There won’t be sources or statistics in this post. I’m going to write this from what I have learned after living 18 years in Guatemala, and covering this for over a year and a half online. If you need sources or statistics on Guatemalan migration I recommend this piece from the Migration Information Source.
My first impressions of Guatemalans migrants were formulated in the rural community on the South Pacific coast that I spent my early childhood in. There, Guatemalans would use their severance after years of hard work to pay for a smuggler, or coyote, to take them North. Human smuggling is a lot like the drug trade in that it is diffuse and impossible to generalize. You take out one coyote and several will rise up to take his place.
Coyotes take migrants through all manner of routes. Some are taken through the northern rainforests of Guatemala and up the Mexican Atlantic coast. Others hop on trains for legs of the trip. As far as I can tell, though, smugglers method of choice is to cram migrants in the back of vehicles for days on end, where many suffocate or die of thirst.
Almost all of the Guatemalans I knew that could pay for a coyote made it. A lot of them now live in the same town in the U.S. and send money back home to their family members. The joke is that the people that are best off are the ones that stay behind and receive money from their family in the U.S. I know a mother with all of her sons and daughters in the U.S. that has a two story house and two cars. She can’t drive. I also don’t think she’s better off. She’s lonely.
While the trip for these migrants was harrowing, they seemed to get ahead and carve out a living for themselves. It wasn’t until years later when I retraced the route of a migrant from Guatemala into the U.S. that I came a lot closer to understanding what it meant to be a migrant. People that can pay a coyote to suffocate them or abandon them in the desert are priviliged compared to most people.
It was in Arriaga, Mexico, that I first came in contact with average Central American migrants. There, people had traveled on foot for 12-16 days from their homes in Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador. They still had 3000 kilometers to go. During their two week walk it wasn’t a question of whether or not they would get assaulted, it was a question of how many times they would get assaulted by men with guns that would take everything they owned, even their shoes. Most of the people I spoke to had been assaulted three or four times.
They had been waiting by the tracks in Arriaga for a train that they would have to hang on to for days just to get to Veracruz, Mexico (still 2,239 kilometers away in a straight line). During that train ride, migrants can fall off by either scrambling to get on the train, by falling asleep after hanging on for days, by getting knocked off by a branch or something, or when they are escaping the many armed bands that raid the trains. When they do many lose their limbs or their lives when they fall off, severed as the train runs over them.
These were some of the many migrants that would not make it to the U.S. It would take months before they reached the border, if they were able to make it that far. Our simplistic minds like to categorize the people that leave and the ways in which they arrive but it is very difficult to generalize these massive human movements. It was only very recently that I discovered an entirely different segment of migrants.
Woman usually don’t have the disposable income that men do, so the only way for poor women from Central American and Mexico to get to the U.S. is to sell their bodies. Communities up and down Mexico and Central American are riddled with prostitutes from countries further South. Some are forced into the industry more brutally then others, but all are forced because it’s the only way for them to get ahead.
The U.S. “immigration debate” hasn’t even touched upon the negative affects that migration is having long before people reach the U.S. border. Those are the stories you don’t hear, from the migrants that didn’t make it. These are the migrants that are getting beat up on in the U.S. despite having faced some of the worst injustices that this world knows how to deal. Worst of all they are forced to leave due to policies engineered and supported by the U.S. government.
All over the world migrants are discriminated against, and the U.S. is no exception. When are we going to start discussing the root of the problems associated with migration? When are we going to tackle a global system that is forcing these migrants to leave. Progressives and conservatives in the U.S. have a long way to go.
If people in Guatemala and Honduras could find paying work and stay with their families, they would do so, in my opinion.
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Unless there is the kind of ethnic oppression that my family faced, that is.
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My own family largely migrated because of anti-semitism. I remember my great uncle showing me the bullet hole scars in his arm from Cossacks who rode through their village.
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And sadly, some who did not leave died in concentration camps later on, being taken by the Germans from Latvia or Estonia.
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So some leave to avoid starvation, some to avoid brutal ethnic oppression – but if staying worked, was safe, was a place to raise and feed a family, I think few would leave.
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Is the answer “more micro loans”? I bet there are economists and veterans of the peace corps and so forth that could help me out here…
That we have to start debating. “Micro Loans” might be something that forces more people to stay. Eliminating agricultural subsidies would certainly be a major help. Helping to Central America and the Caribbean absorb the thousands of deportees that are being sent back would also be helpful. All of the things we should be debating, not conservative talking points.
