Cultural Education & Study Abroad Readiness

Hearing Patti's story was very interesting but also very sad for all of
us. So often you read in the news about "illegal immigrants" but you do not
know the details behind their choice to leave their home and go to
America. In Patti's case she chose to go to California because both her
parents had died and she had a younger brother who wanted to go to college. She knew that he would not be able to afford to go to college on the very, very low wages the two of them and their two other brothers could earn in Mexico, so she went north to help him. She worked in many different kinds of jobs, almost always for wages lower than the official US minimum, but that was still a lot more than she could have earned in Mexico and it did make it possible for him to compete a college program. She worked as nanny (also doing cooking and cleaning as well as childcare for the family), worked in a factory sewing shirts (where the hours sometimes went from 7 am until 2 or 3 in the morning, it sounded like what would be described as a "sweatshop"), working as a housecleaner and she had lots of other jobs as well. Most of her jobs were in places with other illegal immigrants but if there were Americans working (like in the factory settings, they would get paid $15 per hour while the illegal workers were paid $5 an hour or sometimes even less. She thinks that most Americans did not want the kind of jobs and the kind of hours that the people from Mexico were willing to work.

Patti said she was sad in California much of the time, she missed her family and her home country but she stayed there many years to support her brother's education,and later her own. She worked full time and then began to attend classes in the evening herself. She fell in love and got married during the time she was in the US too.

She was surprised how when she walked down the street people would not greet her with a cheery "Good morning" or even "hello" as people would always do in Mexico, she said she wondered if people did not like her because in Mexico you would always greet someone walking down the street but in California she was often ignored. She decided to try getting work in Colorado, but there she experienced a lot of racism and prejudice
so she returned to California.

Patti decided to return from California to Mexico with her husband after their first child (a son) was born in the US. They knew they were more comfortable with the life and values in Mexico than those in the US so they returned to raise their child at home. Patti had a daughter after they returned to Mexico and now her son is 11 and her daughter is 9. She works at CCIDD helping show visitors about life in Mexico and her husband is a paramedic working on an ambulance crew in Cuernavaca. She has a Spanish degree and has worked as a Spanish teacher but right now she is working on programs at CCIDD. She and her husband do not earn much money in their work but they like their work and think it is important and they are glad to be raising their children back in their home country.

When we went to La Stacion (the squatter settlement earlier this week) we met a woman (Maria) whose husband had just left for America one month ago so that they could afford to keep their four biological children and their
three adopted children (Maria's siblings) in school and with enough food and clothes to survive. The oldest children are young teenagers now and Maria so much wants all the seven children to be able to complete school so they can get better jobs in the future, but after trying to make things work for many years in Cuernavaca finally they realized that the only way would be to have her husband go work in the US for one year or so. Maria was very sad when she told us about this and cried as she told us. Clearly it was a very hard choice for her family, but when she described the cost of electricity, very basic food, education, and clothes, we could understand how it would be impossible to provide everything for the family on her husband's wages as a laborer, along with the small profit she was able to make from running a tiny shop out of her home and selling some embroidery. We could barely imagine how she could make ends meet with even a very simple diet for her children. The family has the same things almost every day, milk, tortillas, beans, and salsa and sometimes rice. Some of the children eat breakfast at La Stacion and that helps to give them some more food that is not very expensive too.

Another woman we met in La Estacion (Andrea) has had her 4 oldest children all go to the US, where most work in restaurants. They have never been home to Mexico in the 7 years since they headed north, and they send money home to help Andrea, her husband and the two younger kids still at home. Andrea stared at Michael when we were at her house and she got sad saying he looked a lot like her oldest son and she missed him so much but only
got to talk to him on the phone once every two weeks and did not know when or if she would see him again. She also said she does not know if her remaining two children will stay in Mexico or go to the US. She hopes they
will stay but she said it will all depend on if they can get good jobs or not because it is hard to get good jobs in Cuernavaca.

I interviewed Tibetan refugee women who fled Tibet for India in the past ten years and their stories were very different from these women who either had gone to America or had their families divided to go to America. People move from their homelands for very different reasons but in these two cases it seems it is equally because of desperation and a belief that it is nearly intolerable to stay in the home country because of certain conditions.

In the case of Patti and the others we met this week(Maria's husband, and Andrea's children ) they were not just going to the US to be able to have more money to buy "extras" that they could not afford in Mexico like many people think in the US. They were going to provide the basics of food, education and clothes for their families and when they could not make it happen in Mexico, they made the very difficult choice to go to the US. Patti came back after her son was born, but we do not know what will happen with the others. All whose families have been divided
have been very saddened by it and wish that the situation were different in Mexico so the families could stay together because we were told that "family is the most important thing"…

Patti reminded us of this many times and told us to all give our family members many hugs when we get home to tell them how much we love them and how glad we are to be able to live with or near them and only be separated
for short times, not like the situation for so many from Mexico.

Michelle