As a volunteer specialized in working with youth, I spend a lot of times with kids. Effectively having done the same type of work in the US, I know that I have a love-hate relationship with working with kids. They can be heinous, rude, incredibly inconsiderate and oblivious to the fact that you aren't trying to make they're lives more difficult but rather trying to help them. But also they can be tremendously sweet, simplistic in their show of affection by running up to you and showering you in hugs. One of the best things about working with youth is their innocence. They are just reflections of the people around them, only beginning to forge who they are, before they reach adulthood and cement their personalities and lose their sense of wonder of the world around them. Like my father told me once, children are great because "their cake isn't baked yet". It's still in that primordial goo, sweet and unsure what shape it will take. I guess that makes me the baker by profession.
There is a sense of honor in being a volunteer working on youth development in a country like El Salvador simply because the situation is so dire. Along with police officers, students are one of the principal targets of gang violence whether it be for the people in their social circle or their unwillingness to join gangs. Kids are abandoned by their parents, who journey to the United States, only to send remittances back. Or you have parents that suffered great tragedies during the civil war, entire families being murdered, who are still on survival mode, uneducated and unaware that by not making education a priority with their children, they are effectively condemning them to the poverty that they all know too well. On top of all of this you have one of the largest humanitarian crises of the 21st century.
It's difficult to unpack all the things wrapped up in the recent US immigration crisis of unaccompanied minors. There are so many statistic, story-lines, differing reasons and motivations on a person to person basis that it's almost impossible for me to talk about these things in general terms. Let me be clear that my feelings on this are based on my small community in the Northeast of El Salvador, a community I still struggle to understand.
From my school there where about 9 out of 250 children who emigrated within the last year. This statistic is much higher in some of my colleagues' sites where it seemed like everyone under 18 was disappearing overnight. I say overnight because the number of unaccompanied minors from El Salvador skyrocketed from 5,990 in 2013 to 16,404 this year alone. This spike seems bewildering until you start looking at the mechanics. By nature the black market is clandestine. People here talk about going "mojado" to the US by they don't say more than they have to. Hopeful emigrants don't know any more about the journey than what they're told by family and friends in the US. The United States until this year had kept quiet on their deportation policy for unaccompanied minors. They never openly said that they didn't deport minors, that they let them stay. But from one-word-of-mouth to another, this fact got out. Pretty soon, it seemed all undocumented immigrants with children in El Salvador knew. And then, boom, you have yourself an immigration crisis.
I remember in April I was participating in a training at our regional office when my colleagues and I were visited by the US Deputy Chief of Mission of El Salvador (the second most important person from the embassy after the ambassador). He brought us doughnuts and wanted to talk. He was there because like everyone else, he had no idea what to do about the immigration crisis and was looking to us for insight, to dissect this monolithic problem by looking at the collective parts of our individual experiences, the stories we knew from our communities. We all shared our anecdotes, the reasons why youth were leaving, basic information on the prices and structure of human trafficking. It was an extremely rich dialogue but I think all of us left with more questions than answers.
And that's the thing, when you have so many lives wrapped into one massive humanitarian crisis, you can only talk about what you've seen.
You read a lot in the news how children are fleeing El Salvador because of the gang-violence, that it's life or death. While it's true, there are cases like that, I wonder if that's the norm or the exception.
In my community, there isn't gang violence to speak of, but there are a lot of kids with parents in the US. You instantly know who they are because of their iPhones, Levi jeans, nice shoes, and other possessions. You don't even have to ask. Their parents have left long ago, making their children trade the experience of growing up with their parent for financial security and nice things.
"Going to the US is the only way for me to provide for my family"
You here that a lot. On face-value it seems like a no-brainer. Parents risking their lives to make the dangerous journey to the US for their loved ones. And it is courageous, selfless, but only to a certain extent. Only until you consider what actually happens to their kids. I've heard a lot of stories about kids being left with relatives only to be neglected, their wellbeing treated like a secondary job by family members who wait for the next remittance check to come. The kids they grow up knowing their parents as an old photo, a voice on the phone, and presents in the mail. There are obvious psychological effects of not knowing your parents but I'd argue that the social effects are greater.
Partly out of guilt, partly out of wanting to give their children everything they never had growing up, Salvadoran parents living in the US shower their kids in gifts. Unlike other kids, they never have to worry about money, it just materializes in front of them. Now, if you're used to money literally showing up at your doorstep, are you going to force yourself to support yourself? No. You become dependent. Your well-being is already taken care of, why work or even go to school for that matter?
This is the remittance-kid's mindset. They become dependent, lazy, unambitious. If you're a parent you might pat yourself on the back, thinking that you've done your job. You've fed your child, clothed them, given them everything they ever wanted. But what you've actually done is ruined them. Like a animal born in a zoo only to be released into the wild, once the sustenance stops, they are left vulnerable and clueless in self-preservation and autonomy.
So when undocumented parents heard that they could bring their kids to the US with no legal repercussions, many didn't think twice, they want to give there children everything after all. It costs anywhere from five to seven-thousand dollars to pay a Coyote (human trafficker) to take you to the United States from El Salvador. Many times parents pay the same Coyote that they used to get them to the US to try and cross their children.
There are many horror stories of crossing the border. Women and children raped, literally sold into slavery. I remember one of my colleagues telling me that a little girl that they lived with was going to be smuggled to the US by a Coyote. They told me they tried talking to the girl's grandmother about the dangers, all the terrible things that could happen to her granddaughter. But in the end, the risk was worth it for all of them, even the girl. Of course a little girl is going to take the opportunity to see her mother for the first time in a decade and not think of the risks. That's what's wrong. These adults are making decisions, possibly life-altering decisions, for their kids, as if them, the parent, coming home is completely out of the question. The kids must go find them. I just can't agree with that.
Poverty is a reality here, much more for some than others. A lot of Salvadoran parents see going to the US as the only way for them and their families to survive. But there are also parents that struggle, selling baked goods, fruit or whatever they can find in order to support their kids. Sure their kids are going to grow up poor, but they'll at least know their parents. They'll never have to risk their lives to get to meet their parents. I guess that's what it comes down to for me. No amount of money can ever replace the presence of parent.
On a personal level, there is no doubt in my mind that this is where I belong. The timing of me living here couldn't be any more perfect. I'm a volunteer when volunteers are needed most. When kids need someone the most. I'm unsure what my time here will accumulate to but I am grateful for the opportunity to try and help.