We as a nation welcome immigrants from all nations. We just ask that you do it legally. I’m not sure why you just can’t understand that.
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It’s pretty damn simple.
People that advocate for legal immigration are completely ignorant of how messed up the legal immigration system is. You cannot blindly support laws that are not just.
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It’s funny how I have barely discussed U.S. immigration policy in this post and you are already spewing conservative talking points. It says a lot about how toxic debate on this subject has become.
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I would appreciate it if you would discuss my diary, which says we should start focusing on the root of the problem and give migrants a reason to stay.
I am discussing your diary. And in a nice way I’m telling you I don’t really care about your version of “justice” I care that people obey the law as written. When they can do that then I’ll begin to discuss “justice” until that time I don’t care why people come here illegally, you can make every excuse for them you want. I’ll continue to support raids like the one at the Michael Bianco plant in Fall River that send them home. To not support that means that you support giving up our sovereignty.
First of all crossing the border illegally is a civil offense, it’s just like speeding. Secondly you can’t just blindly support a law unless it is just. Just because it’s law doesn’t make it right and the fact that you’re willing to support injustice shows you have no right to speak on this.
Since when is the “law” a source of morality?
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It wasn’t so long ago that it was against the law for a black child to attend school with a white child or an asian man to marry a white woman. At one point the U.S. Supreme Court upheld laws prohibiting women and African Americans from practicing law. Ever take the Park Service tour of the Boston Common? You might learn about Massachusetts’ own history of hanging people for professing a different religious faith.
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Your focus on “the law” here appears to be a flimsy cover for nativist jingoism to me.
so much as an updated Thomas Hobbes, who argued that the definition of justice is, more or less, what the sovereign says is just. To Hobbes, since justice is what is lawful, then to go against what you consider an unjust law is by definition unjust. It’s an old, outdated and soundly thrashed argument, but it still persists.
it will mean we will have to pay more for our lawn services, our construction services, or any other service that is performed by illegal immigrants. Quite frankly, your response is a bit simplistic. For years, the government has tacitly allowed illegal immigration because it provides cheap labor for businesses. The current laws against hiring illegal immigrants have been on the books since the early ninties… they have just not been enforced. It is a little late to start now.
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In any event, any law to try to stop illegal immigration will probably be ineffective. The problem is an economic problem. They need jobs and businesses here need workers willing to work for low wages. The government helps by not adequately enforcing the wage and hour laws and we help by not being willing to pay higher prices for services.
It is never too late to start enforcing the law. Round em up and send em home. “It’s closing time, you don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here.”
The U.S. debate on this has become so anti-migrant that you actually believe it is possible to deport millions of people. That requires making life more miserable in the U.S. than it is for them in Mexico or Guatemala. That is unjust.
is that they have refused to play by the rules that other immigrants have played by. That is unjust and unlawful. Your twisted sense of justice where the laws of this nation don’t have to be followed is not justice it’s something but not justice.
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And what is heartening to me is the American people seem to be with me on this and not with you. So much so to the point of it destroying John McCain’s candidacy for the presidency. I don’t know if you saw the MA-05 debate on WCVB TV the other day but the first question was from an African American man from Lowell, what was his question? Basically what are you going to do about the illegals.
I don’t understand what you’re doing on Blue Mass. Group, but the last time I checked Republicans aren’t the “American people”. I don’t know what polls you’re reading but most of the polls that I know of, U.S. citizens support a path to legalization.
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The argument that you are making is that the law is justice. Only the ignorant blindly support a law that is not just. You’re defending a legal immigration system that is entirely messed up, even for people coming here legally. I look forward to when you can address the real issues.
…you are willing or undable to address issues from the other side, you aren’t a very good advocate.
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This coming from an advocate who has argued all three sides of an issue.
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You must learn how to argue against those who disagree with you.
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As I have put here several times over the last few months, the US’s “illegal” immigration problem is probably in part due to its own econimic policies. But, now, there is a problem. And how are we to address it? That last is what you are failing to do–how to address it. You probably don’t even know what the problem is.
U.S. immigration policy within the nation. It doesn’t matter if you legalize 12 million people or shoot them all. Unless you start fixing the problems that are forcing them to leave that’s never going to happen. People can’t even discuss that.
