Tribuna del Yaqui
Urban Observatories
December 12, 2009
Gloria Valdez-Gardea Ciria *
In recent years, policies anti-immigrant applied by the U.S. government have severely affected the welfare of hundreds of families of Mexican immigrants. For example, during the first seven months of 2009, the Working Group of the Commission on Population, Borders and Migration Affairs of the House of Representatives, reported that at least 90 thousand Mexican children were deported by the U.S. government. Have also been deported approximately 300 000 adults.
The study states that about 15 percent of children, about 13,500 live in the Mexican border without any government protection and, at best, are attended by religious institutions or NGOs.
Anti-immigrant policies, coupled with the economic crisis facing the neighboring country, have caused the separation of families when a parent is deported, or repatreación "voluntary" entire families to the economic and political situation that exists in the together. For example, from 2004 to 2008, 82.341 Mexicans have welcomed the voluntary repatriation program, which offers "the possibility of returning to their home at no cost to them, which prevents the death of those family trying to achieve by entering the U.S. for the desert areas of the corridor Sonora (Mexico)-Arizona (United States). "
According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (SRE) in the month of September 2009, voluntarily returned to Mexico 10.561 Mexicans living in the United States, 20.65 percent of them women and 814 minors. Trance
This affects the most vulnerable: the children.
When families return to Mexico voluntarily or not, children face social and cultural environment and impose particular institutions to enter the educational system in our country.
The Ministry of Education and Culture (SEC) in Sonora has reported on the arrival of children and youth with educational experience in U.S. classrooms Sonora schools in the past two years.
For example, in the 2008-2009 school year were received in 1.114 sound boys in primary and 164 secondary, 1.278 children in total. In this school has received 1134 primary level students and 164 secondary. In both seasons, most of these children in the state of Arizona.
The ignorance of the situation being experienced by children in their integration into the classroom Sonora and the particular needs for better development in the academic, social and cultural development has been little studied. What he brings, what leads, what brings the migrant children to school Sonoran? What's receiving the migrant children in the classrooms Sonora for their educational experience? These are questions that we want to respond. Therefore, on 29 January 2010, the Migrant Children seminar session devoted to the topic: "The return to the classroom Sonora: migrant children and youth." We wait.
gvaldez@colson.edu.mx