Out of his Vegas garden, he’ll speak to a president

By Timothy Pratt (contact)

Wednesday, Nov. 14, 2007 | 7:26 a.m.

Within an hour of finishing his shift, Las Vegas gardener Alonso Flores had changed out of his green uniform and into a dark blue suit and white shirt and was sitting at a Starbucks table.

The transformation fit the moment - Flores was about to board a plane for Mexico City to give a speech to Mexico's president and members of Congress. The subject: the state of Mexican immigrants, legal and illegal.

The message won't be cheery. Flores sees many of his fellow immigrants going through hard times after immigration reform failed in the U.S. Congress and the federal government stepped up workplace raids.

Flores, a master gardener, has callus-free hands that care for orchids at the Mansion, an exclusive villa behind the MGM Grand. How did he wind up with this assignment in Mexico City?

At Starbucks, the Guadalajara native explained that he has spent a life in the politics of his birthplace, even after moving to the United States 20 years ago. For the past 18 months, Flores has served as an adviser to an agency the Mexican government created in 2003 called the Institute of Mexicans Abroad. The agency's goal is to improve conditions for the 28 million-plus people of Mexican background across the United States - and 114 of Flores' fellow advisers from other states chose him to speak on behalf of those millions.

His speech, scheduled to run five minutes, is an example of what academics call transnationalism, which refers to Mexican immigrants and others' living active civic and political lives in two countries.

Mexico President Felipe Calderon's administration is one of the forces driving the phenomenon. Flores' trip "is consistent with the Mexican government's policy to reach out to immigrants, whether for political or economic reasons," said Luin Goldring, associate professor of sociology at York University in Canada.

So Flores had spent the past few weeks preparing for his speech by talking to maids, porters and other MGM Grand employees, asking them, "If you were in front of the president, what would you say?"

Many couldn't answer. Some started to cry.

"Their families are suffering as they see raids carried out elsewhere" in the United States, he said. "They're scared. Their children, born in the U.S., are scared."

Flores was describing the recently stepped-up Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids such as the one in Reno in late September that affected dozens of McDonald's employees. The point, he said, is that many immigrants are in families composed of some legal immigrants, some not.

Flores, who is a U.S. citizen, mentioned that he recently found himself at McCarran International Airport in his gardener's uniform - not a suit. Three federal immigration officials came up behind him. One tapped his shoulder and asked, "Are you an American citizen?"

"This is what I'm going to tell the president," Flores said.

He's also going to talk about the need for Mexico to expect more deportations in the near future. "The country has to be prepared for receiving these people ... and dedicate money to helping them" as they readjust to life in Mexico, he said.

And he's going to remind Calderon about his promise to create jobs for Mexicans, which is crucial to keeping workers at home.

Was Flores nervous?

"No, this will be the third time I address a president" of Mexico, he said.

He began speaking to politicians at age 9, when a local organization tapped him to speak to the president about a polluted lake in his town.

The experience taught him the key is to create a "message that goes to the man, not the institution."

"That's all he is," Flores adds. "A man."