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I think anyone that argues that 12 million people should be deported or forced out of the U.S. is inhumane and unrealistic. They want to make migrants suffer so much within the U.S. that is is worse for them within the U.S. than it is for them in Mexico or rural Guatemala which is a really tall order, and it is a lot of misery. But people here don’t seem to be able to discuss the root causes of the solution.
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That’s a helluva statement.
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I don’t know how you came up with that theory, but I do which group definitely is NOT the “Amercan people” … illegal immigrants.
my statement out of context. What was meant by what I said above was that Republicans don’t make up all of the American people.
The anti-immigrant nativists who unite behind the strict adherence to law argument are losing credibility, when the minutemen are putting out videos of indiscriminate murder to rally their troops, and John McCain is complaining about getting death threats on his original stand on immigration.
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Cracking down on most misdemeanor immigration offenses by busting down doors, terrorizing sleeping kids in the middle of the night, and tearing families apart – how is that justice? We don’t enforce every law on the books. We don’t arrest every driver who drives 66 mph.
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Our nation has stuggled with unjust laws throughout its most pivotal moments. Harriet Tubman broke the law. Rosa Parks broke the law. Martin Luther King broke the law. As a nation, we were able to understand the moral imperitive to change our unjust laws. We, as Americans must rise to challenge again, for history will not be kind to apathety and the moral cowardice.
Completely agreed.
Who will then decide which laws I must obey and those I choose not. You? Me? The guy down the street?
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This is MY country, not THEIR country. If they would like to come here for a good reason, then they can go through the PROCESS.
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If every human being from a third world craphole decided they are coming to USA and F_CK any American or enforcement officer who attempts to impede them, then where are we.
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I want USA to take Guatamala by fiat to grow bananas and the Guatamalan’s can pack their bags and head for the country of Venezuela or Cuba where they will be met with open arms.
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What’s wrong with that? My transgression is no worse than their’s. Oh, that’s right, their willful unlawfullness is politically correct , at least in some sectors, and mine is not. Silly me.
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Spare that crap about rigid adherence to law. If we didn’t adhere to the law these people would be getting a fusillade of lead in their faces.
Why the hate?
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“Go through the process!” is another red-herring, when a casual perusal of what’s broken, out-dated, and unrealistic about the immigration system will make clear that there really is no “process” available. The doors are closed, and not for any good reason. Legislation hasn’t been updated for over twenty years in any meaningful way.
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Many people are angry and afraid, but anger and fear usually make the worst ingredients for good policy.
There needs to be real discourse on the matter, not insults and vague threats of violence – especially out here on BMG!
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Everyone can agree, I think that the immigration system is badly broken and needs an overhaul. The question should focus on what would make good policy.
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What should a realistic immigration system overhaul accomplish? Well, it should certainly start by reflecting our traditions and values, as well our national interests.
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Let’s start some real discourse, and stay that angry impulse that leads only to hate.
…that few people in the USofA want to have “some real discourse” about illegal immigration, and your question “Why the hate?” is reflective of that. When you start throwing out the word “hate,” you turn people off; they ignore you. You may not like that, but it’s the truth. It’s about as dumb as the Republicans referring to Democrats as being “Bush-haters.”
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I have raised a number of issues regarding so-called “illegal immigration” here in the last eight months. If I believed that anyone in was actually interested in it–other than kvetching about it–I might write a book about it, but the sad fact is that they aren’t.
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The poster here can post all the pictures of presumably migrant workers that he wants, but it isn’t going to change anything. The recent earthquake in Peru will have more of an effect on aid to the stricken zone, if only to induce them to stay down there. Pictures of the stricken zone in Peru have been all over the Sueddeutsche Zeitung in the last couple of days, and on German TV.
The person above talked about the possibility of shooting lead in the faces of Latin Americans.
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I don’t know how you can see that as anything else than hate. We call it hate because migrants are suffering right here and now some of the worst injustices the world has to offer and all people can say is “follow the process”. “Too bad, this is our country”. This is unjust. This is hate
I found this through the wikipedia article on immigration.
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“More legal immigrants than the rest of the world combined.” Immigrants that follow the rule of law to get here.
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You can say that I am fueled by hatred against immigrants all you want, but that would mean that I hate immigrants, and since I don’t hate my mother that would be wrong. You see my mother and aunts and uncles are all legal immigrants. But they’re from Canada so it doesnt’ count right. Because they don’t know about the “injustices” of Central America right?
