Immigration

My conception of Peace Corps before departing the US was that I would be falling off the map for 2 years. This to me meant both not seeing or talking frequently to friends and family back home for the whole time, and also Host Country Nationals (PC term for the locals) not knowing much about the United States. I think that I went in with this belief mainly due to the fact that 90% of my information about Peace Corps came from my parents, who both served in Africa in the 1980s. Everyone in the know knows that PC Africa is a different animal, even today. Now, 30 years ago I can’t even imagine how different it is than what my modern Peace Corps El Salvador experience has been.

Salvadorans joke that El Salvador is the 51^st state. Every Salvadoran I’ve ever met either has lived in, or has friends and family members living in the United States. They are up to date on American politics, culture, and sports (well, soccer anyway). They intimately know the geography of different states, too. I’ll never forget the first time I told someone I was from Boston and he asked me “Where in Boston? I lived in Chelsea for 15 years.” I’m used to getting called out by Americans for saying “Boston” when what I really mean is “a suburb of Boston you’ve NEVER heard of so I’m just gonna say the city,” but I never expected that from an old farm worker who doesn’t speak a word of English and is missing a good portion of his teeth.

¼ of all Salvadoran people live outside of El Salvador. There are approximately 8 million Salvadorans in the world, and about 2 million live abroad. Most of these people live in the United States, although there are some in Canada and other places. A large portion of those living abroad is doing so illegally. Salvadorans represent the second highest Hispanic population in America after Mexicans. All of these people are coming from a country the size of Massachusetts, which is astounding to me. Most elderly people have either lived there or have children there and most young people have the hope that they will live there someday, even though they realistically acknowledge that they will probably not be given papers and therefore will have to cross illegally.

While illegal immigration has been around for ages and has been an issue in the United States for years, before coming to El Salvador it was not on my radar. Living in suburban Massachusetts I was never aware of a large illegal immigrant presence and the raging political debates in Arizona, Texas, and the like seemed alien to me. Now, living in El Salvador, I have a very unique perspective on illegal immigration that most US citizens will never have.

Let me be upfront about this: I strongly dislike illegal immigration and am very much against it. This is not because I don’t want illegal immigrants taking advantage of our public services or sucking up all of the job opportunities. Not at all. I am against illegal immigration because I hate to see what it does to the families of the immigrants and the nations that they leave behind. Kids are growing up in broken families. Parents, siblings, and friends are missing. When someone goes to the US the assumption is that they will never be seen again. Hopefully, this is because they have successfully crossed the border and will be living there. The alternative is that they get killed in the crossing, get put in jail, or get deported.

Mere days after leaving my site in San Vicente to move to Morazán I found out that my host brothers, Marvin and Erik (age 18 and 16) had left to cross illegally into the US. They are now living with their parents (who have been in the US for about 15 years) in Chelsea, a city right outside of Boston where my mom worked for years. A few weeks later pictures popped up of them on Facebook on the duckling statues at the Boston Public Garden…one of my favorite childhood locations. How surreal. Marvin and Erik’s parents left for the US 15 years ago, when Marvin was 3 and Erik was 1. They left their children for a very legitimate reason – they wanted to make money to send back home so that their kids could have a better life in El Salvador. They left them with Blanca, their aunt and my host mom. Blanca raised them as her own and they grew up considering her to be their mother. They never had interaction beyond Facebook and occasional phone calls with their parents. However, in January, the parents decided that they were ready for their sons to join them in the US. They made the arrangements and mandated that Blanca send the 2 boys over the border (I’m not sure how they made this happen, but I imagine with threats of withdrawing remittances). Marvin and Erik were not at all happy. They did not want to leave the family they had grown up with, their hometown, and their comfortable, upper middle class life in El Salvador to live in a poor, cramped neighborhood of a working class city in Massachusetts. Marvin and Erik made it across the border safely and are now living with their parents in Chelsea. A cousin of theirs was grabbed at the border and detained in Chicago for some time before being released to his parents. They both say that they miss Santa Paula and their family, but the reality is that they will probably never return to El Salvador unless they are deported or somehow win papers and can travel back legally. Blanca misses them daily. Her biological son has been in the states for 5 years now, and Marvin and Erik were like her surrogate sons. Now all of her children are living in the US and she will probably never see any of them again. 

Now, in Sunsulaca, I am having another experience with immigration. Tonio is one of my favorite kids in the neighborhood. He is perpetually happy, walking around town grinning a gigantic smile and saying hi to everyone. He hangs out and watches me watch movies in English just to keep me company, asked me to be godmother of his puppy, and once identified my friend Tricia as my “friend with the orange water bottle” (instead of going for the more obvious qualities such as her height of 6 feet or her white-blonde hair). He collects marbles, loves to draw, and turned 8 in May. Tomorrow, he will be heading across the border alone to join his mother in New York. Tonio’s mom is paying a “coyote” (professional border-crosser) $10,000 to get her son across to New York. She doesn’t have that much money, so she’s had to borrow it, from whom I don’t know. Tonio has no interest in leaving El Salvador and crossing to the United States. He will be leaving his whole family and making the trip alone with an unknown man. He’ll be forced to walk for days, go without food and water, and hide from authorities. If he makes it, he’ll be living with people he doesn’t remember in a place he doesn’t know. He’ll be cold, he won’t speak the language or know the customs, and he won’t have any friends to help him out. Tonio’s a good kid and he’ll adapt quickly, but I hate that he’s being forced to. He’s too young to be experiencing all of this, but then again I don’t think anyone should ever have to go through what he’s about to.

In the United States the illegal immigration debate is generally based around the civil rights of the immigrants and the effects their presence has on US citizens. Here, it's about the people who are getting left behind, and the broken families that fill this country and the immigrant population of the United States. I just wanted to write this so you all can have a glimpse of what it’s like down here. I don’t pretend to have any brilliant, deep ideas or insights about this issue, but I hope that it gives you a new perspective on immigration.

my buddy Tonio