An illegal immigrant couple with six children were already living in poverty. Then the quadruplets arrived.?

Question

With two teenage daughters at home and triplets still in diapers, Angela Magdaleno's family overflowed from a one-bedroom apartment in South Los Angeles that they strained to afford.

Diapers had to be changed 15 times a day, feedings held every three hours. One triplet, 3-year-old Alfredo Jr., needed special attention because he was born with liquid on his brain and partially paralyzed.

Even simple events — like going to the store — required complex orchestration.

And that was before the quadruplets arrived.

On July 6, Magdaleno gave birth to two boys and two girls, drawing national media attention as a bewildered mother of 10 (with nine living at home). Now, she and her husband, Alfredo Anzaldo, 44, must figure out how to provide for everyone on Anzaldo's maximum pay of $400 a week as a carpet installer.

As cameras flashed two weeks ago, capturing the 40-year-old mother with her newest progeny, she appeared dazed, even morose.

They'd have to leave their $600-a-month apartment for something bigger. They'd have to buy a minivan with room for four more car seats.

"I was afraid," she said. "I still feel like I can't believe it."

U.S. immigrants' stories often are about reinvention and newfound prosperity, about leaving behind poverty and limitations.

But that is not Magdaleno's story.

Both Magdaleno and Anzaldo are illegal immigrants, settled for years in an immigrant enclave. Magdaleno has the same number of children as her parents, who were peasant farmers in Mexico. Like her parents, she is living in poverty and struggling to provide for her family.

"It's not sweet," said her 36-year-old sister, Alejandra. "It's very sad. The life for girls back there in Mexico is the same as the one Angela has now. They marry and have children, and that's their lives."

Neither Magdaleno nor her husband speaks English, though she has been in the United States 22 years and he 28. Even her teenage daughters

Even her teenage daughters speak mostly Spanish; their English vocabulary is limited.

Yet all of Magdaleno's 10 children are U.S. citizens. The triplets receive subsidized school lunches. All the youngsters have had their healthcare bills covered by Medi-Cal, the state and federal healthcare program for the poor.

Alfredo Jr. had been hospitalized all his life until recently. He's had three state-funded brain operations and will require several more, the family said. The couple receive $700 in monthly Social Security payments to help with his medical needs."I thank this country that they gave me Medi-Cal," Magdaleno said. "There's nothing like that in Mexico."

Magdaleno's existence contrasts sharply with that of her younger siblings, who followed her to Los Angeles but then left. They have settled in Lexington, Ky., had no more than two children each and built better lives than they had known before. Four bought houses. Their children speak English fluently.

Magdaleno's sisters struggle in vain to understand her. "She still thinks like people in Mexico — that's what I think," said her 38-year-old sister, Justina. "You have to think first of your living children instead of thinking of having more."

Magdaleno struggles to explain. She said she was wearing a birth-control patch to keep from getting pregnant, then took it off when it made her nauseated.

"I didn't want any more children," said Magdaleno, who used fertility drugs to conceive the triplets but said she did not use them in the case of the quadruplets.

"Four is too many. I'm still trying to believe this happened to me."Her sister Alejandra was the first to leave. In Los Angeles, she and her husband were barely able to make ends meet. As in Mexico, "there was little work and it's poorly paid," she said.

Eight years ago, she and her family moved to Kentucky, where a friend said there was more work and were fewer Mexican immigrants bidding down the wages for unskilled jobs

In Kentucky, Alejandra picked tobacco. The work was hard and she didn't know the language. But soon, life improved. Over the years, she invited her siblings to join her. One sister married a man who managed a Golden Corral, a chain of all-you-can-eat buffets. Soon several Magdaleno siblings were working in Golden Corrals. Their husbands found work installing windows and as farm-labor contractors. They went to night school to learn English because few people in Lexington speak Spanish.

Today, the Magdalenos in Lexington earn more than they did in Los Angeles, in a city where the cost of living is lower. Kentucky is now their promised land, and they talk about California the way they used to talk about Mexico.

"What we weren't able to do in many years in California," Alejandra said, "we've done quickly here.

"We're in a state where there's nothing but Americans. The police control the streets. It's clean, no gangs. California now resembles Mexico

everyone thinks like in Mexico. California's broken."

Justina was the last to leave Los Angeles, about the time Angela was pregnant with the triplets.

She and her husband wanted better schools for their sons, 15 and 9.

In Lexington, she said, "at the school there are just people who speak English. It's helped my children a lot."