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You will find no stronger proponent of legal immigration that me. Immigration has shaped this country and I count among my friends many legal immigrants from Southeast Asia in Lowell who come here work their asses off and make a better life for them and their family. I work with legal immigrants from all over the world. It’s people that don’t obey our laws whose first act in coming to this country is breaking the law that I don’t like and or support. That’s not hatred, you may think it is but its not.
I’m glad you went so deep with your research as to look the problem up on wikipedia. That is correct but U.S. immigration law actually has no way for unskilled labor to come into the United States. Seriously, research the type of legal system that you are supporting. It doesn’t matter if you are the most educated, follow the rules, immigrant, the system is messed up and unfair. Seriously consider the laws that you are blindly supporting.
that we allow more immigrants into this country than the rest of the world combined allows immigrants into their countries.
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Where is the injustice. It is NOT my problem what happens in Guatemala or other countries, it is that countries problem. They can affect change in their own country.
See how shortsighted your views are? You don’t care what happens to people in other countries, but you fail to see that your lack of care is what is pushing people onto your doorstep in the first place.
earlier this year, i helped my friend consuela travel illegally from quetzaltenango, guatemala through mexico to los angeles.
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because before i try to be a good american, i try to be a good human being first. and i hope that the rest follows.
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we forget that laws were written by mankind for mankind. not the other way around. you can do the googling yourself, but the giants of human rights of our time like gandhi, and mlk, and mandela all spoke eloquently on this philosophy. while each of these men fought to overturn laws that were manifestly odious and nationalistic in character, the foundation of their struggles were the basic acknowledgments of our humanity.
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behind every number on an apartheid stat sheet was a human being. someones child. someones mother or father. a person who dreamed the same human dreams for the safety and prosperity and hope for themselves and their loved ones that we dream every night. and in the rush to enforce the vaunted laws of the land, their humanity (and often their lives) were stripped from them. and for what? because it was the law? so who was served? our brothers and sisters under god? the state? our race? when we write our basic common humanity out of our laws, we are not serving a larger more noble cause. we are degrading ourselves.
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immigration is a human issue. certainly there are laws and laws wrapped around it like baling wire, but underneath all of the intent and legalese there are human beings just like you and i. and when we lose sight of that and expect man to serve the law rather than the other way around, we are tossing out one of the core philosophies that our unique republic was founded on.
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this doesn’t mean open borders and abolition of any immigration controls. it means that we should never forget that we should strive to serve humanity before flags. how many millions of people have to die for flags before we can start to grasp the futility of this mentality?
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consuela had just lost her only son to cancer. and feeling a deep need to reconnect and rebuild her life, she wanted to spend time with her daughter who is living legally in los angeles with her son, to feel some comfort in their time of loss. so, she applied to the u.s. embassy for a visa to allow her to see her daughter. denied.
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so what now? what should triumph, american law or the love of a mother for her family?
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so traveling on a bogus mexican national i.d., consuela became ‘alejandra’ and we set off from quetzaltenango headed for tijuana where consuela would meet a coyote that her daughter in l.a. arranged to sneak her across the border into california. in the southern mexican state of chiapas, our bus was stopped 5 times by mexican immigration. on each occasion, some sad and broken looking (the more mayan -thus central american- looking people were targeted) person was pulled off in the middle of nowhere, and the bus ordered to drive on.
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i guess on each occasion, i could have felt better that mexico was just a little bit more secure now that the laws were enforced. but it doesn’t work like that. the mood in that bus was watching a fellow human beings hopes and dreams crushed. crushed. before your very eyes. and bundled anonymously into the back of a van going to who-knows-where. no longer a human being like when they were sharing a stick of gum with the person next to them a few minutes before, but a number. an alien.
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my part in helping destroy the american way of life came when a very hard looking female mexican immigration inspector stopped in the aisle of the bus and suspiciously eyeballed consuela pretending to be asleep in the seat next to me. as she went to ‘awaken’ consuela, i made a sudden weird move acting like i was trying to quickly hide something in my bag. at that point, the officer turned her attention to me, looked me over and then proceeded to study my passport under flashlight for about 3 minutes. after handing my documents back to me, she continued up the aisle forgetting about the ‘sleeping’ consuela.
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at that point, i realized that i had just conspired to help consuela eventually break the laws of our land. and that was a not a legal reaction, but one of the common humanity that we all share. it was not the constitution or old glory or the subservience to law and order that was in my head on the side of the road in chiapas. it was love of a mother who just wanted to be with her child on the other side of a line drawn on a map.
