By Emilio Godoy
The Inter Press Service
November 7, 2010
MEXICO CITY - The last time Estela Domínguez of Mexico saw her daughter Estela Paz was in April 2006, when the young woman left home with the goal of reaching Las Vegas, Nevada.
Paz, who was 27 at the time, planned to cross the U.S. border at the town of Altar in the northwestern state of Sonora. She was traveling without documents, and with her six-year-old son Emiliano. She was heading back to her job making bracelets.
But she never made it.
"I talked to her on the phone just before she was to cross the border, but I never heard from her again," Domínguez, a supermarket bagger in Córdoba, a city in the southeastern Mexican state of Veracruz, told IPS. "What I want most in the world is for her to come back, and for her children to see her again."
Her grandson survived, and was reunited with his family when the "coyotes" or people smugglers contacted them in the United States. He is now living with his aunt.
Domínguez, 57, joined a protest convoy of 13 members of the Network of Committees of Migrants and Relatives of Honduras (Red COMIFAH), which set out from Honduras on Oct. 26 and reached the Mexican capital on the night of Nov. 3.
The NGO estimates that some 800 Honduran migrants have gone missing over the last decade in Mexico, on their way to the United States.
"We located one Honduran in Tapachula (a Mexican city on the Guatemalan border) and we have information about five other people," the executive secretary of Red COMIFAH, Ian Quiroz, told IPS. "Our main objective is to find the people who are missing and also forge ties with local human rights organizations."
The Honduran NGO is taking part in the Alternative World Forum for Peoples in Movement, Thursday through Saturday in the Mexican capital. Under the slogan "No Human Being Is Illegal", the event has drawn scores of activists from the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa.
The main issues on the agenda of the forum are the promotion and defence of the human rights of migrants, and the key event is an international tribunal that will hold a symbolic trial focusing on eight cases of abuses against foreign migrants committed in different parts of the world.
Some 500,000 undocumented migrants from Central and South America cross Mexico every year in their attempt to reach the United States, according to estimates based on official statistics and figures from NGOs.
Along the way, they face the risk of arbitrary arrest, extortion, theft, assault, rape, kidnapping and murder, at the hands of youth gangs and organized crime, as well as corrupt police and other agents of the state.
Undocumented migrants cross the porous border between Mexico and Guatemala and ride what is known as the "train of death" through the southern states of Chiapas, Tabasco, Oaxaca and Veracruz, the most dangerous areas, before they head northwards towards the U.S. border.
But perhaps the most horrifying face of the phenomenon is the disappearance of migrants. A recent report by the Mexican legislature's committee on population, borders and migration affairs states that more than 60,000 Central and South Americans went missing between 1998 and 2008 in Mexico on their journey to the U.S.
In late August, 72 undocumented migrants from several Central and south American countries were killed on a ranch near the U.S. border in the northeastern state of Tamaulipas, presumably by members of Los Zetas, a crime syndicate made up of former elite Mexican army commandos that dominates the kidnapping of undocumented migrants racket.
The massacre destroyed any remaining shred of credibility that Mexico's migration policy might have had.
Names like those of Honduran migrants Junior Espinoza, Carlos Valle, Jorge Osorto and Brayan García have given a face to the tragedy. Fifty of the bodies have been identified, including those of 32 Hondurans, 12 Salvadorans, four Guatemalans, and two Brazilians.
But nothing has changed since the mass killing, according to migrant rights advocates. This week, a train running between Oaxaca and Veracruz, carrying numerous migrants perched on the roof of the wagons as usual, was assaulted and a score of people were kidnapped, Catholic priest Alejandro Solalinde, one of the leading advocates for migrants' rights, complained Thursday.
Solalinde, who runs a shelter for migrants in the state of Oaxaca, said the authorities are still not doing anything to prevent or investigate the frequent kidnappings and assaults.
So far this year, 56,566 undocumented migrants have been detained in their attempt to make it to the United Status. Most of them were from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, according to National Migration Institute (INM) statistics.
"Our chief demand is for the human rights of migrants to be respected," Elvira Arellano, a Mexican representative of Familia Latina Unida Sin Fronteras, a Chicago-based immigrant rights organisation that emerged in 1987, told IPS.
"We've had enough of being seen as the goose that lays the golden egg, because of the remittances we send home. We want solutions," Arellano said.
The 34-year-old Arellano, who lives in the west-central state of Michoacán, became a symbol of the fight for migrant rights after she took refuge for a year in the Adalberto United Methodist Church in Chicago, Illinois in defiance of a deportation order, to avoid being separated from her U.S.-born son.