Justina, who came to the U.S. with Magdaleno, applied for legal residency under the 1986 amnesty law and is now a U.S. citizen. Magdaleno never applied.

The sisters say they have urged Angela to come out to Kentucky — at least to visit. She said she hasn't because her son has been hospitalized so much.

Last year, however, she sent her daughter, Kelly, 17, to Kentucky for several months. Though American born and raised, Kelly hadn't been outside South Los Angeles.

In Lexington, school was hard because few people spoke Spanish, and the city "barely had one Spanish radio station," Kelly said.

"The girls right here in Los Angeles are like in Mexico. There are girls that are 14, they got kids."

The family in Kentucky "is more in the United States than" her mother, Kelly concluded. "They want a better education for the kids. With less kids there's better possibility of you having something."

Magdaleno, meanwhile, was raising six other children and using a variety of birth control methods — the latest being the contraceptive patch.

She said she was stunned when doctors told her that she was carrying quadruplets.

"She didn't do this on purpose," said Dr. Kathryn Shaw, who delivered the couple's triplets and their quadruplets. "She was not at all elated, and not excited about the fact that they were quadruplets."

All are healthy, Shaw said, but weighed between 3 and 4 pounds at birth. They remained at White Memorial Medical Center in East Los Angeles long enough to gain weight, then came home this week.

Now Denise, Destiny, Andrew and Andrey are with the rest of the family.

For Angela Magdaleno, their arrival — 22 years after she left Mexico and entered the United States hoping for a different life — has brought her full circle. Her older daughters, like girls in Mexico, have been drafted into helping raise the new children.

"I don't have anything," she said. "Just children."

la.times.com

Marica what do you think birth control is about, it is a choice. This story appeared on the front page of the LA.Times.It's a matter of being smart and making the right choices in life. Bringing more childern into Poverty isn't helping the world any, when there are far to many who childern in proverty right now who need help too,what about them ? "You have to make an educated choice. Marci " Stop playing the hate card.

Answer 1

I read this article today and I was absolutely appalled, too!! And to think that all 10 of the children are "legal US citizens!" That $700/mo. they receive is only the amount for the one handicapped - you can bet your biffy they receive much, much more than that, in total from Social Assistance! I bet that dad will even quit his job now as they will be able to get more money just from welfare, so why bother working at all? Just disgusting! That woman DID have a tubal ligation after her triplets, but then her new ILLEGAL husband "had to have a son," so he paid for her to have the reversal surgery and she had the quads!

It's people like these who really give the illegal immigrants a bad reputation! Other illegal and legal immigrants and ALL the citizens of the USA should be furious at these ignoramuses! These are a prime example of illegal immigrants USING the ANCHOR BABY loophole to the FULLEST extent!

I believe the parents should be DEPORTED immediately and let them choose to take their anchor babies (all of them!) with them, or not. If not, then put all those kids in foster homes and kick the parents out asap! NEVER allow this man and woman back into the country, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES WHATSOEVER!

Answer 2

artwork for some won't help some little ones out of poverty, yet in spite of this no longer working isn't the respond the two as this is going to in basic terms make concerns worse, through fact each and every so often if your working, doors can open the place as though no longer working doors tend to stay firmly close. Why is it human beings think of they might desire to get a solid nicely paid activity the 1st time around, no, having a activity even a low paid min salary activity could be a foot interior the door to greater advantageous issues.

Answer 3

I wasn't aware having children was a choice. All I see in your motives is hate, and no compassion for human life. I could just imagine what Jesus would say about all of this.

Answer 4

Gee did anyone tell her where babies come from?
Why here-don't we have enough trouble with our own?
She is Illegal-send her home and all the kids go too. Are we the babysitters of the world now too?

Answer 5

angela R- You are pathetic. I suppose you agree with having more kids when you can barely afford the ones you have now? Makes sense I guess....

Answer 6

I guess you would prefer living in China....Where there is a quota on child bearing?

You people will find any obsecure story to make your point.....GET A LIFE

Answer 7

Yeah and they get $700 a month in taxpayer money,the money that 'illegal lovers' keep saying they don't get because their illegal?! Well, that shoots their story all to hell don't it.

Answer 8

They have free birth control at planned parenthood...also, she could have gotten her tubes tied or he could have had a vasectomy...when you live in poverty, you really can't afford to be careless about birth control.

Answer 9

Put the kids up for adoption and ship their butts back to Mexico, until they can bother to become LEGAL!!!!!!!

Answer 10

Old axiom----if you can't afford them, don't have them. At the dad's salary, no kids would be too many