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let’s have a debate about immigration. but please let’s make sure that we are on the same page. don’t glorify laws when human dignity and basic human decency has to be glorified first.
stories that I have read in a long time. Thank you for sharing that with me. Please try and get in touch with me I’d like to email you.
This is Alex Westerhoff on my husband’s blog account. I immigrated to this country back in 1988 from Germany when I was 17. I came to the United States and wanted to become an American citizen because I really did believe in this country’s values and freedoms. I made a choice to come here and did it ALL on my own with no support from my parents and no bank account.
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Little did I know at the time, but the process to become an American would take me almost ten years. I maintained different visas in order to work here, was careful not to let any expire and no, I was not on some “special” allowance because I did work that no other American was capable of. It was difficult, but I started my own small business and even at one point had to open a smaller store in Germany in which to send product and money out of the country to qualify for the visa that I was on during this time.
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Finally when I got my green card, after many years, I was told (and at that time believed my processor) that if I lost my job, I would be deported immediately. It was ironic for me to see green cards being used in the checkout line of a grocery store as identification for food stamp exchange.
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I guess what I am trying to say here is that I went thru the process legally. I was told that the quotas for Europeans coming to the US was very very low–and I found it was almost impossible for a German to immigrate. But I did it. And I became naturalized about 5 years after I received my greencard (because that again is the process).
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I understand that many people want to come to the US, but I do not understand why we are debating allowing illegal immigrants to do what they do. I see this debate more a racist and classist one fueled by partisan sentiment. I just resent the thought of allowing people to come here illegally when many of us did the correct thing.
I appreciate you sharing your story about the hardship you went through, but how can you deny that the migrants I spoke about in my post have not gone through hardship that is equal to, or worse, than your own?
but being an immigrant from Europe as opposed to one from Latin America, Africa, or Southeast Asia really is comparing apples and oranges. There is a desperation that exists amongst immigrants from developing countries that simply does not exist in the same way amongst immigrants from highly developed western nations like Germany. This is not directed towards you in any way, but I really feel that if more Americans travelled to developing countries, they would view the immigration issue very differently. Once you see children in an impoverished country whose limbs have been blown off by landmines, or who are suffering from diseases that don’t even exist in the US or Europe anymore, the whole immigration debate becomes a whole lot clearer, and suddenly you have an actual understanding of what drives people to do anything at all to get out of the situation they’re facing in their home countries.
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I also think that certain people on this site who apparently would like to shoot immigrants in the face or pump them full of lead or whatever else, would do well to reflect on the reality of these people’s lives. Perhaps they should book themselves a plane ticket to Cambodia or El Salvador and view the reality of the situation firsthand before making such hateful statements. And I agree with the person above that the only appropriate way to characterize such statements is as hateful.
I posted my above comment. So it’s true you guys and gals(I’d say you people but that’s racist isn’t it) think there is a difference between countries of origins. And those of us on my side think the law should be applied equally to all immigrants regardless of national origin. Whose the racist? Whose the one that thinks that one group of people are different based on their skin color?
Nobody said skin color. The above commenter was talking about situations, not skin color. You don’t get hurt by a land-mine because you’re brown, and you don’t seek out a better economy because of your skin color. Do you want to apply the law so harshly that we force ourselves to ignore the human condition? That would make our own laws unjust to begin with.
We need to allow the borders to be opened to third world countries based solely on broad sweeping determination that their economy sucks and therefore we should bear the burden? Ms. Sunshine, most of us who came to the United States had reasons for coming here. I had very personal reasons which I do not want to share at this time but I feel that when you generalize Europeans in such a manner you are definitely showing prejudice against us.
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We need to work on changing quotas based on well thought out plans which deal with economic impact and legal processes. Those on the conservative side must be careful not to stereotype and demonize people and cultures, however those who take a liberal stance need to understand the reality of open borders and its impact on our country.
