Fighting for title shot, green card
For boxer Beltran, a win should secure permanent residency
“(If) I can be deported at any time, who will provide for my family and take care of them?” Boxer Ray Beltran, a native of Mexico
Ray Beltran has been through the same struggles endured by countless others seeking to gain a U.S. green card, the same grueling battle through red tape and paperwork and the same nervous waiting game.
Yet Beltran’s experience is different from the millions who have entered the USA illegally in that his long journey might end with an actual fight.
“This fight is the key,” Beltran, a wiry lightweight, says, as sweat beads trickle down a tattoo honoring his family name stretched along his back. “It is the key to everything.”
The fight he is referring to is Saturday against Jonathan Maicelo in an IBF world title elimi- nator at New York’s Madison Square Garden. Win, and the 35year-old will not only be entitled to a crack at the belt but also, according to his immigration attorneys, be essentially guaranteed permanent resident status.
“(In boxing), the green card process is unique,” says Beltran’s manager, Steve Feder. “You have to prove yourself unique to anyone else, not just in the world but within the sport itself. You have to be a great fighter among great fighters. It is twice as hard. It is not about how long you have been here, if you pay your taxes, it is nothing to do with that.”
Getting an EB-1 green card requires proof of “exceptional abil- ity” in a particular field, be it sports, music or arts and sciences. Beltran’s long career, 41 bouts over nearly 18 years, supports his case a little, as do letters from major boxing network and sanctioning officials. But nothing will boost his chances like a victory and a chance at the title.
“This is by far the biggest fight of Ray’s life,” Feder says. “A lot of people say they are fighting for a green card, but Ray is literally fighting for his green card.”
As he sits down after a grueling sparring session at Freddie Roach’s Wildcard Gym in Hollywood and slowly unwraps his
hands, Beltran is greeted warmly by all, including four-division world champion Miguel Cotto, who arrives for a training session.
With the Maicelo bout looming, a co-main event to Terence Crawford’s HBO-broadcast junior welterweight title defense against Felix Diaz, Beltran allows his thoughts to shift to what a green card might mean.
“It is like a championship belt,” he says. “It is like winning the lottery ticket, because I know that being (permanent) here, I will have a lot more opportunities. (If ) I can be deported at any time, who will provide for my family and take care of them? I want to grow and do something and contribute to this country.”
Beltran grew up in Los Mochis, situated on the coast of the Gulf of California. Members of his father’s side of the family were ranch workers; on his mother’s side were musicians. The family was poor, living in a house made of sheet metal and cartons, and sometimes struggling for food.
Beltran crossed into the USA with his mother and siblings at 15, bouncing from Arizona to Michigan before winding up in Los Angeles and spending a decade as Manny Pacquiao’s preferred sparring partner. He is married with three children, with his family living in Phoenix while he trains in Los Angeles.
Pacquiao loves Beltran because he is rugged and fearless and never says no to hard work, and the Filipino star used him extensively in preparations for the biggest fights of his career.
“Ray was probably my best sparring partner,” Pacquiao tells USA TODAY Sports, via email. “He brought everything he had into the ring. He would stop at nothing. I love Ray like a brother. He has always been known as a family man, and I admire that about him. I will never forget how much he has helped me all these years.”
Boxing hasn’t made Beltran wealthy. He’ll make $100,000 for clashing with Maicelo, but a large chunk of that will be swallowed up by taxes and training costs.
Yet the prize he craves most, tantalizingly within reach, has nothing to do with money.
“(A green card) is a big accomplishment. It is like a dream come true,” he says, having retreated to a changing area while the thud of Roach’s speed ball being pummeled by another hopeful reverberates through the thin walls. “It is to prove to people that just by hard work, a lot of blood tears and sacrifice, I have been able to reach my goal.”
Boxing has its favored sons, those fighters with either great amateur pedigree, the right kind of hype or some other factor that gets them picked up by a major promoter and nursed to a padded record.
Others drift into the position of being the “B-side,” the underdog. In 2012, sitting on six defeats and with three losses in the preceding six-fight stretch, Beltran was very much in that position. Then, contemplating retirement, he was picked as an opponent by the promoter of Hank Lundy, then an upand-coming prospect seeking a tuneup before a bout with Adrien Broner.
Beltran stunned Lundy with a majority decision win, gained momentum and began to climb the rankings. Soon other problems emerged.
He was seen as too dangerous but not famous enough for the top dogs in the division to take a chance against him. And in May 2015, he knocked out Takahiro Ao in the second round but tested positive for the anabolic steroid stanozolol, and the result was change to no contest.
But Beltran (32-7-1 with 20 knockouts) has kept winning enough to reach the cusp of mandatory position, at which point the titleholder must fight you or relinquish his belt. Saturday’s fight can put him in that spot.
“It has been one hurdle after another, but he keeps going through. He is the guy who gives every fighter in every gym in this country hope,” Feder says. “You have losses, and you believe at some point you are an opponent. Ray is the great Cinderella story of boxing.”
Beltran starts to head out of the gym with the final stages of camp, including a nasty weight cut, ahead of him. But he wants a few things to be known first. He thinks it is possible to be a proud Mexican and a proud American at the same time, to have love for your country of birth while seeking opportunity in another land.
He wants the formalities to be taken care of, to get the green card and later the passport, not to take opportunities from others but to prove the immigration officials right in giving him a new life.
He takes pride in how far he has come and how he stuck with boxing when it would have been easier to quit. He doesn’t get frustrated by President Trump’s rhetoric on the topic of immigration. “It just makes me sad,” he says.
And while he knows that thorny issue divides opinion and that not everyone will support his right to be here, he insists he has been a worthy citizen, if not an official one.
“My only crime,” he says, “was to cross the border.”