South Oakland looks deserted on blustery Sundays, but one squat brick church warms the chill each week with the sounds of Spanish and guitar and the wails of small children.

	Lake Fong, Post-Gazette Sister Janice Vanderneck, center, of St. Hyacinth Church in Oakland, teaches English to Milagros Villegas, left, and Lucia Vaccarello, who are both from Venezuela.

The Masses of St. Hyacinth Church on Craft Place have become the focal point of Pittsburgh's Hispanic community, still relatively small but thought to be growing and achieving more cohesion. As two men began playing a hymn on guitar last week, dozens of women and men greeted each other with colloquial phrases from Mexico, Peru and elsewhere in Latin America.

Most fit neatly into one category or another used by U.S. immigration officials to classify foreign-born residents who are here legally, but others represent a group that has been much in the news lately: illegal aliens -- people who are here off the books but who now are part of proposal by President Bush to lift their status.

Maria Reyes is one of them.She cleans houses while raising four children with her husband, an undocumented restaurant worker. She followed him to Pittsburgh eight years ago after he came with the help of a cousin here. Reyes praised the president's plan to legitimize people such as her and her husband, even if it wouldn't give them everything they want.

"I live in fear of being arrested," she said, though feeling secure enough to be interviewed, in a mix of English and Spanish. "We know we came illegally, but we have to eat. ... I would accept the proposal because I could get more income and I would not have to be afraid anymore. I would have worker's rights."

That's one viewpoint of the proposal that's being widely debated. Critics have come from both the right and left of the president. Some say entering the country illegally should not be excused. Others argue the plan doesn't offer enough to encourage "illegals'' to come into the open.

While the proposal is a long way from specific details and congressional action, its key point would allow people who have been working in the country illegally to stay for three years. Their employer would have to show they're not taking away jobs sought by Americans.

	Online Graphic: A look at immigration numbers

The workers would obtain the labor protections afforded regular citizens and could acquire driver's licenses and qualify for Social Security and other benefits, but they would not be able to stay permanently and become U.S. citizens.

The number of illegal immigrants in Pittsburgh is unknown. Almost certainly, they are staying here in working conditions that would be intolerable to many Americans, or to them if they had an alternative. Reyes said her husband worked 12-hour shifts in a restaurant, receiving about $5 an hour.

Sister Janice Vanderneck, who works within the church to assist the Latino community, said undocumented immigrants typically find work in Chinese restaurants, on fruit and vegetable farms, or in construction and landscaping. Some stay put, such as the Reyes family, while others are migrants, shifting around the country to find work.

Sergey Gorlov, who immigrated from Moscow in 1991 and owns several convenience stores in the Pittsburgh area, said many Americans don't want a tedious, $6-an-hour job. Some people who have admitted being in the country illegally have worked for him for below minimum wage. He supports the Bush proposal now.

"We just struggle to find anybody," he said. "Immigrants are more willing to take these jobs."

Pittsburgh's pattern

The illegal immigrant issue, just like discussions of legal immigration, generally attracts less attention in the Pittsburgh region than in border states and other cities that are magnets for people moving to the United States from other countries.

A recent report from Carnegie Mellon University's Center for Economic Development said that of the 50 largest metropolitan areas, Pittsburgh has a lower share of foreign residents than any but Cincinnati. Immigrants generally move to places where a community of their nationality exists or where jobs they're suited to are readily available. Pittsburgh falls short in both categories.

Of more than a million legal immigrants admitted to the United States in the 2002 fiscal year, the Pittsburgh metropolitan area received 2,532, or fewer than three of every thousand newcomers nationally. Those are the people who can obtain green cards, primarily because family ties or refugee status make them eligible for permanent status as citizens after five years.

Several thousand more a year come to the area temporarily, but legally, as students or as workers whose employers have a special need for them.

Others are here illegally, lacking documents and earning under-the-table money, can be deported if caught. A report from the former U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service estimated Pennsylvania's illegal alien population at 49,000 in 2000, among 7 million nationally, but provided no local breakdown. A new Urban Institute report estimated the numbers higher, at 9.3 million nationally and at least 75,000 in Pennsylvania.