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For “third world” countries’ leadership to consider the United States a dumping ground for its problems does those countries and their peoples no good and will hurt future generations. You have got to understand that.
restricting Europeans from immigrating to the US. Nor does it have to do with changing the immigration laws to discriminate against people based on their country of origin. What it does have to do with is empathy, and context, and being able to understand what drives people to risk their lives to come to this country (or to Western Europe for that matter). I’m sure that you, like my parents, had your reasons for immigrating from Europe to this country. But I’m also guessing that those reasons didn’t include that your kids were dying of dysentery, your husband had leprosy, you had no clean drinking water within five miles of the shack you lived in, and you’d never even made a phone call, let alone been fortunate enough to have an entire home powered by electricity. Frankly, Europeans and persons from developing countries are simply differently situated, and it’s not particularly useful to pretend that we’re all playing on a level playing field when we’re not. You, for instance, would never have been denied a tourist visa to the US to visit your family members because the majority of European countries (including all of Western Europe) are part of the visa waiver program. I just think it’s useful to keep this in mind when you’re thinking about the reasons that people might be willing to circumvent the immigration laws of this country. Having said that, I wish that it was easier for Europeans to work in the US, and for Americans to work in Europe, because I think it would benefit our economy tremendously. But I don’t think that this discussion is necessarily about what changes I would make to the immigration laws if I could. As I said above, I think it’s about empathy for other human beings and the reality of the situations they face in their countries of origin.
I understand why they want to come here–of course I do. And those in this country who would wish to advocate for them should do so. Sponsor them, educate them, assist them in participating in the legal process, devote your life to that, lobby for them, etc.
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But just because people are in this country illegally should not mean that they should get a free pass just because it is the easy way for us to deal with this.
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And with your logic ms sunshine, shouldn’t you be educating all of the disenfranchised, poverty stricken, non-educated, etc people all over the world about coming to our country? Why not through compassion and empathy call for everyone to come here illegally?
No one is getting a free pass here. These people live and work (often 2 or 3 jobs) in constant fear of being arrested, sent to a federal detention facility (often for an extended period of time) and separated from their families, possibly forever. They contribute to the economy of this country, and are often exploited and victimized because of their fear of the authorities. Simple things that we take for granted as legal residents of this country are out of the realm of possibility for them. It can’t be an easy way to live, relegated to the shadows of society. I wouldn’t call it a free pass. You might say that’s the chance you take when you come here illegally, but it certainly isn’t the way you’d choose to live if there was a choice involved. In any event, a lot of people still seem to consider a life lived in the shadows of the United States or Europe preferable to the life they faced in their home countries.
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Frankly, I think it would be pretty pointless to attempt to coach people in other countries on how to immigrate to this one legally. As you are well aware, I’m sure, there are virtually no options for people who want to come here legally, especially if they are from a country like Guatemala where the demand for visas far outstrips the availability. It’s basically a matter of luck at this point for persons from developing nations- whether you’re lucky enough to be related to/married to a US citizen or LPR (in which case, you will still have to wait for many, many years if you’re from Guatemala, Mexico, or the Phillipines) or whether you’re lucky enough to win the green card lottery. Unless you have a lot of money to play around with, and most people from developing countries obviously don’t, those are about the only options (aside from refugees/asylum claims) available under our current system. So the idea of heading to the Guatemala City garbage dump and teaching the families living there (there are hundreds of families subsisting off the garbage dump in that city alone) about the complexities of the American immigration code is pretty silly. There’s no way for people like them to come here legally anyway.
If you made the following statement:
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“I was speeding and hit a tree. Trees should be removed from roadways.”
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At least some people are going to tell you the problem is not the trees, but rather your speeding.
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I suggest if you really want to move the dialog forward, then talk about the system, not about the behavior to skirt it.
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Take fairdeal’s tale, for example. fd says:
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I’m assuming it was a visitor’s visa that consuela was applying for. From the U.S. State Department:
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Consuela may have had a difficult time proving that she wanted to come for only a visit. But it doesn’t mean that getting smuggled in was her next available option. Assuming she was better able to make her case that she had ties compelling her return home, she could have reapplied. Unfortunately, her choice to come into the country illegally and fd’s assistance with that, perpetuates the problem, making it more difficult for the next person who wants to come legally to get approved.
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Why? Because it perpetuates the assumption that people don’t want to just visit, they want to stay. It surely seems that was the case with Consuela. And it is unfortunate, because there is a legal manner by which Consuela could have come permanently, if her daughter had sponsored her.
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And of course, there was the option that Consuela’s daughter could have been the one traveling.
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I’d be interested in hearing more about what Guatemalans would have to do to immigrate legally. Then maybe we can have a discussion about solutions.
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It is almost impossible for a Guatemalan to immigrate legally. You’ve done a lot of good research above. You don’t understand the U.S. embassy does not allow, basically, anyone to get into the country just to visit.
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Some of the most educated people I know that fit all the criteria above with flying colors are still denied their visas, even when all they want to do is go to Disneyworld.
