Thread: Waiting to cross

by Linda Valdez - Sept. 14, 2012 12:00 AM
The Republic

It's perilous getting there, but El Norte holds allure

The soup kitchen in Nogales, Mexico, is full of broken hearts and tragedies waiting to happen. It's a place for people deported from the United States or who repatriated after crossing the border illegally.

Many of them will try to cross again.

Any of them could wind up dead in the desert.

The Kino Border Initiative's feeding center, run by Jesuit priests and Missionary Sisters of the Eucharist, served nearly 36,000 meals from Jan. 1 through July 31, said Father Sean Carroll, executive director. Volunteers from the Tucson-based border humanitarian groups No More Deaths and Samaritans help with clothing and other assistance.

Several of the recently deported speak English and lived in the United States for years. One man had the aggressive speech patterns of a New Yorker; New York had been his home. Another spoke in dreamy tones of his now-dead wife and his desire to return to California.

Some, caught on their first attempt to cross the desert, were weighing whether to try again. One woman's eye was badly injured when she ran into a thorny bush. Another young woman said she wanted to work in the United States because her son in Guanajuato, Mexico, was sick. She couldn't afford his medicine unless she got a good job.

Everybody had a story.

Consider the Gonzalez family.

Amado, Yolanda and their 12-year-old daughter, Mayra, lived for eight years in New Jersey without documentation. Mayra's U.S.-born siblings, ages 5 and 7, were left with an aunt in New Jersey when she and her parents returned to Puebla, Mexico, to visit her sick grandmother.

They paid a smuggler to get them back across the border, Yolanda said. After five days in the desert, they were caught. It was their second try. Mayra wants to keep trying. She's eager to get back to her school in New Jersey.

Consider Lucy Aragon Perez.

Age 23 and 4 1/2 months pregnant, she says you can work for 12 hours a day in Oaxaca, Mexico, and make about $6. Her husband used to live in Florida, she says, and he made good money.

The two of them crossed illegally with a group of 15 people and were caught after two days in the desert. Lucy wants to try again. Crossing is dangerous, she's told, especially in her condition. She says she knows.

Later, Lucy's husband, Francisco Hernandez, catches up with us outside. He says they decided not to try crossing again. As he talks, he touches his abdomen with his open hand, as though he were touching Lucy's pregnant belly. It's too dangerous, he says, the baby is too precious.

His choice now? Try to raise a child on $6 a day or return alone to the United States and send money to his wife and a child growing up without a father.

Consider Delmi Lisseth Sanchez.

She and her three children were brought to the soup kitchen in a Mexican immigration truck. Lunch was over, but the nun wrapped up plates for her and the kids, ages 3, 5 and 7.

They ate in an empty room at a Mexican government-run center for migrants. Originally from Honduras, Delmi says it took her a month to cross Mexico with the kids. It was unclear if they would be detained by the Mexican authorities or allowed to leave. But her intention was clear: She was headed north by any means possible.

There are signs at the center warning people not to cross into Arizona. The desert will kill you slowly, the signs say. Pictures show a rattlesnake, a group of people being arrested, a body under a tarp and another body being loaded into a white van.

Asked how she planned to get across the border, this petite mother in a strange land answered simply: I don't know.

Waiting to cross

This is Mexicao's problem and they should be addressing it not pushing it off on the US to finance. Supposedly the Mexican economy grew at about 5% last year and almost that this year. Mexico has been touted as having one of the fastest growing middle classes in the hemisphere. I suppose it has grown at the expense of US citizens.

Mexico plans to improve the conditions in their own country by exporting their poor and uneducated to the U.S. Saves them lots of money when the U.S. pays their medical costs, education and welfare.

Originally Posted by ReggieMay

Mexico plans to improve the conditions in their own country by exporting their poor and uneducated to the U.S. Saves them lots of money when the U.S. pays their medical costs, education and welfare.

Mexico is also receiving foreign aid that is borrowed from China and can afford 50 consulates and lawyers to continue the financial and culteral rape of this country.

Originally Posted by Newmexican

This is Mexicao's problem and they should be addressing it not pushing it off on the US to finance. Supposedly the Mexican economy grew at about 5% last year and almost that this year. Mexico has been touted as having one of the fastest growing middle classes in the hemisphere. I suppose it has grown at the expense of US citizens.

They're well aware of it too as this bit from a different article makes clear.

Mexican scholar Luis Rubio has written that Mexico “has become a nest of privileges where only a very small fraction of people can achieve their aspirations. The rest have virtually no possibility of envisioning opportunities different from those that their social origin imposed upon them…. Everything seems organized and built to make life difficult for the population, to cancel opportunities, and to close spaces for their development.”17

Rubio has also written: “Emigration is an easy solution to a country whose population and politicians have been unwilling and incapable of making the tough decisions" needed to provide opportunities to its people. "In the absence of the escape valve that the American economy represents, Mexico would have had to face up to its challenges a long time ago."18

Grijalva is also sharply critical of Mexico’s social divisions. “My dad used to tell me that we’re lucky to live in this country (the United States) because if we were in Mexico, half the people wake up every day looking to screw the other half,’’ he said.19

http://www.alipac.us/f12/raul-grijal...essman-165701/

Grijalva is also sharply critical of Mexico’s social divisions. “My dad used to tell me that we’re lucky to live in this country (the United States) because if we were in Mexico, half the people wake up every day looking to screw the other half,’’ he said.19

Seems to be another attitude they have brought with them.