All to often anti-immigration advocates will shout, “Go back where you came from,” to immigrants challenged by the growing wave of anti-immigrant sentiment. A very interesting article today in the New York Times reveals that many undocumented Brazilian immigrants are taking that advice to heart. Many feel hopeless after the U.S’s failure to pass comprehensive immigration reform. Many have expired driver’s licenses that can’t be renewed thanks to tougher laws. The value of the dollar against the Brazilian real is dropping and the economy in their home country is improving.

“You put it all together, and why should you stay in an environment like that if you have a place like Brazil, where there’s hope, a light at the end of the tunnel and it’s not a train to run you over?” said Pedro Coelho, a businessman in Mount Vernon, N.Y., who is known as the mayor of Brazilians in Westchester County. “Are they leaving? Yes, by the hundreds.”

In Massachusetts, says Fausto da Rocha, the founder of the Boston-area Brazilian Immigrant Center, his compatriots — many here illegally — are leaving by the thousands, some after losing homes in the subprime mortgage crisis. In New York and New Jersey, travel agents and others who sell airline seats say that one-way bookings to Brazil have more than doubled since last year, to about 150 daily from Kennedy International Airport, and that flights are sold out through February.

What’s really interesting is that those who are leaving are Brazilians who have established roots in the U.S. Many of these immigrants have children born and raised in the U.S.. Others spent years creating businesses and paying taxes from their earnings. But for many, living in fear just isn’t worth the trouble.

Norma dos Santos, a former house cleaner, said she felt she had no choice. Seven years after overstaying her visa, she said, she does not drive to work or pick up her children at school for fear that a traffic stop could put her in immigration detention.

“It’s just getting harder and harder to stay here without documents,” she said.

Still, she is uncertain that she is doing right by her American-born children, a newborn and a 2-year old boy.

“I’m worried they’ll grow up and ask me, ‘How could you have left America?’“ she said.

Via / The New York Times