The Immigration Debate: Separated at the holidays

Latina_VoicesBy Veronica Rios, Latina Voices

This past Christmas Mayra Hernandez missed her cousin.

“My cousin Guillermo submitted to voluntary deportation after being detained for driving without a license,” said Hernandez of the Back of the Yards neighborhood of Chicago.

Hernandez explained that attorney fees and traffic violations caused problems for her cousin, causing him to return to Mexico.

“To my mother and father, it was like losing a son,” Hernandez said. “To my siblings and myself, it was losing a brother.”

During the holidays, many undocumented immigrants cannot easily communicate with their families or travel back home. Some use social media to stay in touch, but many have relatives, such as aunts, uncles, grandparents and parents, who live in rural areas and don’t have Internet.

It’s a time that families also are reminded that they face separation from their loved ones.

Hernandez said her family feels incomplete. Right now, she said her family mostly stays in contact with her family in Mexico through social networks, like Facebook. Others she can only reach by phone.

Jose Alonzo, head of the immigration committee at Holy Cross/Immaculate Heart of Mary Parish in the Back of the Yards neighborhood of Chicago, said that the holidays are meant for families to be together. He said his church tries to send a message of hope to the community, though it still doesn’t change the reality.

“The holidays are a time when families are called to come together,” Alonzo said. “Unfortunately the reality is that some of our families are still at the risk of separation and are actually being separated.”

Since taking office in 2009, President Barack Obama has deported almost 2 million undocumented, more than previous presidents. Under former President George W. Bush, about 2.2 million undocumented immigrants were removed between 2000 and 2008.

For Christmas this year, Adriana Velazquez, said she would be able to see her other grandmother for the first time in 10 years. She and other family members obtained temporary visas to visit.

“After not being able to see my grandma for 10 years,” Velazquez said. “I am going to be able to spend Christmas with her.”

But most families can’t get visas. Edy Dominguez said the separation takes an emotional toll on families.

“There are families out there, there are kids out there,” Dominguez said. “There are sons and daughters who don’t have that privilege of spending time with their family members.”

His father, Marciano Dominguez, is an undocumented member of the Back of the Yards community. He left behind his mother and some of his brothers and sisters in Mexico. He said he was only able to communicate with his family by phone, but found it hard to bring himself to make the calls.

“It was because I didn’t have any good thing to say to them,” said the elder Dominguez. “I wish to have something like ‘Hey, I’m going to go back to visit you like next week, next month or the next year’ or something like that, but… I didn’t have the opportunity to travel and come back securely.”

His son, Hugo Dominguez has lived in the U.S. for 13 years without papers. He said the holidays have become bittersweet to him. He uses social media to connect with his family in Mexico, but it is not the same as sharing the holiday experience in person.

“Every holiday I get depressed because I am hungry to see my relatives in person,” Dominguez said. “I am hungry to be able to have experiences with them. I am really hungry to hug them.”

While families are celebrating the holidays and preparing to bring in a new year, Edy Dominguez said it is important to think about how families deal with separation all year round and not solely during this holiday season.

“I think that the whole year, every second, every hour that a family member is missed just because of the immigration system is just not fair,” Edy Dominguez said.

This article was originally published in Latina Voices.

Veronica Rios is a journalism graduate student at Columbia College Chicago. She grew up in Hammond, Ind. and now resides in downtown Chicago.

[Photo by SEIU International]

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