In Mexico, Families Hope Immigration Reform Will Trigger Long-Awaited Reunions Jude Joffe-Block - PRI's The World
go to original May 10, 2013

Santiago Domínguez, bottom right, poses with his children, grandchildren, and a portrait of his daughter, Rosa, who is in Arizona. (Jude Joffe-Block/Fronteras Desk)

Many Mexican families are tuned into news from Washington and whether Congress will change immigration laws. For years, families on both sides of the border have lived apart, with Mexicans in the US without papers afraid of visiting home and then being unable to cross back. But new laws could change this.

It’s a typical Sunday in the town of Tepeapulco, in Mexico’s central highlands. Families gather, cook and catch up. And that’s the scene at Santiago Domínguez’s home. At 82-years-old, he’s the family patriarch. He’s wearing pressed slacks, his dark hair smoothed back. By lunchtime, he’s surrounded by relatives.

But one person’s always missing: Rosa, Domínguez’s daughter. In the living room, there’s a picture of her as a young woman. “I thought she’d only be gone three or four years - and then come back,” Domínguez said in Spanish.

But it’s been 18 years since Rosa left for Arizona with her two young sons. They went illegally to join the boys’ father there. She’s now 43 and has never returned to Mexico. Without papers, it’s just too risky.

“It got to the point that I told her, ‘You know, I’m not sure if we’ll see each other again,’” Domínguez said. But now they might.

Read the rest at PRI's The World

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