How a Return of DACA Recipients Could Be a Huge Asset for Mexico
Observers say stratified country would benefit from influx of well-educated, ambitious dreamers
by Margaret Menge | Updated 06 Sep 2017 at 11:22 AM
Dreamers upset at the news that the DACA program was being canceled took to Facebook to try to figure out what their options are going forward, with some suggesting that maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to return to Mexico.
“I really don’t care if Im send [sic] back to Mexico,” one young woman named Alee Marts wrote of the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act. “I can be a teacher over there and teach English. life goes on its not the end of the world. make mexico great again.”
Several others on the DACA Facebook page chimed in, with many agreeing that going back to Mexico might be a good option.
(video may be viewed at the source link)
"We survived here with nothing, we can survive anywhere with nothing is true!" wrote Facebook user Carmen Morales-Himes.
"Well said," wrote a Facebook user named Iohnatan Ceballos. "I love my country because I am a true Hispanic. Even if I was brought so little here and does not know much about my home country. We can work over there too. It's not the end of the world."
Several began to talk about whether they could go back to the area they're from, or whether they would choose a safer region.
"I might go to Puebla," wrote one woman named Nancy Isidro, referring to the Spanish colonial town south of Mexico City. "They say it's calm there. And yeah were [sic] I am fron [sic] they kill, kidnap and rape people almost everyday."
Others started talking about jobs in Mexico, and the best place to go to get a good job.
"Good morning dacafriends," one woman wrote. "my plan if they take our papers away is very simple and is save save save every single penny and go back to Mexico I'll rent my house and start a new life in Guadalajara."
"Im from Jalisco," a Facebook user named Panchis Aguirre wrote. "I have my plan "B" too, go to mexico and work there in my dog breeding,.."
Others jumped in to talk about jobs at the American consulate, and how to get Mexican identification. Several said they had family living in Mexico.
The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, created by the Obama administration in June of 2012, offered protection from deportation and the ability to work legally in the U.S. for two years at a time for those illegal immigrants who came into the country before the age of 16, lived here for at least five years, and had no felonies or "significant" misdemeanors.
The Mexican government estimates that 625,000 of the approximately 800,000 who are now in the DACA program are citizens of Mexico.
Following Attorney General Jeff Sessions' announcement on Tuesday morning that the DACA program is being rescinded, the Mexican foreign ministry issued a statement saying that it "profoundly laments" the change, but that it will welcome its citizens back with "open arms" and will offer them assistance with work, finances and education.
Most of those in DACA are in their 20s, though they can be up to 36 years old. To be eligible, they must have been present in the country at the time the memo was issued in 2012, and must have either graduated from high school, or be enrolled in some type of educational program.
"If these people go back to Mexico, they're not going to cause the kind of disruption their presence caused in the United States, because they speak Spanish," says Matt O'Brien, the research director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which has been urging Trump to keep his promise to voters and end DACA.
Until Tuesday, it was not certain what the president would do, as his government has continued to process new DACA applications. The change is effective immediately, and no new applications for DACA will be accepted after Sept. 5, though renewal requests will be accepted through Oct. 5 for those DACA beneficiaries whose DACA benefits expire before March 6, 2018. The administration is giving Congress six months to act to pass a law to shield the so-called dreamers, if it has the votes to do so.
The arguments about DACA have focused on illegal immigrants who've been accepted into the program, and rarely on the countries the dreamers left behind.
Americans who've advocated for mass migration, O'Brien says, have not considered that we "destabilize" neighbors to the south, like Mexico, when we take in so many of their immigrants — often the most ambitious of them.
Sending them back, he said, is likely to strengthen Mexico — "a nation on the move" — as most have been able to avail themselves of a free K-12 education and many have also earned a two- or four-year college degree. Many others have been able to work in fields such as construction or hospitality.
"Essentially, we've equipped a huge group of people with the skills necessary to succeed in the Mexican economy," he told LifeZette.
As of 2010, according to Prof. Ricardo Ainslie of the University of Texas, 11 percent of citizens of Mexico were living in the United States — and they'd all come in just over the prior 10-15 years. Most of them crossed the border illegally.
"You have a tremendous talent drain. You have a tremendous brain drain," he said in an interview in 2010. "This has had a profound effect on Mexican society, Mexican culture..."
Mexico's economy is the 15th largest in the world, with a state-run oil company and a strong tourism industry.
But the society is stratified, with a large underclass and a relatively small upper class, most having a European background.
And though property rights exist on the books, they're often not enforced due to widespread corruption, and bribing of police and judges.
The U.S.-educated dreamers may be just what Mexico needs.
In a 2013 op-ed in The New York Times, "Migration Hurts the Homeland," Paul Collier, a professor at the University of Oxford, wrote of young foreigners who come to the U.S. to get an education and then return to their countries:
"Not only do these young people bring back valuable skills directly learned in the classroom; they bring back political and social attitudes that they have assimilated from their classmates. Their skills raise the productivity of the unskilled majority, and their attitudes accelerate democratization."
http://www.lifezette.com/polizette/h...et-for-mexico/
