They dream a little DREAM

I may be wrong, but it seems to me that amost of the lthe immigration activists in the states assume that all immigrants want to stay and become citizens. Some do, but many don’t. In any event, these bills often are deaf to the needs of families to be families. Essentially, this law may breed a bunch of illegal border crossings so that kids can visit grandparents and even parents who have stayed at home. It certainly treats them as delinquents on probation. It doesn’t acknowledge that they may have trouble coming up with the money to go to college or even to stay in high school if they are living with people in the shadows who move from job to job. And indeed, many of these kids are good students and certainly a lot better behaved than their US citizen counterparts.

I have seen and could probably dredge up the statistics that show that US education in fact is in itself harmful to the very family ties that keep these kids on track.

I guess the thing that most bothers me is the lack of resources kids have for meeting the demands unless they join the military. Kind of a nasty way to build an army. Further, the inability for such kids to go home to Mexico to visit sometimes is definitely not good for the kids or the families.

I think Americans way overvalue the American way of life and don’t understand the ties of home here in Mexico. I imagine most kids who have spent most of their lives in the US think of it as home, so naturally they want to stay. However, many, many value trips to Mexico.

Kids are dazzled by the new cars in the states, etc., but as I hope Americans are now learning, the glitz does not a worthwhile life make. In our years in San Antonio, many Mexicans and Mexican Americans of all ages who could afford to liked living comfortably, yes, but thought that “Anglos” had a lot to learn from them about values. Here where we live, it is the same. Interestingly, a lot of Mexican Americans in San Antonio for generations have managed to climb out of poverty through the US Military.

You’re wrong on sex ed. It is compulsory here in Mexico. And it is real sex-ed, not abstinence only. My young neighbor and recently discussed the fact that some girls still got pregnant and for some similar reasons as in the US. You might also like to know that way up in the mountains in tiny communities drawings of birth control methods decorate the outside walls of local community health clinics. Mexico is a birth control success in most places. The birth rate has fallen from 7 kids per woman to just slightly over 2 since the 1970s. The pope may wail about this as may the church hierarchy, but they don’t have much influence. In Mexico, many churches are rather sparsely populated on Sundays. Even where they are populated, the priests are often pro-birth control. Remember, it was a priest who started the Mexican Revolution in 1810. And people here know priests on the whole are not saints.

Mexican girls are better students and make up more of UNAM’s graduating class than do boys. In our neighborhood in Mexico, girls are not servile. In fact, property ownership often passes through the woman and a lot of women do not take their husbands’ names. There are many, many women physicians in Xalapa, the capital of the state of Veracruz, and men and women alike go to them. A rather interesting woman is in charge of the PRI, perhaps again the biggest political party. There is one in our colonia who serves the population at large. The former US ambassador married a very successful Mexican businesswoman. She is if I remember correctly the second richest woman in Latin America. Women of all social levels hold all kinds of jobs. Men need them to work here, as they do in the US. I would be careful making overgeneralizations about the girls and women in Mexico or in Mexican families.

Mexican youths get in the same kinds of trouble here that they do in the states, and as they do all over the world now that social ties have been broken by the need to migrate internally or externally for work; now that not enough jobs exist; now that good education is elusive world-wide; now that mafia-like organizations can offer them either death or lots of money, as they say. It is the tragedy of corporate dominance of globalization. (Not that every kid would have been a good kid if it weren’t for globalization. Mexico has produced all kinds of crooks and criminals through the years.)

I think citizenship means for kids the chance to work legally, the chance,supposedly, not to be afraid of immigration authorities, the chance to take part in the ever-shrinking pool of worker benefits. And of course the chance to feel safe at home in the US. But at least in San Antonio, family still matters to people from all generations if the family can stay close. There are studies that show that it is good, for instance, for kids to know Spanish as well as English, that kids who don’t know Spanish have more trouble both with their families and in the world away from home in the US. I think you can find some of this at the Brookings Institution. Don’t undervalue Mexican values. The US could use more of them.

Esther, I think you missed the point. When I stated that it is important to be careful in citing statistics on how the US education system is bad for family values, I was referring to your statement that US education is bad for families. It is indeed the fact that much of the research done in this area, on the US educational system, has been funded by the extreme religious right wing in order to promote their agenda and that agenda is not particularly receptive to independence for women. I made no statement and implied nothing about the system in Mexico.

As far as the fact that

I’m no conservative, but I do have to say I think US education is bad for families and for communities and for social ties….much of it, anyway. At present, it stresses testing over all; acquisition of basic skills and rote-learned material over the richness of literature or history or our own or other cultures; kids are often bored to tears or mainly competing to get into a college. I know I’m overgeneralizing. Poor kids go to school because they have to and they learn very little in them, not even enough to get good jobs. I am glad Obama seems to have a much broader vision for education. I hope he gets somewhere.

In Mexico, which again, is not anything close to heaven in anyway (some Americans’ views to the contrary) at least they stress community values; they have courses that address environmental issues which include addressing them as of community concern; they stress the value of academic success for the purposes of serving family and community, etc. Now truth be told, a lot of schools are basically having kids thumb through the book and watch tv until the end of the term. But that’s not so different, is it, from the US? At least there is a recognition that there’s more to life than self. AND I might add that if you did a poll here in my colonia about whether people thought global warming was real or whether deforestation was a significant issue, most people would say yes to both questions. Even though, on the other hand, deforestation continues and Mexican cities belch out CO2 and for that matter, industrial agriculture gallops ahead.
However, just to inform you, Mexico City has banned plastic bags and has cleared the air considerably and the Xalapa Diario has had significant environmental activities and you can see awareness in students again in rural schools where their posters hang in windows. And on non-environmental issues, abortion and civil unions for gays are legal and the State Theater here in Xalapa is dedicated to a famous gay Mexican playwright who was.definitely out of the closet.

On the pregnancy stuff: they’re not getting pregnant because of ignorance or abstinence only programs. I really don’t know the rates, but considering the birth rate, it can’t be that many at all.

Hey Rich,

I just saw this post and wanted to thank you for linking to me. I hope the DREAM Act is passed sooner rather than later. I hope Obama doesn’t sell migrants out.