Littlest Immigrants, Left in Hands of Smugglers

[Rose Siding]

OUGLAS, Ariz. — They were barely old enough to cross a street by themselves, much less a border. But there they were, alone on a hot August evening at a United States immigration checkpoint, surrounded by law enforcement officers wearing badges and guns. Eight-year-old José Cruz Velázquez held the hand of his brother Sergio, who was 6.

The Mexican boys had been seized from a smuggler hired by their parents living without legal papers in Pennsylvania. They were two of a growing number of children traveling without families who have been snared in the net that American and Mexican agents cast to stop illegal immigrants from crossing the border.

Authorities attribute the trend to aggressive American law enforcement operations during the past decade that have effectively sealed long sections of the 2,000-mile border. The blockade was further reinforced after the terrorist attacks in the United States on Sept. 11, 2001.

snip>

"If my children stay in El Salvador, I will definitely lose them because of the distance that separates us," said Rigoberto Centeno, a Salvadoran immigrant who lives in the Washington suburbs and who recently hired a smuggler to help reunite his family. "If they come with a coyote to the United States, there is a chance that I will lose them in the desert."But there is also a very good chance that they will make it across. If we want to be with our children, there is no other way."

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/03/international/americas/03SMUG.html?hp

[DuctapeFatwa]

1. And if the regime catches them, they chain them to the floor in a cell

indefinitely.

Amnesty, HRW, et al periodically issue reports about US atrocities against children, mostly indigenous children of this continent.

The reports are largely ignored, and the atrocities continue with the enthusiastic support of the voting classes, who if anything, do not believe that the children are tortured severely enough.

[sistersofmercy]

2. It is an awful situation. I am always surprised at how few ppl read AI

reports. And as usual not many on this board will comment on this subject is my guess. I've seen threads about child slave rings getting busted going virtually unnoticed here. I posted a thread based on a National Geographic article about 21st century slave trade, 27 million humans world wide are victims, most women and children some as young as 4 years old. Not one reponse, not one!

[DuctapeFatwa]

3. Well, there are two issues, sensitive for different reasons

The treatment of people, both adults and children, who are seized by the migra is not a concern to most of the voting elite, for one thing. They want enough of them to make it to keep their lunch and hotel rooms cheap, but to criticize the way people are being treated by the regime is touchy, because it leaves the complainer vulnerable to charges of "anti-Americanism."

Human trafficking is a separate issue, and a whole nother level of sensitive. Because it is very profitable, it is hard to delve too deeply into it without risking embarrassment of US allies, and some parties within the US itself.

Human trafficking was a big concern for the late Senator Wellstone, who did not heed advice that he focus on other issues.

[bleedingheart]

4. This is revolting. Americans want cheap labor to watch their kids

clean their homes, build their homes and work in their yards...but we won't let them be with their own children and then these poor kids get caught in a horrible mess.

All so wrong.

[CarinKaryn]

5. So sad...

these children are just more victims of the *resident's war on the Third World.

There must be some way to unite families torn apart by an imaginary line we call the "border."

[Undemcided]

6. No other way?

If we want to be with our children, there is no other way.

I would go home rather than trust my children to a coyote. This is just child abuse.

[bleedingheart]

7. they left their children to earn money...should they have stayed with

then and watched them starve?

I don't think we can be judgemental of the parents since we haven't walked in their shoes.

[Undemcided]

8. I think we can be judgmental.

This is an economic migrant who deserted his children to an uncertain fate and then entrusted them to total strangers.

[bleedingheart]

9. Its nice to be judgemental when you live comfortably

these people have few options.

I refuse to judge.

My great-grandfather left his pregnant wife with two small children to come to the US to make a better life. He didn't see her for eleven years!
She had to live through the battles of WWI and suffer Russian troops raping and pillaging her town.
She had to do this all alone!
But guess what...they had no choices. If her husband had stayed he would have been conscripted into the army and most likely killed.
In the end he saved enough to bring her and the children to the US and purchased a family farm for cash.

My paternal grandmother was abandoned by her father after her mother died so he could find his way to the US to make money to improve their lot in life. She was bounced from relative to relative until she made her way to this country.

[Undemcided]

10. My comfort level has nothing to do with this.

Without knowing the specifics of this case we can at least gather a couple of facts, he entered the country illegally, he abandoned his children to an uncertain fate, whilst professing love for them he entrusts them to the notoriously unreliable coyotes. Notice how staying in the US is the “only way” they can be reunited. How any father can countenance “ there is a chance that I will lose them in the desert” is beyond me.

Sorry but that’s the way I feel.

PS: I am glad things worked out for your family.

[DuctapeFatwa]

11. I think there are a lot of people who don't realize

that the other choice would be to leave the children to a certain fate of slow death by starvation.

And there are even more who simply don't care. As long as the lunch arrives on time, the hotel room is clean, and the home repairs are reasonable.

[lostnfound]

12. Poverty in Mexico grew from 35% to 70% postNAFTA; is El Salvador similar?

"Would you have us let our children starve?", the last words of a Mexican woman preparing to illegally cross the border in a magazine article I read recently. The words have stayed with me -- their choices are so impossible. It's easy to say 'grow your own food' but sometimes crops fail; plus land they had farmed but didn't "own" is now being taken away under Vicente Fox. Some migrate to the cities for jobs but now the jobs are going to Vietnam and Thailand..

[Undemcided]

13. Here's the problem

We should not be importing poverty, we should be exporting prosperity.