It's a good guess that illegal immigration to the Pittsburgh area pales in comparison with other cities. The majority of the country's illegal immigrants are from Mexico, and that country represents a relatively small fraction of Pittsburgh's known foreign-born population. About one in four of the nation's legal immigrants is from Mexico, compared with about one in 66 Pittsburgh immigrants.

Instead, Asians outnumber Hispanics as the biggest immigrant group to Pittsburgh. Many are well-educated professionals drawn into university, medical, engineering and computer-related positions. The kind of service-sector jobs that have drawn Hispanic laborers to Florida, Texas and California and major cities are not as plentiful here.

"Most of the foreign community here, whether Hispanics or Europeans or Asians, are top executives or doctors or professors, that kind of thing, and students," said Eugene Matta, executive director of the Hispanic Center, which provides local information and assistance to newcomers from Latin America.

Anecdotally, he and others say the Hispanic community is growing locally, although no numbers exist to support it. That also could boost the number of illegal immigrants, as has been the pattern in other parts of the country.

Officials with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement arm of the Department of Homeland Security say it's increasingly common for unauthorized people to settle outside the border states and big cities, procuring illegal documents such as birth certificates, green cards and passports.

The agency's Pittsburgh field office, covering Western Pennsylvania and all of West Virginia, arrested 473 illegal aliens for deportation in 2003 and took action against another 222 who were already jailed for other crimes, spokesman Mike Gilhooly said.

He said many of those could be arrests of people passing through the area and checked at Pittsburgh International Airport or elsewhere, as opposed to individuals living locally. In a place like Western Pennsylvania, they also would more typically be students or workers who overstayed the date of a temporary visa instead of people who sneaked into the country to begin with.

Officials in the foundation community and international organizations have planted more seeds in the past several years in hopes of attracting more international immigration to Pittsburgh, without much tangible result. The lack of legal immigration, stalled also by security concerns and the economic slowdown after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, likely reflects something similar about illegal immigration.

"The jobs aren't leaping out here, not even for undocumented workers," said Doug Root, spokesman for the Heinz Endowments, which has helped fund the Hispanic Center and other organizations. "It's difficult enough for people in our own community to find decent work, and I'm sure it would be even harder for someone who doesn't want to be found, unless they're working for just terrible wages."

Pros and cons

Even with substandard working conditions, the jobs may be preferable to the life the illegal immigrants left behind, especially considering exorbitant sums that some paid to receive help crossing the Mexican border.

"It is worth the risk for them," Vanderneck said of the possibility of arrest and deportation.

Ricardo Gonzalez, who entered the United States from Mexico in 1996 by temporary visa and invitation from a software company, said the three-year time limit on legal stays offered by the Bush proposal would deter many illegal workers from changing their status.

"I know many people who came here illegally and have been here for many years," he said. "They don't want to go back. They have invested so much time and effort into getting here."

Just as immigrants are divided on the Bush proposal, labor officials disagree about whether there is a place for new low-wage workers in the local economy.

Rick Stanizzo, the business manager of the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater Pittsburgh, said local laborers had struggled to find work in the current economy and didn't want more competition from immigrants.

"We're losing jobs every day in this country, and all it's going to do for workers is lower wages," he said.

Service Employees International Union spokesman Tom Hoffman said the need for more workers in custodial positions, however, could be addressed by qualifying illegal immigrants as workers. The union also represents employees in the health care industry, which has experienced shortages.

While the union supports Bush's proposal, Hoffman said the government should offer the workers more of a future. "There is no road to citizenship, and that is a major concern," he said.

Currently, if workers without proper papers are discovered by authorities, there is little their employers can do to help them remain in the country.

When someone locally is processed for deportation, word quickly spreads and fears are raised, said Francisco Carballido, president of the community council of the Hispanic Catholic Community of St. Regis Parish, which includes St. Hyacinth.

They're typically sent to the Allegheny County Jail, and then to a detention facility in York, and then are flown to the border.

"And in two weeks or a month, they come back," Carballido said. "It is very common."

Maria Reyes has never been won over by politicians' pronouncements, and just wants a place where she and her family can live securely.

"We are not bad people," she said. "We just do the really hard jobs that Americans don't want to do."