Immigrants Who Speak Indigenous Languages Encounter Isolation

NYTimes: Laura is a Mexican immigrant who lives in East Harlem, a neighborhood with one of the largest Latino populations in New York City. Yet she understands so little of what others are saying around her that she might just as well be living in Siberia.

Laura, 27, speaks Mixtec, a language indigenous to Mexico. But she knows little Spanish and no English. She is so scared of getting lost on the subway and not being able to find her way home that she tends to spend her days within walking distance of her apartment. Read more. 

Kids First: A Response to the Southern Border Humanitarian Crisis (Congressional Progressive Caucus)

Congressional Progressive Caucus: The United States and the international community have long recognized the unique needs of children seeking asylum. As an extremely vulnerable population, unaccompanied migrant children need special care and protection. We must not allow politics to jeopardize any child’s safety and we should immediately reject attempts to solve the migration crisis on our southern border by circumventing due process or rule of law. Calls for expediting removal of children without due process, back to the violence they have escaped, is an attempt to simplify a complex situation and it is a derelict of U.S. responsibility under international standards. When examining the reasons for migration, the United  Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) found nearly 60 percent of children had fled violence and were in need of international protection. Only two of 404 children interviewed reported that they had traveled to the U.S. because of rumors of potential immigration reform.

 An effective response must recognize that this is largely a refugee crisis and must place the best interest of the children first. Abrogation or repeal of the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act,
including the protections to children arriving from non-contiguous countries, will do nothing to alleviate the situation and could place children in harm’s way. Read more. 

From Germany to Mexico: How America’s source of immigrants has changed over a century

PEW Research Center 
By Jens Manuel Krogstad and Michael Keegan

With more than 40 million immigrants, the United States is the top destination in the world for those moving from one country to another. Mexico, which shares a nearly 2,000-mile border with the U.S., is the source of the largest wave of immigration in history from a single country to the United States.

But today’s volume of immigrants, in some ways, is a return to America’s past. A century ago, the U.S. experienced another large wave of immigrants. Although smaller at 18.2 million, they hailed largely from Europe. Many Americans can trace their roots to that wave of migrants from 1890-1919, when Germany dominated as the country sending the most immigrants to many of the U.S. states, although the United Kingdom, Canada and Italy were also strongly represented.

In 1910, Germany was the top country of birth among U.S. immigrants, accounting for 18% of all immigrants (or 2.5 million) in the United States. Germans made up the biggest immigrant group in 17 states and the District of Columbia, while Mexico accounted for the most immigrants in just three states (Arizona, New Mexico and Texas). Behind Germany, the second-most number of immigrants in the U.S. were from Russia and the countries that would become the USSR (11%, or 1.6 million). Read more. 

On Location Video: Mexico's drug cartels recruit migrant labor

GlobalPost
By: Deborah Bonello
August 4, 2013

Mexico — As the US Congress mulls legislation to increase fencing and manpower on the United States southern border, migrants from Central America face increasing perils as they cross Mexico. The Mexican crackdown on drug trafficking, partly financed by the US government, is prompting criminal gangs to exploit other revenue streams such as kidnapping and extortion. And these gangs are now tapping migrant streams for new recruits. Those fleeing poverty back home find it hard to resist the lure of a life of crime, and some are being given no choice.  Watch here. 

Millions of immigrants waiting for green cards

USA Today
Daniel González, The Arizona Republic
June 23, 2013

The long wait is at the center of the debate over whether to give the estimated 11 million immigrants living in the country illegally a pathway to citizenship.

Phoenix - Alejandro Bojorquez wants to play by the rules.

The Mexican citizen has patiently waited for years for a green card to allow him to come to the United States legally, even as millions of compatriots crossed the border illegally.

But his wait has been long. Very, very long.

Bojorquez was 14 when his father, Jesus Bojorquez, then a legal permanent resident, filed a green-card petition on his behalf. Alejandro is now 29.  Read more. 

The Other Mexicans: Indigenous people come from a world apart from Spanish-speaking Mexicans

National Geographic

Katya Cengel

Published June 24, 2013

Mixteco is Villegas's native language. It is the only language he spoke fluently when he came to the United States sixteen years ago at the age of seven. The trilingual rap song is his own creation and he takes to heart its Spanish language refrain: "Mixteco is a language, not a dialect. It's the gold that I treasure."