She was deported to Mexico in 2007.
Her case, like the murders of the 72 migrants in Tamaulipas, is one of the cases that will be tried by a 20-member jury in the international tribunal, which held a first session Oct. 7-9 in Quito, Ecuador.
"We defend the right to emigrate, and we condemn Mexico's responsibility by omission in the massacre," said Quiroz, whose convoy met Thursday with the members of the congressional committee on population, borders and migration affairs.
The alternative forum was held parallel to the Peoples' Global Action on Migration, Development and Human Rights (PGA), held Tuesday through Friday in Mexico City.
Both events were organized ahead of the Fourth Global Forum on Migration and Development, to take place Nov. 8-11 in the resort city of Puerto Vallarta on Mexico's Pacific coast.
© 2010 Inter Press Service
Showing posts with label Critique of Mexican Policy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Critique of Mexican Policy. Show all posts
Monday, November 8, 2010
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Migrants struggling for work in Texas return to Mexico as a burden
By ALFREDO CORCHADO
The Dallas Morning News
Monday, February 1, 2010
CORRAL DE PIEDRAS, Mexico – The leader of this community has a message for its native sons and daughters who work in Texas and dream of returning home: Don't do it. You'll regret it.
To make her point, she has the perfect example: her husband.
Teresa Cadena Moreno, 34, the mayor's delegate in this farming community of 5,000 people in central Guanajuato state, has noticed a troubling trend over the past few months. With the slowdown in the U.S. economy, she is seeing a rising number of expatriates returning home. They're not coming just for a Christmas visit or town
celebration, but with every intention of staying permanently. And that has the town in a bind.
They come back with more expectations than they left with. They want better public services – roads, schools, sewer systems – and, more important, jobs. Some complain about the lack of drinking water. Their children often speak only English or broken Spanish.
"It's not easy," Cadena said. "We're a poor community that relies on the remittances of our migrants, not on them returning home to stay."
It's not easy for the returnees, either.
Last fall, Cadena's husband, Jaime Hernández, 32, returned home after working in construction in Tyler. He had every intention of staying put for a while, if not permanently.
As a painter in Texas, Hernández made in one day what he makes here in a week, roughly $100, he said. Yes, food is cheaper here and his home is paid for, but after a few weeks "you miss a good steak," he said.
"You have to watch every peso you spend," he said. "Here you fight to maintain whatever you have, not necessarily to get ahead."
In the third quarter of 2009, the Mexican government recorded an unusual trend: 108,078 emigrants returned home to stay, up 30 percent from 2008. The trend was expected to continue through the fourth quarter, though those numbers haven't been released yet.
Meanwhile, money sent home by Mexicans abroad plunged a record 15.7 percent in 2009, a reflection of the sluggish U.S. economy. Remittances are Mexico's No. 2 source of foreign income after oil, totaling $21.2 billion in 2009 compared with $25.1 billion in 2008, according to the central bank.
For a country that says it wants to see its emigrants return home, these trends put Mexico in a quandary.
For more than two decades, the Mexican government has been trying to re-establish bonds with Mexicans living abroad.
The government even has an agency, the Office for Mexicans Abroad, with a campaign that in part aims not just to lure return investment in Mexico, but to encourage emigrants to return home. Just not now.
"There are a lot of pretty, nostalgic words spoken by the Mexican government," said Primitivo Rodríguez, director of the Coalition for the Political Rights for Mexicans Abroad.
"But where is the substance? The question really is, 'How can Mexico reserve a job for you, immigrant, when the government can't even guarantee a job for your cousin or brother back home?' "
Mexico's long, devastating recession and drought have left millions unemployed or underemployed.
Even as President Felipe Calderón declares the recession officially over, it will take time for many municipalities to rise from financial ruin. Last year, the National Association of Mayors reported that more than 70 percent of Mexico's 2,439 municipalities were broke or near bankruptcy.
Corral de Piedras is no exception.
Jesús Ramírez Ramírez, 42, worked in construction throughout the southeastern United States but returned home last year when work became scarce. Now he sells corn on the cob for 10 pesos, about 90 cents, each.
"There's not much work here either. ... I'd like to go back, but it's hard," he said, pointing to one of his seven children.
And the returning emigrants add to the strain on the community, Cadena said.
"We don't have enough room in our schools, much less bilingual teachers, as some students arrive speaking English, and they can't fit in," she said.
"I don't want to sound ungrateful or offensive," she said, "because here almost everyone has a relative living in the United States."
