Migration Thoughts

Independence day just passed and everyone else is doing it, so I guess I should join the crowd and talk about migration. My twenty-one-year-old host brother got back tonight after a failed attempt to reach the United States. He's trying again in a few weeks. Also, I just went to a "boda civil," which is the wedding where the lawyer comes and explains all the technicalities of being married. There are very specific clauses in the contract that talk about how if the couple is separated without contact for a year, the marriage can be dissolved, but that the pair can choose to omit that part of the law if they think that "for economic reasons" they may be separated but still want to be married. That means that marriage in El Salvador has been specifically adapted because of the mass migration of young people. Insane.

As indicated in the title, these are thoughts based on my experience in my community and my life in the US, and therefore not necessarily true in any situation other than my own. However, This blog by Tim Muth is fantastic for basically anything you want to know about what's going on in El Salvador. The migration posts are here and I recommend you bookmark the website and educate yourself.

In our group, Alex has a post and a few links on her blog, and Noah wrote about his host sister making the trip with later updates. Frank is always good for an analysis with an update from his community.  

Let me highlight two statistics from the Salvadoran 2010 household census according to Tim: At least 21% of families in El Salvador receive remittance money, and more than 90% of Salvadorans have a relative living in the United States. MORE THAN 90%.

Every day during sewing class talk inevitably turned to sneaking across the border or who just left or who just got caught. They traded names of good lawyers and good coyotes (human smugglers) and shook their heads at the mayor’s son who just got deported for the fourth time. One of the women told the others she wanted to learn to sew to support herself so that she wouldn’t have to make the terrifying journey to the US, while another just received a letter (in English, which she cannot read) from the Embassy saying her visa application was terminated. 

Emigration is completely out of control in this country and we’ve known it for ages, but it is finally reaching the public consciousness in the United States as well.  NPR is talking about it, and this story is shockingly similar to what I have been seeing and hearing in my community. The US Ambassador in El Salvador had a very well-publicized conference about the current rate of migration, especially of the youth population, and pleading for families to stop sending their kids across the border. The incidence of minors crossing the border has increased alarmingly. Gang violence in most of the country makes it impossible to run even a moderately successful business or to live and travel freely. Youths in gang-controlled territory have few choices - if they don’t accept the gang, they have to make a run for it and nowhere in the country is far enough to get away. 

Even without gangs, quality of life isn't great and job opportunities are basically nil in many small communities. My English class kids assure me that if you cross the border as a minor, the border patrol will send you to live with relatives until the deportation paperwork is processed, which can take a year or more, plenty of time to get settled and start working illegally within whatever company the family already has a connection. (This is no longer the case for the most part, but that information hasn’t made it through the grapevine yet.) They take it seriously too, because one left a few months ago and two of my best students left while I was on vacation. 

The journey is perilous, but the thousands of dollars paid to a coyote to ferry illegals from San Salvador through Mexico to Texas guarantees three tries. My 21-year-old host brother is finished the final transactions to pay a coyote and join his brother and sister in Maryland. He left while I was on vacation. He had been saving money for ages and finally got the message from the coyote. In the two weeks I was gone, six young people from my community left that I know of, and I have no way of knowing if they ended up safely with family or fell along the way. The group my host brother left with got caught in Mexico along with the coyote. He will be doing time, but all the travelers spent a week in jail then were sent back to San Salvador and appeared back in town tonight. I can tell my host mom is relieved - she slept in my host brother’s hammock so she wouldn’t have to see it empty when she woke up in the night. 

While my host brother was gone, we talked for a while about traveling mojado (illegally) to the US. She already has two children in the United States, and endless horror stories about the journey. The coyotes will leave you behind if you help someone injured, she assures me, so travelers are left to die in the desert. A nephew disappeared on the trip, left behind by his group because his asthma made it impossible for him to breathe and no one would help him. Her son’s group came to a well in the desert with a dead man leaning against it, dead from dehydration or drowning. The same son was caught in Mexico before making a successful trip and they received a call assuring them he was already in the US and needed money sent to a bank account - a scam. Young girls are even more at risk, even traveling with family, as men take advantage of their situation. People are making millions off of others’ desperation.

