As you’ve probably heard there’s currently an immigration crisis here in the United States. Since October, about 63,000 unaccompanied minors have crossed the United States border, the number has nearly doubled since last year. The majority of the children are in states where immigrants have traditionally settled like New York, Texas, California and Florida.
I know I was wondering and I bet you were too, “Why now are there so many more children coming to the United States?” Now I’m able to tell you the answer based on an article I read in The New York Times. The surge of unaccompanied minors crossing the border alone began in 2012. More than three-quarters of the minors are coming from mostly poor and violent towns in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. The reason for coming to the United States, varies from child to child but there are some common factors: poverty, violence and family reunification. Honduras has the world’s highest murder rate, meanwhile the children coming from Guatemala are extremely poor. The Department of Homeland Security said another reason is because many minors in the past were reunited with there families and not immediately deported, giving Central Americans the idea that the United States was allowing children to stay. In addition, I was very surprised to find out that less than a quarter of the children are coming from Mexico.
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| Where the children are going in the United States |
The children can’t be deported immediately because of an anti-trafficking statue, stating that minors from Central America cannot be deported immediately and must be given a court hearing before they can be deported. Once the children are caught, they’ll stay in a shelter for approximently 35 days. There are about 100 permanent shelters located by the United States/Mexico border but because of the sudden increase in children, three temporary shelters were opened in military bases in California, Oklahoma and Texas. Then the majority of the kids are placed with a family member or sponsor until their court hearing. As you can imagine, it’d take a very long time to have a court hearing for each of the 63,000 children.
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| Where the children are coming from in Central America |
From The Distance Between Us, Reyna described how difficult it was to cross the border. They failed twice and when Reyna knew if the third time wasn’t successful she wasn’t going to the U.S., if gave her even more determination to cross with success. That’s the type of determination all 63,000 of these kids have, because if they didn’t have that determination, they wouldn’t be here right now.
There were times when Reyna, Carlos and Mago wanted to leave Mexico and go to the United States to find their parents since they didn’t think they were coming back any time soon. If they had left and made it to the United States, they wouldn’t of had any where to go, just like all those kids today, they don’t have anywhere to go but overflowing shelters.
The Grande’s migrated to escape poverty and in hope to reunify their family, just like thousands of kids are today. However, they were successful in having a decent place to live and becoming legal citizens in the United States. Only the future will know what will happen to all of these kids. Will they be allowed to stay in the United States and start a new life? Or will they have to go back to the horrible life they were trying to escape? If it was your choice, where would you send them?
To answer your question, "Where would you send them?"
ReplyDeleteI believe that the answer to that question is too deep and complex when looking at a human being to have a simple answer.