Cadena runs a neighborhood grocery store with help from the money her husband has sent from the U.S. Recently, she said, he has been edgy, staying up late at night, worried about the difficulty of making a living at home. Finally, he told his wife he had decided to leave again.
"Being away from my wife, my kids, my hometown is very painful," Hernández said. "Living apart is no life. But so is living without a good-paying job."
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/world/stories/020210dnintreturn.40d7bb7.html
The Dallas Morning News
Monday, February 1, 2010
CORRAL DE PIEDRAS, Mexico – The leader of this community has a message for its native sons and daughters who work in Texas and dream of returning home: Don't do it. You'll regret it.
To make her point, she has the perfect example: her husband.
Teresa Cadena Moreno, 34, the mayor's delegate in this farming community of 5,000 people in central Guanajuato state, has noticed a troubling trend over the past few months. With the slowdown in the U.S. economy, she is seeing a rising number of expatriates returning home. They're not coming just for a Christmas visit or town
celebration, but with every intention of staying permanently. And that has the town in a bind.
They come back with more expectations than they left with. They want better public services – roads, schools, sewer systems – and, more important, jobs. Some complain about the lack of drinking water. Their children often speak only English or broken Spanish.
"It's not easy," Cadena said. "We're a poor community that relies on the remittances of our migrants, not on them returning home to stay."
It's not easy for the returnees, either.
Last fall, Cadena's husband, Jaime Hernández, 32, returned home after working in construction in Tyler. He had every intention of staying put for a while, if not permanently.
As a painter in Texas, Hernández made in one day what he makes here in a week, roughly $100, he said. Yes, food is cheaper here and his home is paid for, but after a few weeks "you miss a good steak," he said.
"You have to watch every peso you spend," he said. "Here you fight to maintain whatever you have, not necessarily to get ahead."
In the third quarter of 2009, the Mexican government recorded an unusual trend: 108,078 emigrants returned home to stay, up 30 percent from 2008. The trend was expected to continue through the fourth quarter, though those numbers haven't been released yet.
Meanwhile, money sent home by Mexicans abroad plunged a record 15.7 percent in 2009, a reflection of the sluggish U.S. economy. Remittances are Mexico's No. 2 source of foreign income after oil, totaling $21.2 billion in 2009 compared with $25.1 billion in 2008, according to the central bank.
For a country that says it wants to see its emigrants return home, these trends put Mexico in a quandary.
For more than two decades, the Mexican government has been trying to re-establish bonds with Mexicans living abroad.
The government even has an agency, the Office for Mexicans Abroad, with a campaign that in part aims not just to lure return investment in Mexico, but to encourage emigrants to return home. Just not now.
"There are a lot of pretty, nostalgic words spoken by the Mexican government," said Primitivo Rodríguez, director of the Coalition for the Political Rights for Mexicans Abroad.
"But where is the substance? The question really is, 'How can Mexico reserve a job for you, immigrant, when the government can't even guarantee a job for your cousin or brother back home?' "
Mexico's long, devastating recession and drought have left millions unemployed or underemployed.
Even as President Felipe Calderón declares the recession officially over, it will take time for many municipalities to rise from financial ruin. Last year, the National Association of Mayors reported that more than 70 percent of Mexico's 2,439 municipalities were broke or near bankruptcy.
Corral de Piedras is no exception.
Jesús Ramírez Ramírez, 42, worked in construction throughout the southeastern United States but returned home last year when work became scarce. Now he sells corn on the cob for 10 pesos, about 90 cents, each.
"There's not much work here either. ... I'd like to go back, but it's hard," he said, pointing to one of his seven children.
And the returning emigrants add to the strain on the community, Cadena said.
"We don't have enough room in our schools, much less bilingual teachers, as some students arrive speaking English, and they can't fit in," she said.
"I don't want to sound ungrateful or offensive," she said, "because here almost everyone has a relative living in the United States."
Cadena runs a neighborhood grocery store with help from the money her husband has sent from the U.S. Recently, she said, he has been edgy, staying up late at night, worried about the difficulty of making a living at home. Finally, he told his wife he had decided to leave again.
"Being away from my wife, my kids, my hometown is very painful," Hernández said. "Living apart is no life. But so is living without a good-paying job."
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/world/stories/020210dnintreturn.40d7bb7.html
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Immigration mishmash
By Ruben Navaratte
The Baxter Bulletin
April 9, 2009
What a mishmash the Obama administration has made of its position on immigration reform.
