There are stories of people who have their green cards and are applying for citizenship, but are "accidentally" deported. Even though they're in the final stages of the citizenship process, their application is voided, because to leave the US is to abandon your attempt at citizenship - even when you are driven over the border in a prison bus, illegally.
I've heard some of these stories first-hand. In the past two days, when I was in Nogales and Altar, Mexico, I have talked with a man who was a legal permanent resident, having lived in Los Angeles for 25 years - since he was two - who was deported after being convicted of a crime, serving jail time, and being stripped of his legal status. He seemed excited to meet someone else who spoke English. I talked to an older man, with impeccable gray hair, who told me that he had no other option but to cross the border. His family in Mexico had all passed on, he said, and his life was in Phoenix now, where he had lived for many years, until he was stopped in the street by police, asked to show his papers, and deported when he couldn't comply. He said he never took risks, never drove, never went to other states, all to avoid being detected. It turned out that the fatal risk for him was living in Maricopa County. This is also the story of Jaime who is seriously contemplating the permanent dissolution of his family - cut in half by the US-Mexico border and over a hundred miles of desert that he isn't sure he'll be able to cross.
I've also learned a new term: Economic refugee. The concept that someone can be fleeing the impossible economic situation of their country, rather than revolution or an oppressive dictator, is a powerful one for me. We met a brother and sister in Altar who had been traveling for a month just to get that far. They had paid almost nothing for their passage, hopping trains across the border and through Mexico, where they sometimes had to jump off of speeding trains to avoid immigration officers. They related the stories that I have heard from several groups of Guatemalans, of having seen people killed trying to get onto or off of trains. They said that they stayed in church shelters when they could, and slept in the streets when they couldn't. Now that they got to Altar, they are excited to see that there is only a hundred miles of desert separating them from a job that pays more than two dollars a day, and the money that they need to pay for medical operations for their children in Guatemala City. One child is a US citizen. For these people, as it is for the vast majority, migration is not a choice. Moving to the United States is not a decision taken because of a desire for US culture or the services offered in the US. Migration is a last resort, the ultimate sacrifice of separation for the sake of one's family. The best-case scenario, they say, is that they stay in the US for three years, until they amass the money they need for the operations.
I have heard from people that we need to close the border so that people will come through legally, "like they should." If they could, they would. Nobody in their right mind will risk a hundred-mile death march, without a guide, simply to avoid "doing it the right way." But the people that I have met are doing just that, and they are the strongest and most sane people I have ever met. They simply have no other choice. I'm sorry to end this on that note - it seems really negative. However, I'd like to challenge people to think of that as a positive. Here in the US, my family and friends and I are mostly white citizens who are insulated from these things, and we don't have to think about them very much. We don't often have the chance to make such supreme sacrifices for our families, and I know that I don't know what I would do if I was in that situation. For that reason, I don't feel sorry for the people who are coming. I will fight for a world in which they don't have to make that choice, and I will work to make sure that when they do they will stand as good a chance as possible to make it, but it will be because I am in awe of their strength, not because of their need for charity.
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