Villegas spent two years working in the grape fields where his older siblings still toil. Now he is a community worker at the Fresno headquarters of the Binational Center for the Development of Oaxacan Indigenous Communities, a nonprofit that focuses on the specific needs of indigenous Mexicans who have migrated to California. Across the United States these indigenous migrants are isolated even more than other immigrant groups. They speak neither English nor Spanish and are often looked down on by Spanish-speaking Mexicans.

They may not be the Spanish-speaking migrants that politicians picture when they discuss immigration reform, but as their numbers increase and trilingual members like Miguel organize, they have their own stake in the fractious debate in Washington. A possible language requirement would be particularly difficult for indigenous communities. Without Spanish, their road to English fluency will be that much harder. Their own languages are not traditionally written languages. Many have not had formal schooling.  Read more. 

Who’s crossing the Mexico border? A new survey tries to find out.

Washington Post
By Brad Plumer
June 2, 2013

Last year, the Border Patrol caught about 356,000 immigrants trying to cross illegally at the U.S.-Mexico border. That’s thought to be about half of all attempts.

It also isn’t much of a deterrent. About 43 percent of those detained say they’ll try to cross again in the near future — often because they’re trying to get back to a job or family members waiting for them in the United States.

That’s one upshot of a big new survey (pdf) from the National Center for Border Security and Immigration at the University of Arizona. The researchers interviewed more than 1,000 detainees at the Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector in 2012.  Read more. 

Undocumented migrants back in Mexico hope to some day return to US

The Guardian 
by Amanda Holpuch in Guadalajara
February 4, 2013

For millions of undocumented migrants who have spent years in the US legal shadows, the rupture of the political deadlock on immigration was the realisation of what once seemed a forlorn hope.

But even if the moves to fix America's broken immigration system result in a deal that once seemed so elusive, for many others it will come too late. Those are the people for whom the pressure of living without proper legal status bore down too hard, and they returned home.

Most of them will never be allowed back: anyone who has lived illegally in the US for more than a year is permanently barred from ever re-entering the country, unless they can argue for an exemption on the grounds of "extreme or unusual hardship". And there are no plans to change that particularly harsh provision in America's notoriously tough immigration regime.

Many former undocumented migrants return to Guadalajara in Mexico. It's been dubbed "Mexico's Silicon Valley" and those who return from the US with bilingual skills can easily find a high-paying job at call centers in multinational corporations. Here, there is a ready-made support system for people trying to find their footing in the country they were raised, but barely know.  Read more. 

Women’s Migration Networks in Mexico and Beyond (review)

GeoMexico  November 17, 2012

As long ago as 1885, Ernst Georg Ravenstein, a German-English cartographer, proposed seven “laws of migration” that arose from his studies of migration in the U.K.

The original seven laws, as expressed by Ravenstein, were:

1) Most migrants only proceed a short distance, and toward centers of absorption.
2) As migrants move toward absorption centers, they leave “gaps” that are filled up by migrants from more remote districts, creating migration flows that reach to “the most remote corner of the kingdom.”
3) The process of dispersion is inverse to that of absorption.
4) Each main current of migration produces a compensating counter-current.
5) Migrants proceeding long distances generally go by preference to one of the great centers of commerce or industry.
6) The natives of towns are less migratory than those of the rural parts of the country.
7) Females are more migratory than males.

These laws, though certainly not accepted uncritically, have provided a basic framework for many later studies of migration. Surprisingly, despite the wording of law 7, there has been remarkably little focus on female migration in the literature, with far more attention being paid in most studies to the migration of men.


Recognizing this, anthropologist Tamar Wilson provides a detailed account of several important aspects of female migration in her Women’s Migration Networks in Mexico and Beyond (University of New Mexico Press, 2009).

Wilson’s book focuses on the experiences and thoughts of doña Consuelo [all names are pseudonyms], a woman she met while researching in Colonia Popular, a Mexicali squatter settlement, in 1988, and her daughters Anamaria and Irma.  Read more. 

The economics and human costs of migration: violence and healing in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands

The Americas MexicoBlog is pleased to post this guest blog by our contributor, Dave Feldman. Dave has been volunteering on the border and brings us his observations and reflections on migrants along the Arizona-Sonora border and US projects to provide help.

By Dave Feldman
I am not usually one to frequent McDonald’s, but I nonetheless head towards the double golden arches, which seem to cry out: “Welcome to the United States of America.” I am returning to Douglas, Arizona after an afternoon spent at the Migrant Resource Center in the Mexican border town of Agua Prieta, Sonora.

