3 Jul 2014

US immigrants are more than just numbers

We couldn’t show much of our teenage interviewee from Central America, who we spoke to about her journey to the United States, with a smuggler paid by her mother. She’s fearful for her life, and her family’s safety, at the hands of the gangs in her hometown. Her lawyer only agreed to the interview on the basis that her identity was disguised.

So, Ben Martin, our Washington cameraman, patiently shot pictures of her sneakers, and her ponytail, and her restless hands, to convey some sense of this vivacious girl, newly transplanted into America. On screen, her face appeared as a shadow silhouette, and we altered her voice in the edit suite.

But I can tell you she was more than the sum of those parts. The whole story? She went to school in her town one day, and wore the wrong colours, although she didn’t know they were the wrong colours at the time. Two members of a gang approached her, and delivered a death threat, since the colours she’d worn were the colours of a rival gang. She shrugged when she told me she didn’t know the rules, and answered, yes, that other young people in her town had been killed for not understanding the rules.

She telephoned her mother that day, who immediately contacted a family friend in the United States. It took her mother five days to find a smuggler who’d bring her to the US.

Her details of the journey were scant. She seemed reluctant to share. She says they walked much of the way, ran at times to keep to their schedule. They took buses, and rode in cars. There were other young people on the journey – shepherded presumably by the same smuggler. She became friends with two other girls. There were much younger children – among them, five-year-olds, unaccompanied. They all took a boat across the Rio Grande, and walked straight into the arms of the border patrol.

When I ask her whether she came to the US because she believed that she would be able to stay, whether others in the town believe if they travel now, the US will let young people stay, she says the main reason she came was the threats against her. She confides her mother has been asked for money by the gang since she left, and threatened. Her mother took the threat to the police, but they’ve done nothing.

She is quietly spoken, but prone to sudden bright smiles. She’s doing really well at school. She is full of hope, but worried about her mother, and unsure of whether she’ll be able to remain in the US. She tells me people from her country think that if they get to the US, God will decide what happens next.

Not America’s problems

Protesters on the crossroads of the Californian town Murrieta halted buses carrying undocumented migrants to a processing centre this week. They’d like to decide what happens next. Namely that all these foreigners be turned around, and flown back to the countries they came from. Their problems aren’t America’s problems. But if they’re looking to build higher fences, they’ll need labour. And that may well mean more Latinos.

My favourite placard at the protests was the Latino guy supporting the migrants, holding the one that said ‘We Build Your Houses’. It’s July 4th tomorrow, and the President in his comments on the immigration crisis this week, reminded people that America is a nation of immigrants, it promises opportunity, and that’s a heritage worth guarding. I know a 16 year old from Central America who would agree.

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KIND serves unaccompanied children who face the U.S. immigration system alone – www.supportkind.org

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