If You'd Been in the Shoes of These Immigrants from Mexico, What Would You Have Done? Steve Lopez - The Los Angeles Times
go to original December 11, 2016

The Story of a Millennial Who’s Undocumented in the US (World of Playboy)

When it comes to immigration, there’s plenty of rhetoric, none of which is very illuminating.

And then there are stories.

I once met a volunteer who was directing traffic outside the school her children attended near Koreatown. We later talked at her cramped apartment about how she hustled to scratch out a living.

She was undocumented, and I asked if she ever second-guessed her decision to leave Mexico.

Never, she said. As hard as her life was in Los Angeles, it was harder in Mexico, with little hope of advancing. Here, she had a daughter in college.

“If you saw where I came from,” she told me, “you’d understand.”

And so I traveled to her village north of Mexico City, where her brother showed me the farm shanty they grew up in and explained how they bartered with neighbors to put food on the table. Jobs were scarce, especially for women, and schools were as poor as the people.

On another trip to Mexico, I came upon a town west of Puebla with a predominance of women. I asked a man where all the other men were. They went north, he said, to work on farms in the States. The town’s only industry was corn, but local farmers couldn’t compete against the low prices of corn imported from the U.S., where taxpayers spend billions to subsidize farmers.

I thought back on those trips to Mexico when I got a recent email from someone accusing me of supporting illegal immigration. I wrote back to say I don’t support it, I understand it. Not everyone who crosses the border is pure, and schools, hospitals and social services can be overwhelmed by the influx. But if you were destitute, your family was hungry and narco-violence was the norm, what would you do?

Read the rest at The Los Angeles Times

Related: Fearing Trump Crackdown, 'Dreamers' Advised to End Travel (Associated Press)

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