The MRC is a partnership of many different people and organizations, such as the primarily Tucson-based activist aid group No More Deaths—who I am officially volunteering with for the second summer in a row—and the bi-national faith-based Frontera de Cristo, all working together towards the common goal of helping migrants caught in the deadly web of U.S. economic and border policy. We provide food, water, clothing, simple toiletries and basic first aid, and connect folks with other organizations and shelters serving migrants in town. Some have been caught by Border Patrol and deported after walking for as long as eight days in the desert, while others are coming from the south and using the town as a departure point before trying their luck. Raia, a fellow volunteer, had heard that a vigil for those souls whose luck had run out among the cacti and rattlesnakes was going to take place in the McDonald’s parking lot, and so we decide to stop by before heading back to our double-wide trailer in the Hidden Valley Mobile Ranch.

We are met by Mark from Frontera De Cristo, along with a couple of local volunteers and a group of students from Duke—who have arrived with the Tucson-based Border Links—and Stanford. We also spot Kara, a No More Deaths volunteer we met a couple days before at our training session in Tucson. She is based in ambos Nogales—both border towns share the same name—but has just gotten back from a day in the desert near Arivaca, AZ, where No More Deaths maintains a camp and leaves water for the many migrants attempting to cross over to el Norte.

The 100+ degree heat, mountainous terrain and frequent summer monsoons do not make it a logical crossing point along the nearly 2,000 mile-long U.S./Mexico border, but the increased patrolling of urban areas through the construction of a military-style wall and the deployment of heavily armed Border Patrol and National Guard agents has left little choice. The so-called Southwest Border Initiative, first launched by the Clinton Administration in El Paso/Ciudad Juárez in late 1993, is essentially a militarized arm of the controversial North American Free Trade Agreement.

US-born kids of migrants lose rights in Mexico

The children of migrants who have been deported from the United States or returned to Mexico on their own due to the economic slump in the U.S face many challenges. U.S.-born children cannot register for any public services including school without going through a lengthy and often expensive legal process.

AP: MALINALCO, Mexico - As a cold drizzle washed over this town of narrow cobblestone streets in the forested highlands of central Mexico, mothers waiting outside the colonial-era cultural center wrapped wool blankets around the infants snuggled in their arms. Other parents tightened plastic bags around folders filled with U.S. passports and birth certificates from California, Ohio and Texas.

One by one, the parents filed inside, sat down before a Mexican government worker and told stories of lives that had crossed the U.S.-Mexico border twice. First, they crossed illegally into the United States for work, found jobs, and had children. Then, they were caught and deported, or left on their own as the work dried up with the U.S. economic slump. Now they are back in Mexico with children who are American citizens by virtue of being born on U.S. soil. Read more. 

Posted by Marlene Medrano. 

Op-Ed: Death in the Desert

NY Times (Op-Ed): NO matter how the Supreme Court rules this month in Arizona v. United States, which will determine the fate of Arizona’s aggressive illegal immigration law, the national conversation about illegal immigration has shifted. As recent data from the Pew Hispanic Center and the United States Border Patrol indicate, illegal immigration is on the wane, with arrests of migrants trying to cross the United States-Mexico border at a 40-year low and with net migration to the United States at a standstill — and perhaps even reversing direction. In the eyes of many, this is cause for celebration: no more straining the resources of border states while migrants risk life and limb for a shot at a better life.

But this rosy image of “success” ignores the larger, sobering picture of which migrant death and suffering is still very much a part. Read more.

American Children, Now Struggling to Adjust to Life in Mexico

NY Times: IZÚCAR DE MATAMOROS, Mexico — Jeffrey Isidoro sat near the door of his fifth-grade classroom here in central Mexico, staring outside through designer glasses that, like his Nike sneakers and Nike backpack, signaled a life lived almost entirely in the United States. His parents are at home in Mexico. Jeffrey is lost.

When his teacher asked in Spanish how dolphins communicate, a boy next to him reached over to underline the right answer. When it was Jeffrey’s turn to read, his classmates laughed and shouted “en inglés, en inglés” — causing Jeffrey to blush. Read more. 

Immigration Realities: Illegal immigrants live on edge of society, fearing deportation

Another story from a series on the realities of the lives of undocumented immigrants; from the Janesville (Wisconsin) Gazette.

