Thread: Mexican Street Children - New Wave of Immigrants?

I keep reading over and over how cruel we Americans are. Emotional blackmail is continuously used on us. We are constantly being told about the values of family life of the Mexican people. How dare we Americans deport illegal Mexican aliens. We are causing these children to live in fear, splitting families up.

I started thinking of my trips to Mexico in the 70's and all the children, begging in the streets. Then I started remembering all the news articles showing these poor homeless children. Children abandoned, fending for themselves. Where were the parents, where were these families then? I did a little research and here is some imformation I found published as late as 2009.

Mexican street children facts & statistics
Mexico City has 1,900,000 underprivileged and street children. 240,000 of these are abandoned children. (Action International Ministries)
In the central area of Mexico City there are 11,172 street children. 1,020 live in the street and 10,152 work there. (City of Mexico/Fideicomiso, Report, 1991)
In 1996, the Inter-American Development Bank and UNICEF estimated there were 40 million children living or working on the streets of Latin America--out of an estimated total population of 500 million.
Begging - Some 20% of the children survive by begging, 24% by selling goods, and others by doing subcontracting work. ("Over 5 Million Child Laborers in Mexico", Xinhua: Comtex, 14 September 2000, citing National System for the Integral Development of the Family (DIF), "Prevention, Attention, Discouragement and Eradication of Childhood Labor")
8-11 million children under the age of 15 years are working in Mexico. (US Dept of Labor, Sweat and Toil of Children, 1994, citing US Dept of State, Human Rights Report, 1993)

Murder, consistent abuse and inhumane treatment are the "norm" for these children, whose ages range from six to 18. They often resort to petty theft and prostitution for survival. They are extremely vulnerable to sexually transmitted diseases including HIV/AIDS. An estimated 90% of them are addicted to inhalants such as shoe glue and paint thinner


http://www.mexico-child-link.org/street ... istics.htm

I wonder are these children now grown; the members of drug cartels or are they the new generation of illegal aliens in the United States? Is this why I cannot relate this new generation to the Hispanics I knew and loved in my youth?

I think there has been a problem for a long long time. My mother-in-law's mother was made destitute when her father died. He worked for the government and they managed to find a way not to pay his pension to his wife. (Sounds like today in the US huh?) She was the youngest and she ended up as slave labor on a ranch because her mother had to work and the rancher's wife promised to take good care of her - NOT. So she never got the education that her older siblings received and her tortured life brought her to the US after she got out of the slave child situation.

Sarum, I know the life they led was terrible and no one should have to go through what they did. However the fact is they had to lie, steal or beg to survive. In 1996 there were 40 million of these kids in Latin America. I am sure many of them became criminals to survive. But we have Mexico telling us that all illegal immigrants are good hard working people. I am sure many are, but you cannot tell me that a lot of these street children have not grown up and immigrated to the U.S. bringing with them the values they learned on the streets of Mexico.

Children abandoned, fending for themselves. Where were the parents, where were these families then?

These are the wonderful family values that are crossing our southern border by the hundreds daily.

MSherry, would you please add links to the info in your original post. We here at alipac consider outside documentation to be vital to our cause.

Ratbstard here is the link for these facts:

http://www.mexico-child-link.org/street ... istics.htm

If you type in streetchildren Mexico on your search button you would be amazed at how much information comes up on this subject.

The origins of street children
There are many reasons why children are abandoned & left homeless, such as domestic violence & family breakup, as well as economic migration of the parents to the United States. In Mexico City or Puebla, it is not unusual to see homeless children as young as four or five years old working in the street, selling chewing-gum, matches or trinkets.

The child with learning disability is much more likely to be abandoned because s/he cannot contribute economically to the family from an early age. Street children are very prone to abuse and exploitation in these circumstances. In addition many children living in the streets have developed problems of substance and drug abuse such as glue sniffing. Solvent abuse has been linked to permanent brain damage.

http://www.mexico-child-link.org/street-children.htm

Mexicans and Human Rights groups need to step up to the plate and stand
up to the Mexican government to make them clean up their act and
stimulate their own economy in favor of the poor in Mexico instead of
wasting time and valuable resources fighting for rights of illegals in this
country.

Mexico is one of the richest nations in the world with tremendous natural
resourses and international trade. There is no excuse why it should be a
third world country.

THIS is the heart of the immigration issue!

Def

I agree with you MontereySherry. Life is cheap in many nations and when you are just trying to stay alive and feed your belly the morality is for you and only you - anything else is stupid frivolity. So I know that if I were in Mexico most likely I would also make the trek. Their racism includes that all US citizens, especially euro-descent peoples are complicit and responsible for damage done by our government and our corporations. They are not capable of seeing that citizens also are victims and targets until we are reduced to the same exact or worse circumstance as them.

So I also find much falafalizing (philosophizing) of the liberal left as ridiculously out of touch - I see that they, due to lack of real world experience, are reaching for understanding from within their college psychology/sociology training, really reaching while third world criminals take advantage of our sense of fair play - we already have enough of that domestically - we do not need to add to the inflammatory unsettled mix we already have. The criminal tricks the mark by taking advantage of a civilized social/moral culture (help me find the lost puppy) and so do criminal nations use our civilization and laws against us.

