immigration

Mexico’s Unwanted Poor

Posted on by Laughingnomad

One migrant advocate that has recently been deported from the U.S. has said that “Mexico could not economically or socially absorb an estimated six million Mexicans who face deportation from the US.” She is probably right. More than a million undocumented Mexicans will be deported from the US this year, according to the Institute for Mexicans in the Exterior (IME). There are 5 million children living in the US with at least one undocumented parent, and more than 500,000 will be separated from their parents this year, the result of roundups at worksites and deportations, according to the National Council of the Raza.

Oaxaca, one of the two poorest states in Mexico, sends a huge percentage of it’s people North to work. Villages in the mountains I visited last year were virtually emptied of it’s men…and many women. There are no jobs. Education sucks. Children who only speak their native dialect are taught by inexperienced Spanish-speaking teachers in “schools” with dirt floors and no equipment or materials. I could go on and on. Wages from 4-5 months work in the U.S. can support an entire pueblo for a year. NAFTA has helped only a few northern towns and has penalized others. The price of corn, the staple food of Oaxaca, has skyrocketed.

However, absorbing illegal immigrants in the U.S. isn’t going well either…either for the U.S. or for the migrants. While living in Oaxaca last year I and other expats found ourselves on more than one occasion trying to talk Oaxacans out of migrating illegally. 400 migrants have died already this year trying to cross the border, according to Coalition in Defense of Migrants, and the total is likely to exceed 500 for the year due to increased border security. Working with migrants in the U.S. for 20 years has shown me the problems that result when Mexicans, cut off from their families, their language and culture, try to live an illegal life in the shadows. It’s not pretty. I could go on and on about that too.

Pressure is building on both sides of the issue. American views of both sides of this issue has been amplified in the media. This article describes the prevalent current view in Mexico:

Frontera NorteSur (FNS): on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news
Center for Latin American and Border Studies
New Mexico State University
Las Cruces, New Mexico
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Could You Become An American Citizen Today?

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Found on Salon.com this morning written by Tim Grieve:

True Confessions

In the interest of self-reflection or self-flagellation or something, I just took the new-and-improved naturalization test unveiled this week by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

I scored 96 out of 100, which had me feeling pretty good about my bona fides as a U.S. American until I realized how the test really works. While there are 100 questions on the overall exam, any individual citizenship applicant is asked a randomly selected 10, and you need to get six right to pass. What that means: If the four questions I couldn’t answer were among the 10 I happened to get, I would have received the absolute minimum passing grade.

How can that be?

Well, let’s see. Despite having sort of studied American history under a Pulitzer-winning professor and done reasonably well at one of the better law schools in the United States, I couldn’t say, right off the top of my head, how many amendments the Constitution has. It turns out — and you knew this, didn’t you? — that there are 27, the last one providing that “no law varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.”

Whatever. Not knowing the number of amendments is hardly an indictment of my civic knowledge. Nor, I thought, should I feel so bad about thinking that the Statute of Liberty sits on Ellis Island. It turns out — and you knew this too, right? — that while Ellis Island is part of the Statue of Liberty National Monument, the statue itself sits on Liberty Island.

Trivia, I said to myself.

But then there’s the small matter of Question No. 23: Name your representative. I know, I know: Of all people, I should know. And just a few months ago, I would have: I lived in Sacramento, Calif., and my representative was Doris Matsui, and her late husband, Bob, had been my representative for about a million years before that. But I moved to Bethesda, Md., in late July, and as I stared at Question No. 23, it occurred to me that I hadn’t yet taken a moment to figure out which representative represents the part of Montgomery County where we live.

Pleased to meet you, Rep. Chris Van Hollen. Having humiliated myself in public, I shall never forget you.

So that’s three wrong. How’d I miss four? I’ll put that law school education to use now and quibble. Question No. 68 asks for “one thing Benjamin Franklin is famous for.” My answer: He signed the Declaration of Independence. That’s correct, of course, but it’s not one of the officially sanctioned right answers: “U.S. diplomat”; “oldest member of the Constitutional Convention”; “first postmaster general of the United States”; “writer of ‘Poor Richard’s Almanac'”; or “started the first free public libraries.”

Yeah, well, he did that thing with the kite and the key and is said to have said that beer is “proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy,” too. Would a test administrator give me credit for one of those? Probably not. But I’d argue, if my citizenship depended on it, that my answer about Ben and the Declaration ought to be close enough to count.

After all, an officially acceptable answer to Question No. 8 — What did the Declaration of Independence do? — is “declared our independence.”

LAPD Attacks Immigration Rally

Posted on by Laughingnomad

On May 1 there was a peaceful immigration reform rally in MacArthur Park in Los Angeles when the LAPD, in a downright military style action, swept in and chased everyone, men, women and children, not only out of the park but down several streets…with teargas, batons and rubber bullets. They even attacked journalists, including those from Mexico, destroying one filmmaker’s camera. The FBI has been called in to investigate. Go to YouTube to see amateur videos of the melee. This generation didn’t experience the violent police action of the 60’s…the worst being the killing of five students at Kent State in 1968. I was happy to see the outrage. The brutality was mild compared to what happens in Mexico, but the slope is slippery.

The new immigration bill has been stalled in Congress by a small band of Republicans. Don’t know if I agree with everything David Brooks says this morning in the New York Times but he makes an interesting, if generalized, point.
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This Side Of The Border Problem

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Oaxaca is Mexico’s second poorest state with many mountain villages nearly empty of working age men. But over half of the poco English speaking men I have talked to have said they learned the language by working on the East Coast…sweeping a parking lot, waiting tables, dish washing, working on dairy farms in NY state. Many others refer to back-breaking work picking strawberries in California and Oregon….or better…construction in Las Vegas. A woman working as a janitor at the Toyota outlet here said her husband has been in the states for four years. “Oh, where,” I asked. She didn’t know.

My friend Mica had an aunt in Huayapam, Juvita, who sold her successful Tejate business in the market here and unbenownst to her husband, Pedro, paid huge money to an inept “coyote” to take her and two daughters across the border illegally. She died in the Arizona desert. Her daughters survived and are still in the US, leaving her husband here alone. Pedro’s sister, Carmen, is married to a man who hasn’t been back from the US for several years, leaving her here with her 4 year old daughter, Paula.

For 8 years, I mentored a teenage girl from a family of 10 from the Mixtec, in the northwestern Oaxaca mountains that have been playing both sides of the border for years…some of the children legal and some not. The parents have to return every year to work the communal land.

Many are trying to get legal status for work in the US. One young waiter in the Zocalo left his wife and two children in Los Angeles to come home to a small village in Oaxaca to file immigration papers. He is living with his parents and travels by bus one hour twice a day from Tlacalula to Oaxaca City to wait tables at a restaurant in the Zocalo…sending his wages home to his non-working wife. He has been told by immigration all he can do is wait. He has been waiting for one year.

A long-time American born friend from Oregon came to Queretaro with her new Mexican-National husband who is an auto mechanic to file papers for him. They tried once unsuccessfully. Now, in order to be with him, she is stuck in Mexico…trying again. He had been in the US for ten years, living frugally, sending every extra penny home (with Mexico ripping off up to 20% money sent home charges) to support an ill mother with the extra ($40,000) going into “savings” here. Big mistake. As often happens the two brothers entrusted with the money now say there “is no money.”

An AP article of April 27, 2007 illustrates part of the problem that leaves Mexican migrants in a catch-22:

Farm labor shortage may leave crops to rot in field
Tighter border, better paying jobs keep workers away