GazetteXtra: "Every year, migrants risk their lives to illegally cross the 2,100-mile border that separates Mexico and the United States, two neighboring nations that have one of the largest income gaps on Earth.

"I was lucky," said Ana, who lives in Rock County. "I've heard terrible stories about what can happen." More than a decade ago, Ana left behind her mother and nine siblings in Puebla, south of Mexico City, to join her husband in the United States. He had crossed the border illegally to work and had planned to return after two years. "It was hard to stay separated from each other," Ana recalled. "I told him that I can come and make money, too."" read more

Immigration Realities: “Underground America: Narratives of Undocumented Lives”

A book review

Latin America Working Group: "I was not prepared when I opened Underground America: Narratives of Undocumented Lives. One moment I was sitting at my desk, and the next I was with Roberto, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico. I followed him as he moved from one underpaying, exhausting job to the next; working even harder once he had his own family. I was by his side when he received amnesty, but his family didn’t. They voluntarily left the country while he stayed behind to continue working to support them. Here Roberto recounts his own experiences, providing me a glimpse into his struggles and feelings of profound loneliness and loss." read more

Immigration Reality: Immigrants search for better life and understanding

Another personal immigrant story from Wisconsin. The local paper is doing a series to introduce its readers to the real lives of Mexican immigrants in its community. Laudable!

GazetteXtra: "Jorge Islas-Martinez sometimes stares at the underbelly of a passing train and wonders how he survived. "I hid underneath it," he recalled. "Suddenly, the train started to move. The only thing I could do is hang on." Inches off the ground, he clung to the cold mass of pulsing steel in the darkness. He prayed hard as the train picked up speed into California. "I thought about my mother, my brothers," he said. "I thought I would die."

More than 25 years later, he recounted the harrowing details of eluding immigration officers at the border in Tijuana, Mexico. "It seemed like hours and hours underneath that train," Islas-Martinez said. "I had my eyes closed. When the train stopped, I crawled out, and I could not feel my body. I was so scared. My heart was pounding."

Since his dangerous journey to the United States, Islas-Martinez has come a long way. Today, he is a United States citizen who works as a translator, teacher and bill collector. He volunteers widely in his community and owns a home. He also is a vocal activist for immigration reform." read more

Immigration Reality: Young father is proud to be American, but wants to pass on Mexican heritage

From Wisconsin, the story of a Mexican-American father.

GazetteXtra: "Antonio Cortez was born in Mexico but raised in Whitewater. His parents brought him to the United States when he was 4. Today, he feels like a tourist in Mexico. Still, he identifies himself first as Mexican, then as American.

"Just because I have pride in being Mexican does not mean that I do not want to be an American," he said. "I gave up my loyalty to Mexico when I took the oath of citizenship to the United States. I love this country. But I also love my country of origin." He believes in hanging on to his cultural heritage so he can pass it on." read more

Immigration Crackdown--the Reality: Facing deportation to Mexico for a fourth time, he has NH roots

What has motivated a young Mexican man to cross the border--and be deported--four times.

New Hampshire NEWS06: "Four times, Alejandro Olvera-Corona has swum the Rio Grande, paid off the drug cartels that terrorize Mexican border towns, and crossed the Texas desert to make his way north. Just 29 years old, he's now in a Dover jail awaiting deportation to his native Mexico — for the fourth time." read more

Immigration Reality: Commission says immigrants, illegal and otherwise, have had a positive impact on Maryland

AP/Washington Post: "A new report highlights the positive impact of foreign-born residents in Maryland and criticizes efforts to deport or deny services to illegal immigrants and their children. The University of Maryland on Thursday released the report by the Commission to Study the Impact of Immigrants in Maryland. It was prepared for Maryland lawmakers." read more

Border Reality: Minnesota young man uses EMT training to aid immigrants along U.S./Mexico border

Here is one of those local news acccounts that takes you to the personal level of an issue: this one is the border and migration through the desert. 

Daily Globe | Worthington, Minnesota: " Growing up in Worthington, Dan Wilson was acquainted with the controversial issues surrounding immigration. “... I knew people made a lot of sacrifices to do it, and I had also seen some of the reasons for the immigration. I was feeling connected to that last step of immigration, and it was intriguing to me.”

So Wilson spent last summer working in the Sonora Desert along the U.S./Mexico border, using his skills as a trained emergency medical technician and witnessing firsthand another aspect of the immigration story." read more