Thread: {Sob}Mexican families face difficult choice

Mexican families face difficult choice
Staff and agencies
20 May, 2007




By JULIE WATSON, Associated Press Writer Sat May 19, 6:25 PM ET

CANCITA, Mexico - Since they joined their deported parents in Mexico, 7-year-old Adriana has stopped screaming "Papa!" in her sleep and 10-year-old Yadira‘s asthma has eased. Pedro, 15, doesn‘t break into tears anymore, and Adrian, 12, thinks of his new life as an adventure.

Tens of thousands of families are facing similar choices, and even more soon could if Congress goes ahead with an overhaul of U.S. immigration laws.

The Senate is expected to begin debate Monday on a sweeping bill that would provide a pathway to citizenship for 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. The bill would limit the importance of family ties, capping visas for parents of U.S. citizens at 40,000 a year and changing a preference system that for four decades has favored such ties.

Ramirez never went to school. He sneaked across the border as a 16-year-old boy, learning English as he worked his way up from a minimum-wage factory job to night supervisor at an Albertson‘s supermarket.

He and his wife also applied for residency, but were denied after their lawyer was disbarred. Immigration officials say they evaded notices to appear in court.

Before his father was deported in February, Pedro‘s biggest problems were how to get into UCLA law school and persuading his football coach to let him be quarterback. Now, he says he might have to get used to the family‘s two-room shack and bathing in a canal to keep the family together.

His mother, Isabel, said she‘ll let her children decide what they want to do. If they return to California, the boys would live with an aunt in Newark, Calif., and the girls with their fifth-grade teacher in Palo Alto.

After Ramirez was deported in February, Pedro Jr. broke into tears in his math class and couldn‘t concentrate. He was appalled by his mother‘s monitoring ankle bracelet, saying: "You‘re not a criminal!"

Isabel, 36, tries to make life in Mexico as normal as possible for the children. She bought a cushioned toilet seat for the outhouse, but it slides off the wooden bench. She incessantly sweeps the dirt floor of the shack where she cooks and splashes bleach on the ground to keep away the flies.

Earlier this month, a half-dozen military helicopters swooped into Cancita after gunmen in a nearby town killed five soldiers in a midday shootout. The troops frisked Pedro Jr. and his father as they went house-to-house looking for drugs and weapons.

"I was a little nervous," Pedro Jr. admitted sheepishly.

But his main fear is for what will happen to his parents. If they stay in Cancita, there is no work. If they try to return to the U.S., they‘ll have to go illegally through the dangerous desert.

If the children stay in Cancita, they‘ll have to learn to read and write in Spanish. Adrian, a seventh grader, is struggling with "Los Tres Cerditos" — "The Three Little Pigs."

Pedro Jr. spends his days burning rap songs on his dust-covered computer and transferring them to his MP3 player, which the neighbors think is a cell phone.

Yadira said when she explained the device could play songs from the Internet, they asked: "What‘s the Internet?"

"I don‘t want to go to school here. It‘s no good. There‘s nowhere to play," she said. But she added: "I don‘t want to go back and leave my parents."
http://www.onelocalnews.com/whiterockre ... &id=111785

:P :P She bought a cushioned toilet seat for the outhouse :P :P

The future of America...

So they are teaching their children that it is okay to break the law and sneak into another country, and demand rights and privileges, and... That the parents are willing to leave them with a relative...

This article gets no sympathy from me.

These parents should feel guilty for having children and putting them through this. If you can't provide for them, don't have them.

This is not America's problem. This is the problem of a bunch of irresponsible people and their overwhelmingly foolish religious leaders that are giving them reproduction advice.

Darwinism. You can't save the ignorant masses from themselves. I'm not taking responsiblitly for thier poor choices and they are just going to have to learn their lessons the hard way.

Dixie

Per the Ambassador of Mexico they are receiving 300 billion a year from America...so why doesn't the government of Mexico buy everyone a cushion?

JULIE WATSON, must have take to writing short stories or something because this didnt seem real to me.


Sorry maybe my hart has grown cooled.


You know Maybe, If you dont braek the law you wont face the law. If you dont steal from Americans we tend to be nice were like decent people that way .

I DO feel sorry for the children...they're innocent in all this. HOWEVER, having said that, it's now the parents responsibility (not the American taxpayer's) to care for their children. As far as I'm concerned, those parents were utter and complete fools to have children they couldn't take care of and provide for in their own country. They made their bed, now they need to lie in it.

The sins of the fathers............

We need to put an end to the anchor babies, as well.