Mexico considers 'ban' on street children
New law would require officials to move street kids into schools or other programs – or face a $420-per-child fine.

.By Sara Miller Llana, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor / June 1, 2009

Mexico City
Children selling gum or washing windshields in the streets of Mexico are as ubiquitous as traffic lights.

But a new proposal here would forbid the presence of street children in cities and towns across the country.

Under a proposed modification of a federal child protection law, state and municipal authorities would be required to round up kids living or working on the streets and place them in the care of social service agencies. Authorities who fail to do so would face fines.

The proposal, now being studied in congressional commissions, could be modified, and a final vote is months away. But it is already garnering a strong reaction among children's rights advocates.

Supporters of the change say it finally turns attention to society's most vulnerable, attempting to provide children a dignified life of classrooms, after-school activities, and ample playtime.

But for critics, this move to round up street children is too simplistic. It fails to address the complex roots of the problem and, at worst, is an effort to simply sweep the presence of poverty under the rug, they say.

"It's another attempt to lock children up and clean the city of a social problem, as has been tried here and in the rest of Latin America over the decades," says Dolores Munozcano Skidmore, a sociologist who studies street children at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

How big is the problem?

The term street children includes those who are homeless, as well as those who live with their families but work to supplement family incomes. Their presence in Mexico has grown with the decades, in tandem with migration from the countryside to the cities.

According to Mexico's National Agency for Family Development, in a 2004 study carried out with UNICEF, some 108,917 children are at risk, living on the streets in Mexico. Mexico's national statistics office estimates that 3.6 million children (under the age of 1 work, and of those, 41.5 percent do not attend school.

Since 1992, children are required by law to attend school through ninth grade. But many still drop out before the age of 15.

"In both rural and urban areas," according to the sponsors of the proposal – Sen. Mario López Valdez and Sen. Adolfo Toledo Infanzón – "child exploitation has fully become the norm. Thousands of children have been obligated to abandon school to work."

The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) senators say that the economic crisis – Mexico's economy is predicted to contract by 5.5 percent this year – will make the situation even more dire. In the state of Guerrero, for example, they cite national statistics showing that 202,000 children work to provide income to their families, and of those, over a quarter have dropped out of school.

A $421 fine per street kid?

The modified article would obligate authorities to send children under age 14 that they encounter on the streets to government social service agencies. The fine for not doing so is up to 100 days of minimum wage (5,500 pesos or $421).

It has drawn fierce criticism in Mexico. A group of 60 children's rights organizations sent a letter to the senators saying that their proposal "criminalizes poverty."

But Reynaldo Vieyra Marquez, director of the National Parents Union in Mexico, disagrees. "No one is blaming the kids," Mr. Vieyra Marquez says. "They are the victims; it is commendable that someone is starting to put the focus on them."

Still, many say it does not address the economic reality that Mexican families face – in a country where over half the population lives in poverty.

"It is not that we want to see children working as a way of life," says David Espinosa, an education psychologist at the Interdisciplinary Center for Social Development (CIDES), one of 60 organizations that signed the letter against the proposal, which was introduced earlier this month.

CIDES offers classes to at-risk children to bolster their formal studies. Many of them miss class for their jobs. "They have an economic necessity to help their families," Mr. Espinosa says. "The politicians want to create a fictitious city, where they say poverty does not exist."

Selling food at a subway station

Working has been a reality for teenager Eleuteria Dominguez for as long as she can remember. At a recent day at CIDES, she goes through drills with her classmates on what to do in case of an earthquake – a practical lesson that includes a grammar and spelling exercise meant to reinforce lessons at school. She, her three siblings, and her mother sell food at a subway station – mostly on weekends, she says. "Our father doesn't help much," she says. "I like to help my mom."

This is not the government's first attempt to get children off the streets, and in various cities across the country, local officials already do so.

In 2000, Mexico launched a program called "From the Street to Life," to bring together the government and various nonprofits to address the problems of street children. The government has also launched an incentive program to keep children in classrooms, paying families monthly allowances if their children stay in school.

In the 1990s, especially as street children began using drugs and getting caught up in gangs, governments across the region, from Brazil to Central America, relied on a policy of "sweep the streets." "The tendency has been for governments in Latin America to hide or deny the problem," says Uche Ewelukwa, an associate professor of law at the University of Arkansas who has written on street children's rights. But she says such programs, even when touted as a security measure, are often misguided. "If you take children off of the street, more will come onto the street."

Ms. Munozcano Skidmore says such programs have failed because there are neither the resources nor the understanding of the complexities of why children end up living or working on the streets. Many children are not merely homeless or working for money, for instance. Many have long gotten caught up in organized crime webs, are drug users, or have been forced into prostitution. Some don't attend school because they do not perceive that formal education will offer them any benefit; instead they opt to work as informal vendors. Many sent to social service organizations simply escape the next day.
Sen. Guillermo Tamborrel Suárez, of the ruling Nacional Action Party (PAN) and head of the commission for vulnerable groups studying the proposal, says he is committed to getting children off the streets. "Each child has a right to live in a family, a right to health, a right to eduction," he says. But he says he would like to see the language modified to include a case-by-case study of each child's needs and a process of convincing those who can to return to school or home. "Assistance centers should be the last resort
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas ... -woam.html