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This person had a house in Guatemala, a car, he was the manager of a multimillion dollar company, he had plenty of money in the bank, and family to return to. All he wanted to do was take his kids to see the U.S.
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It used to be that U.S. citizens could go to the window with them and vouch for them, but they don’t even allow that any more. There is virtually no way for a Guatemalan to emigrate, legally, even for a tourist visa, much less to work.
I’m calling bull shit!
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According to the Department of States FY06 Annual Report Regarding Visa’s Visas were issued to 7,351 people from Guatamala.
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Below you will find a table with visas by country for North America and the percentage of the population of each country given a Visa to enter the United States. Note I know that a visa is unneccesary for Canadian and Bahamanian citizens to enter the United States.
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p> Visas Population Percent of population
Dominica 464 67000 0.69%
St. Kitts and Nevis 216 50000 0.43%
Jamaica 11115 2714000 0.41%
Grenada 311 106000 0.29%
Saint Lucia 393 165000 0.24%
Antigua and Barboda 197 85000 0.23%
Dominican Republic 21586 9760000 0.22%
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines 260 120000 0.22%
Trinidad and Tobago 2076 1333000 0.16%
Belize 289 288000 0.10%
El Salvador 6397 6857000 0.09%
Barbados 265 294000 0.09%
Haiti 7305 9598000 0.08%
Guatemala 7351 13354000 0.06%
Mexico 52485 103263388 0.05%
Honduras 3035 7106000 0.04%
Cuba 4164 11268000 0.04%
Nicaragua 1918 5603000 0.03%
The Bahamas 77 331000 0.02%
Panama 686 3343000 0.02%
Costa Rica 585 4468000 0.01%
Canada 2839 32994500 0.01%
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Guatemala isn’t even at the bottom of this list.
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Next argument?
another friend in guatemala, whose name really is alejandra, is heavily involved in her protestant church. being single, a lot of her social support and connections are contained within her church activities.
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one of her favorite guatemalan preachers along with some american tv envangelist types were having a big revival confab in indianapolis which alejandra referred to as a ‘congress’. she planned, saved, and looked forward to attending this one week event in indiana that would strengthen her church and faith bonds. she then applied to the u.s. embassy for a visa for her one week roundtrip pilgrimage. denied.
Your choice of numbers is highly selective. If you had actually crunched these numbers for all of the countries that that require a Visa to enter the U.S., you would find that the number of Visas is 0.06% of the population of Great Britain (higher than Mexico, Honduras, Cuba, etc.). The proportion of Visas awarded to folks originating from the Ukraine is 0.011% and from Poland is 0.015%, more than twice than those given to most of Latin America. A quick calculation finds that the US gives Visas to only 0.008% of the rest of the world.
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More importantly, your logic here is fundamentally flawed. First, this report does not include people here on student Visas, which is a popular route to residency for many immigrants. Second, the proportion of a country’s population that obtains a Visa to emigrate to the U.S. doesn’t tell us anything more than how many people are leaving their own countries to join family or to work in the U.S.
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I’m assuming that you are trying to point out that it can’t be difficult to get a Visa to come to the U.S. because over 7,000 Guatemalans came to this country through a work or family Visa. However, the report you link to shows that it is much easier for folks from other countries to get a Visa. Over 33,500 Visas were given to persons from India, almost 40,000 Visas were given to folks from China, and almost 47,000 to those coming from the Phillipines. And the overwhelming majority of these Visas were to join family, not to work (although India seems to be the #1 country of origin for lottery visas). These numbers have absolutely nothing to do with the proportion of the U.S. population who claim these countries as their place of origin or national background.
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The report you cite actually undermines your argument. It is clearly easier to get a Visa to enter this country if you are from some countries and not from others.
by proving your selective statistics wrong, but I know from experience that getting a visa is almost impossible for Guatemalans now. They accept 7,000 visas from Guatemala but there going to deport 24,000 people from the country this year. That should tell you something about numbers.
…nobody has raised the issue that one of the reasons that “illegals” from the central and south America want to immigrate the US is that the US has decimated the agricultural industry in their native countries by dumping US government subsidized food there produced by US farmers.
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And that is aside from the fact of the US government mucking around in central America on behalf of United Fruit. There is a reason why “banana republics” are called “banana republics.
