Migrants vs. family-fragmenting policy: A Mexican home community proposes solutions

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Migrants vs. family-fragmenting policy A
Mexican home community proposes solutions
The Corner Project of Malinalco
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(No Transcript)
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Early-stage migration

• Tends to be circular
• Jobs tend to be rural, seasonal, insecure
• Scattered, multiple destinations
• Destination support is very limited
• Family stays home
• Migrants goal earn return

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Early-stage migration family and community

• Extended families provide support
• Paying migration costs
• Raising children
• Attempt to solve problems internally
• Effects of migration not easily visible outside
  families

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Examples of family-breaking policy

• Deportation of migrant members of mixed-status
  families
• Family members stressed during long waits in home
  community
• U.S.-born childrens bureaucratic limbo
• Enforcement that pushes people into clandestinity
  makes for lost connections
• Less permeable border raises costs children wait
  longer to see parents
• Opaque detention system
• Migrant relatives difficult to locate
• Communications prohibitively expensive
• Health and other problems difficult to address
• Visa restrictions impede family visits for key
  family events, illness, other needs

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Internet-facilitated communications
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Job-creation for migrants widows
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Locating missing migrant relatives
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Family reunification
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Family reunification
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Family reunification
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Programs for migrants children
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Community accounting
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Community accounting exchange
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Solution-generating methodology

• Make services available to families in home
  community
• Build home community-destination connections via
  internet
• Provide translation and technical support to aid
  cross-border linking
• Build links to include
• local home community
• Home country agencies
• Destination country agencies
• local destination community
• Facilitate crisis resolution with two-way
  communications
• Remedy communication gaps
• Strengthen security via community accounting
  methods

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Recommendations

• Create apostille-support network for U.S.-born
  children
• Provide low-cost detainees communications with
  family in home communities
• Create network of home-region-based support
  modules providing
• Internet-facilitated low-cost communications
• Volunteer-staffed English-language communications
  and technical support

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www.elrincon.orgEllen Calmus
ecalmus_at_elrincon.org
The Corner Project of Malinalco