The president recently promised the Congressional Hispanic Caucus that he'd tackle immigration reform this year and argued that legalizing the undocumented improves the economic power of all workers. But more recently, Vice President Joe Biden told a group of Central American leaders that the economic crisis makes this a bad time to push the subject. "It's difficult to tell a constituency — while unemployment is rising, they're losing their jobs and their homes — that what we should do is in fact legalize (illegal immigrants) and stop all deportation," he said.
President Barack Obama and Biden should get their stories straight. Then again, there is similar confusion at the Department of Homeland Security, the agency charged with protecting the nation's borders.
On the one hand, Homeland Security officials recently told The Washington Post that Secretary Janet Napolitano has put the brakes on a series of planned immigration raids pending a department review of the policy. The officials said that in the event the raids resume, Napolitano has asked agents to be more careful in selecting targets and more conscious of the timing of these sweeps. One senior official said the temporary freeze signaled what will be a formal change in policy: Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents will be encouraged to crack down on employers and businesses instead of simply arresting low-level workers.
It is likely that this is all coming from the fallout over the administration's first work-site raid in Bellingham, Wash., several weeks ago. Activists called the action inconsistent with Obama's condemnation of such operations during the campaign. But, in truth, it was compatible with what Obama has said at other times about upholding the law.
Grass-roots immigrant activists may not be satisfied with this moratorium on raids. They tell me that they assume more raids are coming. In fact, they're already planning a new round of immigrant-rights marches for May 1 to protest the Obama administration's immigration policies.
Yet some in Congress fear that Napolitano's temporary freeze could become permanent, and the raids discontinued. They defend these sweeps as an essential tool for preserving jobs for Americans in the midst of a recession.
Talk about being out of touch. Members of Congress are kidding themselves if they think that most Americans — recession or no recession — are going to be fighting immigrants over the chance to scrape the bottom of the barrel by doing jobs that are dirty, dangerous or demeaning.
Meanwhile, Mexican officials in the country's border states are alarmed that, as a result of the raids and other enforcement measures, many of their people have already been deported from the United States. Recently, Mexican officials at the local and state level have begun complaining to their American counterparts that they don't have the infrastructure or jobs to accommodate the immigrants who are returning.
How pathetic.
http://www.baxterbulletin.com/article/20090409/OPINION01/904090324
The Baxter Bulletin
April 9, 2009
What a mishmash the Obama administration has made of its position on immigration reform.
The president recently promised the Congressional Hispanic Caucus that he'd tackle immigration reform this year and argued that legalizing the undocumented improves the economic power of all workers. But more recently, Vice President Joe Biden told a group of Central American leaders that the economic crisis makes this a bad time to push the subject. "It's difficult to tell a constituency — while unemployment is rising, they're losing their jobs and their homes — that what we should do is in fact legalize (illegal immigrants) and stop all deportation," he said.
President Barack Obama and Biden should get their stories straight. Then again, there is similar confusion at the Department of Homeland Security, the agency charged with protecting the nation's borders.
On the one hand, Homeland Security officials recently told The Washington Post that Secretary Janet Napolitano has put the brakes on a series of planned immigration raids pending a department review of the policy. The officials said that in the event the raids resume, Napolitano has asked agents to be more careful in selecting targets and more conscious of the timing of these sweeps. One senior official said the temporary freeze signaled what will be a formal change in policy: Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents will be encouraged to crack down on employers and businesses instead of simply arresting low-level workers.
It is likely that this is all coming from the fallout over the administration's first work-site raid in Bellingham, Wash., several weeks ago. Activists called the action inconsistent with Obama's condemnation of such operations during the campaign. But, in truth, it was compatible with what Obama has said at other times about upholding the law.
Grass-roots immigrant activists may not be satisfied with this moratorium on raids. They tell me that they assume more raids are coming. In fact, they're already planning a new round of immigrant-rights marches for May 1 to protest the Obama administration's immigration policies.
Yet some in Congress fear that Napolitano's temporary freeze could become permanent, and the raids discontinued. They defend these sweeps as an essential tool for preserving jobs for Americans in the midst of a recession.
Talk about being out of touch. Members of Congress are kidding themselves if they think that most Americans — recession or no recession — are going to be fighting immigrants over the chance to scrape the bottom of the barrel by doing jobs that are dirty, dangerous or demeaning.
Meanwhile, Mexican officials in the country's border states are alarmed that, as a result of the raids and other enforcement measures, many of their people have already been deported from the United States. Recently, Mexican officials at the local and state level have begun complaining to their American counterparts that they don't have the infrastructure or jobs to accommodate the immigrants who are returning.
How pathetic.
http://www.baxterbulletin.com/article/20090409/OPINION01/904090324
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