Thread: El Salvador pursuing its deadbeat parents now living in U.S.

El Salvador pursuing its deadbeat parents now living in U.S.

By Elizabeth Llorente
McClatchy Tribune
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 03.18.2007
HACKENSACK, N.J. — The Salvadoran government is hunting down deadbeat parents who immigrated to the United States but failed to support the children they left behind.
Calling unpaid child support a problem that devastates families in the Central American nation, El Salvador recently became only the third country in the Americas — after Canada and Costa Rica — to sign a bilateral agreement with the United States aimed at collecting money from deadbeat parents.
Salvadoran officials hope deadbeat parents might face serious consequences, such as deportation.
They also are seizing property the parents own in their homeland and providing their names to immigration officials so they can be flagged if they try to re-enter El Salvador.
"They forgot their promises"
"They came here, they forgot their promises," said former New Jersey resident Esther Chavez, a Salvadoran immigrant who recently traveled to El Salvador to meet with women who were not getting child support.
"They met someone else here, have more kids here and the family they left in El Salvador becomes abstract, not real."
Consulates are on the front lines of tracking down parents who owe child-support money.
They are sometimes the best hope in what can be a frustrating exercise, as deadbeat parents often change addresses and relatives withhold information about their whereabouts.
"At some point, nearly every Salvadoran who lives here has to turn to the consulate for something — a passport, or some other paperwork they need to travel or that they need for employment," said Blanca Molina, an activist in the Salvadoran community in New Jersey.
"The consulates are a very important link."
Deadbeat parents are a problem in every country. But only about a dozen countries — mostly in Europe — have child-support enforcement agreements with the United States.
"They say they don't make enough, or they'll raise doubt that the child or children are really theirs and not another man's," said Salvadoran Vice Consul Felix Alegria.
"They'll express some kind of bitterness or resentment toward the mother of the children. We have to remind them that it is not about the mother, this is for their children, and they're responsible for their support."
U.S. officials say they would like to see more Latin American countries on board.
Nations in that region send more immigrants to the United States than any other region of the world.
Molina, who works for the American Friends Service Committee in Newark, said more than half of all homes in El Salvador are run by single mothers.
Remittances to El Salvador total about $3 billion annually.
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http://www.azstarnet.com/allheadlines/174144

Calling unpaid child support a problem that devastates families in the Central American nation, El Salvador recently became only the third country in the Americas — after Canada and Costa Rica — to sign a bilateral agreement with the United States aimed at collecting money from deadbeat parents.
Salvadoran officials hope deadbeat parents might face serious consequences, such as deportation.

If that's what it takes to get some criminal aliens deported, I'm all for it!

Just another example of those family values that Bush keeps telling us about.