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  1. #1
    Senior Member JohnDoe2's Avatar
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    'Nothing for us here': Deported Guatemalans plan to return to U.S.

    'Nothing for us here': Deported Guatemalans plan to return to U.S.

    A Guatemalan organization found 95% of people who were deported from the U.S. plan to go back. 'It's practically a game of ping pong."
    y María Martin / Mar.29.2018 / 5:41 AM ET
    Immigrants deported from the U.S. arrive at the Air Force base in Guatemala City on Jan. 10.Johan Ordonez / AFP - Getty Images

    GUATEMALA CITY — Outside a low, white stucco building operated by the Guatemalan Air Force, a few people wait for “el vuelo de los deportados” — the flight of the deportees. Each plane that lands brings 75 to 130 Guatemalans, in handcuffs, back to their home country after being deported from the U.S.
    Since the end of 2017, the number of flights have been increasing, according to Carlos López, administrator of the migrant aid organization Casa del Migrante, based in Guatemala City.

    "In recent months, there have been two or three flights every day," López said recently as he waited for a plane to land.

    In January, nearly 1,000 more Guatemalans were deported by air than in the same month last year, at the end of the Obama administration, Guatemalan government statistics confirm.

    When they land — handcuffs removed — the returned Guatemalans are ushered into a waiting area lined with plastic chairs where they find sandwiches and bottles of water. A government employee offers a few words of welcome and directs them to windows where their data will be recorded.


    The deportees then exit double glass doors and take their first steps toward trying to rebuild their lives in this country of 14 million. For many, this won’t be easy.


    Hicer Hernando, 23, of the province of Izabal, told NBC News that he decided to leave home after his father was killed in a machete attack motivated by religious differences with other townspeople. “Because we are Catholics, and they are Evangelical Christians … ” Hernando said. “They were going to kill me, too.”


    Waiting to be registered by migration authorities. Johan Ordonez / AFP - Getty Images

    Apprehended while trying to cross the border in Arizona, Hicer said that he wasn’t sure where he would be going next, but that he feared for his life if returned to Guatemala.


    “It’s hard,” said Juan Sebastián Tuil Mejía, a volunteer with the Association of Returned Guatemalans, a two-year-old organization. “I was deported a year and a half ago, and I still can’t find a job.”


    With flights increasing each week, volunteers like Tuil Mejía provide welcome services to deported migrants. They’ll offer phones for the returnees to contact their families, give them maps and help them find transportation back to their communities.


    Beyond these gestures, the returnees are mostly on their own. “Jobs are hard to come by here. … Most people who hire want you to have an education; in the United States I was able to work without having a formal education,” said Tuil Mejía, who worked in construction and gardening in the Los Angeles area. He lived there over 30 years before being deported.

    “It’s been really difficult,” he said. His wife and six children, aged 7 to 32, remain in California, he said, and although they speak often by phone or video, “to be away from them, that’s probably the most difficult thing.”


    'THERE IS NOTHING FOR US HERE'


    Guatemala has a high rate of unemployment and underemployment. Only three of 10 Guatemalans have a formal job. In addition, almost half of the population is under 19, and experts estimate that 140,000 young people enter the labor market every year, but only two of 10 will find work in the formal sector.

    “We went to try to complete our dreams,” Tuil Mejía said of why he went to the U.S. “When they send everybody back, they send them to … the same situation where they started. There is nothing for us here.”


    In October 2009, the Guatemalan government approved funding for a new agency to “protect, support and provide assistance to Guatemalan migrants and their families.” The Consejo Nacional de Atención al Migrante en Guatemala, the National Council on Immigration, has put together a number of programs to help integrate returning Guatemalans into society. This includes a jobs database and the welcoming program for returnees.



    A deported immigrant is registered in Guatemala City. Johan Ordonez / AFP - Getty Images

    The issue is how effective or up-to-date those programs are. Lisbeth Gramajo, an anthropologist at Rafael Landívar University who studies the reintegration process for returned migrants, said the government’s principal role in reintegrating deported Guatemalans is the welcoming service at the airport.


    “After that, there is no follow-through to help the migrants in the process of reintegration,” she said.


    The immigration council has been without a director for two years, with the selection process mired in politics and dependent on an ineffective Congress.

    "We know that migrants in our countries have been hit by the lack of public policies of our governments,” said the Rev. Mauro Verzeletti, a Roman Catholic priest and the director of Casa del Migrante, one of the few organizations in the country that helps deported migrants.

    "Corruption has really taken up a lot of space in these countries that are more and more controlled by drug traffickers and organized crime,” said Verzeletti, a priest in the Scalabrinian order, whose mission is to work on behalf of migrants. Until the situation changes drastically in Central America, Verzeletti said, tens of thousands of young people will continue to migrate north.