Some understand that it’s not all peaches and cream in the US, but many are blinded by money, perceived opportunities and TV. I don’t know what the older generation thinks, but if my English kids are anything to go by, their perception is pretty far removed from reality. I don’t want to break the illusion too harshly, but I can’t pretend that everyone welcomes foreigners with open arms and is gung ho about gay marriage and smoking pot. There may not be intense gang violence in most of suburban America but if the news is anything to go by lately, gun control is out of control in the US. Normal Americans seem to be doing just fine killing each other even without gangs or drugs. Violence isn't even the main thing; finding a job isn't the easiest task even for legal residents, let alone for an illegal immigrant with no English.  

Here, and in most of Latin America, community and family are a really big deal. Perhaps it is less so in San Salvador, but many illegal immigrants are coming from poor, rural communities, not the capital. Those who lived for a while in the US mention often how lonely they felt and how they called home every day. I’m American and I felt incredibly isolated coming back the the US after living a few months in Chile. I can only imagine how it must feel coming to America for the first time and confronting language and cultural barriers and discrimination every day. Business is impersonal - you come, you work, you get your paycheck. Neighborhoods are impersonal - you nod to your neighbor and wonder if you ever asked his name, but it’s too late now and it would just be awkward so you just keep walking. Time is money so they work to exhaustion to send half of their paycheck back to the family they left behind. Because money flows in, family members think their relatives in the US are doing extremely well and can afford the latest technology and gifts and bigger checks at the end of the month. Although it may be true for some, for the most part I see Salvadorans working hard to barely make ends meet even without the added burden of relatives waiting in the wings. 

We’re trying hard to improve life here, but it’s hard to argue against remesas when a brand new sewing machine arrives at the door as the sewing class ends. It’s doubly hard to be competitive in El Salvador if you don’t have relatives in the US who can help fund your endeavors. 21% of the population receives remittance money, and those few dollars each month are enough to pull many up one economic class. The problem is that those selfsame people have less incentive to work because they receive their remesas each month regardless of their productivity. Working with youth is also a struggle because their “long-term plan” only stretches as far as getting the money together to pay a coyote to take them across the border. What do I do with an English class that has lost half of its members in a year? Things like protection of the environment don’t even register - what do they care if a plastic bag degrades or doesn’t? They won’t be around to see either way. What about education, I ask. Construction work and house cleaning, the two primary jobs they tell me about in the US, don’t need English skills or a formal education. What about getting a job in El Salvador? Blank stares. There’s only farming and occasional construction gigs (funded by remesa money), they tell me. What sucks is that I know there are many benefits to living in the US and I can’t say that it’s a terrible idea to want job security and flushing toilets. 

90% of Salvadorans have a relative in the United States and I bet that each of them also knows the dangers, but the masses keep increasing. Irony of ironies, my host brother walked in tonight after his week in holding in a Mexican jail, none the worse for wear, just as an ad ran on TV - an uncle in the US reads a letter from his nephew, excited that he has the money together to cross the border and assuring him they will see each other soon. The shot cuts to the teenager dead in the desert. The ad says, “They are our future. Protect them.” The terrifying thing is that this exact scene happens in real life here Every. Single. Day.

Kids love internet and technology - why can't they band together with even a portion of that money and make a little cyber cafe in my town? I'd be a customer for sure. Why can't the $7000 to send one kid to the US be used to build a bridge so ALL of the kids in Palitos can GO TO SCHOOL? Why is the inertia so impossible to overcome? I can't even get the women from the sewing group to agree that they want sewing machines, and all they would have to do is write a materials list and a community profile with me! 

When I signed up for Peace Corps I wasn’t expecting so much of my service to revolve around American culture. I wasn’t expecting to be told when it’s snowing in Denver. I wasn’t expecting to find everyone incredibly informed on all of the cities in Maryland and Texas, on the best illegal routes into the US, and on the conditions of our county jails. I wasn't expecting to get propositioned every time I sit in the front seat of a pickup - "You can get me papers," they all say, as if that's a reason for marrying a stranger. I’m coming to appreciate American culture and Peace Corps and how difficult it is to try to fulfill the Peace Corps mission. It’s a sobering thought that by the time I’m done here my contribution may be that seven young people in the United States know how to say “I have a question” in English.