So single women go north. And increasingly grandparents are being leftSource : Racewire
behind with grandchildren to take care of. The elders do what elders
do: they grow older, they start to lose their hearing, they need
someone to take care of them. But that generation is up north. Women
like Floriberta are left to take care of the elders…to the degree that
they can.
The people who spoke to us are clear that the forced migrations have
brought their towns economic benefits but a devastating disintegration
of families.
In Boqueron, I was struck by how empty the town is of traditional
families. There are elders of both genders and younger women with
their babies but very few men and women in their twenties and
thirties.
The English-language forum for all things Latin American, covering business, politics, and culture.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Immigration Destroying Families On Both Sides of the Border
With the recent ICE raids across the U.S. there is much talk about how families are being torn apart without a deeper analysis of the how and the why immigrants are coming to the United States and how on the Mexican side of the border, families are being torn apart as well as breadwinners are forces to look for work outside their national borders.
What a lot of people also don't understand is that there are a lot of mixed families in the U.S., in which part of the family is a U.S. citizen, part is not and they have kids and extended family (on both sides of the border) and so all the anti-immigrant hysteria ends up being hysteria directed at American citizens as well.
ReplyDeleteMy cousin is married to a man from Central America. He is here legally but I am pretty sure he has family members here illegally. Further, it is becoming harder and harder for them to go down and visit his family, but you can't tell kids they can't see their grandparents.
On the other hand, one thing that some people are finally starting to realize-- the American relatives of these families vote. And once you've attacked la familia anything else you say will fall on deaf ears. That is one reason why in almost every important race for office where immigration has been an issue the past couple of years, the hardliners on immigration have lost.