freeSpeech: Sonia Nazario

Pulitzer Prize-Winning Reporter On Immigration & Family Values

(CBS)  If we are going to start to solve our immigration problem and stay true to our family values, we need to understand the plight of hundreds of thousands of mothers now in the U.S. and the children they felt forced to leave behind in Central America. It's a humanitarian crisis.

What you probably don't realize is that each year, tens of thousands of Central American immigrants make a perilous journey clinging to the tops of freight trains to reach the U.S. Some of them are women—single moms so desperate to feed their hungry children that they take them to garbage dumps to search for food.

Many ultimately make a heartrending choice: they leave their children behind with a grandparent and head north, promising to return in two years-max.

But once here, they struggle in low-paying jobs. What little they have they send to their kids. But they can't save enough to return home or to pay smugglers to get their children here. Many children feel abandoned and resent—even hate— their mothers for leaving them. The mothers often lose what is most important: the love of their child.

Everyone favors a more secure border. But that won't keep desperate mothers out of our country or keep them and their children from trying to reunite. Walls will never stop them.

What we need to do is find ways to help Central American countries create more jobs so these women never have to leave their children. That's the only way we will slow a modern day exodus that's destroying families and taxing America.


Sonia Nazario,a projects reporter for the Los Angeles Times, has spent more than two decades reporting and writing about social issues, earning her dozens of national awards. The newspaper series upon which her book, "Enrique's Journey: The Story of a Boy's Dangerous Odyssey to Reunite with his Mother" is based, won the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing, the George Polk Award for International Reporting, and the Grand Prize of the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards. Nazario grew up in Kansas and Argentina. She is a graduate of Williams College and has a master's degree in Latin American studies from the University of California, Berkeley. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband.

You can read an excerpt of her book here.

[jeannearp]

Unfortunately, when we talk about immigration, we do so in the abstract from the comfort of our living rooms. The reality is that a significant number of the people who come here illegally, do so because they are not safe in their own countries either physically or economically.
Why don%u2019t we pressure countries that are war-torn, corrupt, and economically bankrupt to straighten up. Not with secret CIA coups, in which we way too often back (or kill) the wrong guy, but with above board subsidies, trade relations, and so on. Get them to commit to certain milestones of economic achievement %u2013 we should be less concerned with whether they institute our form of democracy than in whether they can support themselves and stop killing and starving their citizens.
For instance, remove sanctions from Cuba. Allow that country to develop normalized trade relations and allow Americans and Cubans to move freely back and forth along with their money. More people would stay home.
If these countries do not make the milestones that we set for them, then we should let it be known that we will take their refugees, but that we will bill their home countries for all the costs associated with caring for their poor, sick, elderly, and so on. Invest in your own country or put the money in our coffers. Why not, we do prisons for money. At least this way, we do not have to make turning our backs on people who are dying one of the choices.

[kailumego]

Ms. Nazario makes a poignant argument, unfortunately so many of us have become so desensitized and disconnected with the plight of others. The very foundation of this country was built on immigrants. However, many Americans have forgotten this pivotal fact. European immigrants made a exodus across the Atlantic to escape religious and economic degradation, so why should their plight be any different.
Some of us have become so consumed with hubris arrogance that we forget the history of our forefathers. And it has not been a pretty one either! Maybe if the %u201Cbank-error%u201D had not been in our favor [European settlers overpowered the indigenous people of North and South America], the colonists would have been chased back to Europe, the same way some of us are trying to do.

[effallah]

I actually find myself in agreement with the majority of what she said. While she exasperates me with her refusal to acknowledge that these women are lawe-breakers and must accept responsibility for their actions, as does everyone else who whitewashes the actions of illegals, she is right when she says that Central America should create more jobs, to keep their people in their own countries. It is, of course, really up to the governments of these countries to help their people and create opportunities, but I am not opposed to helping them in some ways. Anything that will keep these people from trying to break into our country is okay with me.

[cheyenne16-2009]

Unfortunately, as with most of the "immigrant" (illegal alien) stories aired on our networks lately, this one fails to include relevant information regarding illegal immigrants.
It is a violation of United States federal law to enter the USA illegally, not once does Ms, Nazario mention that fact. She wants us to weep for the "desperate" mothers who want to smuggle their children in illegally, but not once does she mention the fact that illegal alien "mothers" commonly enter this country illegally, and have a baby as fast as they can, in order to qualify for welfare, which we, the employed taxpayers of this nation are having to foot the bill for.
In the future Ms Nazario might want to report ALL the facts, instead of her one-sided perspective. She would certianly have more credibility.

2006 (1st Qtr) INS/FBI Statistical Report on Undocumented Immigration.

More than 380,000 "anchor babies" were born in the United States in 2005 were to parents who are illegal aliens; making those 380,000 babies automatically U.S. citizens. 97.2% of all costs concurred from those births were paid by the American taxpayer;

Less than 2% of illegal aliens in the United States are picking crops , but 41% are on welfare;