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Going up a bit, regarding
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Over 33,500 Visas were given to persons from India, almost 40,000 Visas were given to folks from China, and almost 47,000 to those coming from the Phillipines
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I have no idea what the rationale is for the number of visas to filipinos–except maybe that the Phillipines at one time was a US colony, but I would be willing to bet dollars to doughnuts that the visas to people from India and China are primarily H1-B visas. Those allow high-tech companies to import and hire low-wage high-tech workers in the US. I dealt with that in my last corporate job, and I will let you know, the companies are’t particularly generous with their H1-B visa holders. Not only that, the H1-B program supresses the incentive for Americans to go into those fields that are covered by H1-Bs.
Actually, most of those Visas are for family reunification purposes. The ratio of family Visa to work Visas is 12:1 for the Chinese and 4:1 for Indians.
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It is possible that, at least for Indians, those here on work Visas are more successful in getting their family members Visas to join them. I kind of doubt that the average Chinese H-Visa worker is bringing in anywhere near 12 family members. It’s more likely that people who have been here for quite a while and who are probably citizens are finally in the financial position to bring over aging relatives or older children. These Visas are expensive. Not only are the fees high, but you often have to show that they will not be a welfare burden. This usually means that you have to be able to show that you have a certain amount of money in the bank.
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I understand from my colleagues that bringing over family members while you are here on an H Visa is quite difficult even when you have the money and legal support. I have a colleague who is here on an H Visa who had to wait six months for her husband to get a spousal Visa to join her.
I have a colleague who is here on an H Visa who had to wait six months for her husband to get a spousal Visa to join her.
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Read my last sentence
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Not only that, the H1-B program supresses the incentive for Americans to go into those fields that are covered by H1-Bs.
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The sad fact is that people who emigrate to the US for job opportunities incur certain risks. One of them is family separation. On the other hand, those who are successful in emigrating, particularly in the high-tech sector, really are depressing wages among Americans who might have otherwise wanted to go into the high-tech sector.
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I quite frankly don’t care how many family members Indian or Chinese nationals who hold H visas might want to bring in. What I do care about is, why are they granted such work visas at all? I will tell you why. It is because high-tech companies in the US want those visas to exist, so that they can import cheap labor. That is all.
My point was that the number of certain nationalities obtaining Visas is far higher than is likely to be explained by H Visas.
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Only half of the people in the US on work Visas are through the H-1B program (at least as of 2005, see http://www.dhs.gov/x…).
However, given that the there are over 150 million workers in the U.S. and the most recent reports show only 400,000 H-1B workers, I doubt they are having a meaningful impact on wages for the overall employed population. It is simply not possible that 0.27% of the workforce can meaningfully impact the wages of the rest of the working population.
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According to one DHS report (see Table 44 at http://www.dhs.gov/x…), 55% of H-1B Visas go to computer related occupations. It is possible that you might find some problems in this sector. However, H-1B workers going into computer related occupations only comprise 2% of the total computer related workforce, so the impact of wage depression by H-1B workers is likely to be small.
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I believe that the more importantly public policy that you might want to be concerned about related to the wages of computer related workers is the Fair Pay Exemption from the Fair Labor Standards Act. There is a provision of FSLA that exempts some employees in computer related occupations from minimum wage and overtime laws. Our own public policies have allowed for certain employees to be exploited. However, given that the average wage of a worker in a computer related occupation is $30 an hour, I am personally more concerned about the exploitation of farm workers and food service employees, who also work under similar fair pay exemptions.
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With that said, I do agree that we need to do more to prepare our own children to go into high tech and scientific fields. But I doubt that the kids graduating from high school or going to college are making their employment decisions based on the number of H-1B Visas being handed out. I teach at a local university here in Boston and I can tell you first hand that many of our high school graduates, even those coming from Boston Latin, lack some very basic skills. I teach a class in which the students are expected to do their own research and I actually have to spend time explaining how to calculate a percent and have to constantly reinforce this throughout the semester. This is not a problem that stems from our immigration policies. It stems from our own public policies that has systematically drained funding from our public schools.
RE: Only half of the people in the US on work Visas are through the H-1B program (at least as of 2005, see http://www.dhs.gov/x….).
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I meant to say only half of the people here in H-1B Visas work in computer related industries.
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I apologize for the misunderstanding.
These are the things I think we should be debating and bringing up in the U.S. “immigration debate”.
Drop the quotation marks and I’d give you a 6. It is a debate. It’s unfortunate that this thread got so emotional, there’s some good information here.
for the rating.