AK-Current+Event


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=The Immigration "Problem":=

The Immigration "Problem is one of the most debated issues in the United States as well as elsewhere around the world.

"In some cases, success means keeping a family intact by either stopping a deportation, or by simply processing the right paperwork to reunite family members. In other cases it means empowering a battered immigrant woman to the point where she can now take charge of her life: sever the ties to the batterer; obtain her work documents; obtain her green card; breathe freely. And for others, success means negotiating through or removing the barriers that have prevented the immigrant from achieving his or her dream of becoming a US citizen."

In school we are often blindsided by only hearing of the success stories of immigration. The family who was reunited, or the man who found a better life. The truth of the matter is that every person on this planet has an idea of what the ideal life is. For few that idea is realized without much pain and sufferring, but for the majority of people on this planet, that ideal life is never a reality.

Hermilo and Yolanda were both born in the Mexican State of Oaxaca. After getting married, Hermilo traveled to the United State in search of a better life for his wife and their unborn child. When he was set up in the US with a stable job washing dishes in a restaurant, he sent back for his wife and child. They hired a smuggler and paid him money to get them into the US. When they were near the border, the smuggler said it would take about six hours to get into american territory. Instead Yolanda and her ten-week-old daughter Elizama wandered in the desert for four days. Yolanda, then only 19, gave most of her water to her daughter, and when she could no longer walk, a few of the men from her group went to search for help. Yolanda died in the desert. Elizama made it to America, badly dehydrated and sunburned, and joined her father.

Not near the succesful happy ending they were looking for. Like Huck, they journeyed for a better life. Unfortunately like Huck, they never found the happy ending that they were looking for.

"The brothers began their attempt to cross the border on June 18. On June 19 Jaime called his family in Mexicali. He had become sick and abandoned the trip. He had tried unsuccessfully to convince José, who was also struggling, to return to Mexico with him. In fear for his brother’s life, Jaime reported José and his group to the Border Patrol. Meanwhile, the family began a frantic search. Four days later, they learned that José’s body had been found, along with that of another man. The other three migrants from their group remain missing. José Luís Hernández Aguirre was the youngest of six children. He left a wife and two children, ages seven and one. He had been working in construction in Sonora, but did not earn enough to support his wife, children and mother"

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For the full story vistit http://www.cliniclegal.org/Publications/ArticlesbyCLINIC/america_crossingtheborderdec02.pdf P5 AKoff