible, poverty is almost certain, and the American dream is out of reach.

Garcia worked hard all her life, but she still lives in an old rented trailer with a door that doesn't close and wooden boards for a floor.

"Everything here is borrowed or was given to me broken," she said. "I don't own anything."

In the land of freedom, she keeps aluminum foil over her windows and is terrified to venture outside her neighborhood. She also has no savings and worries about the time she won't be able to work anymore.

Education, for many the gateway to a better standard of living, is also a problem.

Children born in Mexico but raised in the United States can shine in high school, where legally, a free education cannot be denied them. But after graduation, they won't qualify for most financial aid, and college will probably remain out of their financial reach.

A few find ways to make it -- the salutatorian at Princeton University last year was an undocumented immigrant, according to news reports -- but most see their college dreams fade.

The Pew Hispanic Center found that only 48 percent of undocumented children who graduate from high school go to college, compared with 73 percent of documented immigrant children and 70 percent of native children.

Even if they have a college degree, jobs prospects for the undocumented will be limited and deportation will be a real concern.

Out of the shadows

Immigrants and their supporters have been clamoring for the past year for comprehensive immigration reform, which would allow them to legalize their status, among other things, and bring them out of the shadows.

Even though undocumented immigrants are often members of mixed-status families -- families in which some members are legally in the United States while others are not -- visas are largely not available to them.

For example, visas for Mexican spouses of green card holders are so limited that a backlog has grown and immigration officers are just now processing those who applied in December 2000, a State Department report showed. Petitioners are not given temporary travel or work permits while they wait. Friends and employers are not allowed to sponsor unskilled immigrants. U.S.-born children can sponsor their undocumented parents, but only after the children turn 21.

President Bush has said he favors a path to citizenship for longtime undocumented immigrants, but he has met resistance from the Republican party.

Those opposed to legalization say that the latest amnesty, in 1986, failed to prevent more undocumented immigrants from coming to the United States. Supporters say keeping the status quo creates an underclass of undocumented workers who have no rights and who are vulnerable to abuse. The other alternative would be mass deportations.

Like many other undocumented immigrants, the Acostas have not visited Juárez in the 14 years they have lived in Montana Vista.

The thought that her children could be forced to return to Mexico is unsettling to Acosta.

"They are Americanized," she said. "They don't even know Mexico."

This article was published in Week 3 of the El Paso Times Poverty Series.