    ONE DEPORTEE'S STORY


    In a country where over 60 percent of the population live below the poverty line, most Guatemalans, like Rodolfo Antonio Arias, 22, migrate for economic reasons. He spoke to NBC News soon after returning to his native country on “the flight of the deportees.”

    Arias had borrowed 80,000 quetzales — almost $11,000 — to enter the U.S. after drought ruined his family’s agricultural fields. His father had optimistically taken out another loan to expand the family’s planting fields, but then the harvest dried up. Such droughts, attributed to climate change, are affecting large portions of Guatemala.


    Now Arias finds himself back home and in debt. The only avenue he sees to get out of his and his family’s financial crisis is to try to move north again.



    Deported immigrants gather their belongings. Johan Ordonez / AFP - Getty Images

    "We lost a lot,” he said. "Maybe this time they won’t throw me out."


    Verzeletti said that when repression, the economy or criminal elements prevent people from developing as human beings, "they will always try to find alternative ways of life in other countries to be able to develop and have peace."


    When asked whether the current policy of the United States — more deportations to deter people from trying to enter illegally — is working, he said emphatically, "Not at all."


    "It's practically a game of ping pong," Verzeletti said, "because the states deport, and the migrants keep migrating.”


    According to his organization’s survey of deportees, 95 percent say they will try again to migrate, he said.


    The great majority of recently returned deportees confirmed that finding — saying they were just biding their time before once again trying to return to the United States.

    https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/nothing-us-here-deported-guatemalans-plan-return-u-s-n858231

    NO AMNESTY

    Don't reward the criminal actions of millions of illegal aliens by giving them citizenship.


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  2. #2
    Moderator Beezer's Avatar
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    Quit breeding like rats, open a business and fix your own country.

    Send for your Wife and SIX CHILDREN!!!
    ILLEGAL ALIENS HAVE "BROKEN" OUR IMMIGRATION SYSTEM

    DO NOT REWARD THEM - DEPORT THEM ALL

  3. #3
    Senior Member Judy's Avatar
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    It's disgusting. Farm your land, grow watermelons and sell them to Walmart. They buy Guatemalan watermelons. You and your uselessness and whining are not our problems, because you are not our responsibility.
    A Nation Without Borders Is Not A Nation - Ronald Reagan
    Save America, Deport Congress! - Judy

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  4. #4
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    Where do they get the attitude that it is the responsibility of the US to take care of every poor person in the world? We have made it too easy and attractive for them to come in here and squat. We need to make the punishment for coming here illegally so unpleasant that they will stop coming.

  5. #5
    Senior Member Captainron's Avatar
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    Trump has his flaws, and there is no really great jump ahead in immigration control. But there has been a steady enactment of better policies.
    "Men of low degree are vanity, Men of high degree are a lie. " David
    Join our efforts to Secure America's Borders and End Illegal Immigration by Joining ALIPAC's E-Mail Alerts network (CLICK HERE)

  6. #6
    Senior Member Captainron's Avatar
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    How Trump is quietly rewriting US immigration policy


    By Tal Kopan, CNN
    Updated 3:48 PM ET, Fri March 30, 2018

    https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/30/polit...aul/index.html

    "Men of low degree are vanity, Men of high degree are a lie. " David
    Join our efforts to Secure America's Borders and End Illegal Immigration by Joining ALIPAC's E-Mail Alerts network (CLICK HERE)

  7. #7
    Moderator Beezer's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Captainron View Post
    How Trump is quietly rewriting US immigration policy


    By Tal Kopan, CNN
    Updated 3:48 PM ET, Fri March 30, 2018

    https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/30/polit...aul/index.html


    "They're trying to turn our tradition of welcoming newcomers into a visible and invisible wall that keeps people out and kicks people out."

    ----------------------

    CNN...we do NOT welcome illegal alien breeding leeches who break our laws and will become a Public Charge costing us $113 BILLION a year.

    We do not welcome their pregnant ones, their UAC's, their drugs, gangs and criminals. We do not "welcome" the fact that they come here, mouth off and wave their countries Flag.

    We want our Laws enforced...we want them to stop coming here and we want them ALL deported!

    It is time for these countries to take care of their own citizens...not DUMP them over our borders and onto the backs of U.S. taxpayers.

    WE DO WELCOME THE FACT THAT WE HAVE A PRESIDENT THAT IS FIGHTING HARD TO ENFORCE OUR LAWS AND WE WANT DEPORTATIONS RAMPED UP AND A CLEAR MESSAGE SENT...DO NOT COME HERE!!!

    GET IN LINE LIKE THE 2 BILLION PEOPLE ON THE PLANET THAT "DREAM" OF COMING HERE!
    Last edited by Beezer; 03-30-2018 at 04:37 PM.
    ILLEGAL ALIENS HAVE "BROKEN" OUR IMMIGRATION SYSTEM

    DO NOT REWARD THEM - DEPORT THEM ALL

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