Thread: Deported woman says keep families together

MEXICO-ARELLANO Oct-18-2007 (660 words) With photo posted April 19, 2007. xxxi

Deported woman says U.S., Mexico must work to keep families together

By Ioan Grillo
Catholic News Service

MEXICO CITY (CNS) -- Migrant activist Elvira Arellano, who spent a year in a Chicago Methodist church to try to avoid deportation, said her personal battle to live in the United States is lost but the wider struggle for immigrants is just beginning.

Speaking in Mexico, where she now lives with her 8-year-old son, who is an American citizen, Arellano said the Mexican and U.S. governments need to work harder to make immigration laws that do not break up families.

"I've been deported and can't go back to the United States for 20 years. Legally there is nothing I can do about that. But I still want to go on fighting so other people don't have to go through what I've been through," Arellano told Catholic News Service Oct. 17 after an event to support her at the Mexico City offices of the Democratic Revolution Party.

"We have to stop families being torn apart. We have to stop people who have worked for decades in the U.S. being sent back to Mexico and having no job and no place to live," she said.

Arellano, 32, has been outside Mexico for almost a decade, and her son, Saul, has never lived here before. She said Saul is adapting well to his new environment and is enrolled in a primary school in her native state of Michoacan.

"He is doing OK, although he is struggling a bit with the language," she said. "I wanted to work in the United States so I could afford to give him a life with dignity. But we will do what we can here."

She said she hoped that Saul could attend a summer school in Houston.

Arellano became a national symbol for undocumented migrant parents when she refused to comply with a deportation order by taking religious sanctuary and when her son spoke at news conferences calling for his mother to stay.

Arellano was arrested in 2002 while cleaning planes at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport; she was convicted of working under a false Social Security number.

Defying an order to surrender to authorities, she took shelter in the Adalberto United Methodist Church in Chicago with the support of the pastor, the Rev. Walter Coleman, for a year beginning in August 2006.

Although the concept of sanctuary holds no weight in law, police held back from storming the church.

The sheltering of migrants in churches has become known as the New Sanctuary Movement. In an older version of the movement, some churches and synagogues offered space to illegal immigrants escaping civil war in El Salvador during the 1980s.

Arellano finally left Chicago to give a nationwide speaking tour and was arrested outside Our Lady Queen of the Angels Catholic Church in Los Angeles.

"We stepped onto the street and a van with dark (windshields) drove up. Several men jumped out and my son was very scared. I just said to him, 'It's OK, it's OK,'" she recalled with tears in her eyes.

"How can I be a threat to the United States?" she asked. "I have no weapons. I only have an infinite faith in God."

Arellano said the migrant movement needs to lobby politicians on both sides of the border. She said she had faith that the U.S. Congress could still approve a comprehensive migration reform.

"Three months ago, people were saying the immigration reform was dead. But now it's more alive than ever," she said.

Ricardo Ruiz, head of the Democratic Revolution Party in Mexico City, promised that his party, the second biggest in Mexico's Congress, will put its full weight behind Arellano and the cause of other migrants.

"Elvira is an example of the discrimination and racism that migrants face in the United States," Ruiz said. "But she is also an example of the energy to fight for a better world."

END



http://www.catholicnews.com/data/storie ... 705946.htm

I guess she's not getting media attention in Mexico either huh?

Deporting her was the right thing to do and Saul is with her, so what's the problem? Become an activist for a better Mexico.

I'm curious tho, she doesn't speak English and she's saying Saul doesn't speak Spanish? How did they communicate with each other?

Migrant activist Elvira Arellano, who spent a year in a Chicago Methodist church to try to avoid deportation, said her personal battle to live in the United States is lost but the wider struggle for immigrants is just beginning.

OOOOoooo, I'm shakin in my boots!

Miguelina:

I'm curious tho, she doesn't speak English and she's saying Saul doesn't speak Spanish? How did they communicate with each other?

Ooooh, good question. Somebody, somewhere, is not being completely honest about the situation.

Originally Posted by PhredE

Miguelina:

I'm curious tho, she doesn't speak English and she's saying Saul doesn't speak Spanish? How did they communicate with each other?

Ooooh, good question. Somebody, somewhere, is not being completely honest about the situation.

I was thinking the same thing! She's been here ten years and does not speak english.
Also she wants to talk about family values and keeping the family together but her son (and the rest of the world) has no idea who his father is! She's a fine one to talk about family!

All I can say is that these families should not be broken up and they should all go back to the country the parents came from.

Dixie

"He is doing OK, although he is struggling a bit with the language," she said. "I wanted to work in the United States so I could afford to give him a life with dignity. But we will do what we can here."



If I lived in Mexico I would be totally outraged at her saying that people in Mexico have no dignity. I have met numerous people in Mexico that are very dignified and proud of who they are.

Elvira was thrown from the gravy train and didn't like it. Just my opinion.

[quote][quote="He is doing OK, although he is struggling a bit with the language," she said. "I wanted to work in the United States so I could afford to give him a life with dignity. But we will do what we can here[/quote]."



If I lived in Mexico I would be totally outraged at her saying that people in Mexico have no dignity. I have met numerous people in Mexico that are very dignified and proud of who they are

Most illegals break up their families when they cross the border, but they yell about keeping the family together when they enter american. How stupid are our politicans to believe that these people even care about family values? The only thing they care about is what they can get from America. WE NEED OUR RESOURCES TO TAKE CARE OF AMERICA. What other country would borrow money to give to other countries or pay for benefits for those people who broken their laws. Only in America.