Trump’s plan to deport millions of undocumented immigrants is off to quite a roaring start. Since he took office, the number of US flights containing deportees to Mexico City is up to three a week (compared to two under Obama) and he has expanded the definition of criminal alien to include anyone who is undocumented (whether they have a criminal record or not), meaning that anyone who is undocumented can be deported—even children. As we hear more heart-wrenching stories of families torn apart by his immigration policy, we begin to fully understand the repercussions of deportation, including how difficult it can be for immigrants who have called the US home for decades to integrate back into a country that many of them barely remember.
“Many of these people come not knowing how to speak Spanish,” said Amalia García, secretary of Mexico City’s labor department, which serves as a point of contact for the deportees. “They come feeling very bitter, very ashamed and very hurt.” [...]
Moreover, the loss of remittances from the United States — Mexico’s second-largest source of revenue at roughly $25 billion last year — could have devastating effects, particularly in rural areas.
Isn’t it Republicans who always say that they want immigrants to assimilate and learn to speak English? Oh, the sad irony. Apparently, that’s exactly who this administration is deporting.
Of course, they often find that they can barely make enough money to live on given the economic situation in Mexico, leading many of them to turn right back around and find new ways to enter the country.
“The situation here doesn’t look good,” said Luis Enrique Castillo, 47, adding that he planned to return to his wife, four children and two grandchildren in Chicago, where he lived for 20 years.
Castillo said he was arrested when U.S. immigration officials knocked on his door looking for one of his sons, who had been scheduled for deportation. They didn’t find his son and, after checking his ID, picked him up instead.
And then there are the children. At least 500,000 young adults who grew up in the United States have been deported back to Mexico in the past decade, making this a problem that past presidents, both Democrat and Republican, share.
[Magdalena Ventura] was a toddler when her family migrated from a tiny agricultural village in Mexico to Dalton, Georgia. “I always knew we were undocumented, but I was 16 when I started to understand what that really meant. Without a social security number, I couldn’t get a driver’s permit. I wanted to be a nurse, but couldn’t apply for scholarships, which made tuition fees three times higher. I even got turned away from a part-time job at Taco Bell.”
In June 2008, a month after she had turned 18 and graduated from high school with top grades, Maggie decided to return to Mexico alone, because she didn’t want to live a lie. [...]
And upon returning to a country that they don’t even remember, young people find themselves struggling to adjust to difficult conditions and rural poverty. Maggie Ventura recalls her experience which took years of adjustment.
In the village there was a problem with the electricity, so there were no hot showers or washing machines – I had to heat water on a fire and have bucket baths and wash my clothes in the river. It was a shock. The first three months felt like someone had died. The grief was so strong, I couldn’t do anything, I couldn’t believe I’d left my whole life to come here.”
And for students who wish to enroll in schools in Mexico, after having gone to school in the US, transferring credits can be nightmarish.
The system for transferring U.S. school credits into Mexican schools is rife with red tape, requiring translated transcripts and other proof, which can take more than a year [Jill Anderson, director of Otros Dreams en Acción (Other Dreams in Action), an advocacy group for former undocumented immigrants who grew up in the United States said].
Immigration is an incredibly difficult subject which requires lawmakers to balance national interests and security. It will be nearly impossible to come up with a solution that pleases everyone and while we are a nation of laws (as the Republicans are fond of saying), so too must we be a nation of decent human beings. Let’s not forget that the undocumented are also people—who have families, dreams, hopes for a better life and who are generally incredibly hardworking. Rounding them up at random and booting them out when they have been here for decades is unjust and cruel and does nothing to honor our heritage as a nation built, in large part, by immigration.