One of the most difficult parts of those who migrate is leaving their family behind, and moving to another country to seek a common benefit. Migration has caused hundreds of family ties to be broken, not only between spouses, but those ties that are lifelong and gestate from the womb. Those are those of a father to his son. Immigration policies have always been criticized as a means of causing these family breaks, as Ronald Rael criticized them in June 2019 when he installed a swing set on the border between Ciudad Juarez and El Paso, Texas. The swings were installed to tell the world that many families had been separated from their children and relatives for seeking a better quality of life. This is just another case of the reality of hundreds of Mexicans who must leave their children behind in order to provide them with a better quality of life.
You came here in the year 2000 and, where did you first arrive in the United States?
This is Mrs. Patricia: Here to New Jersey. We walked through the desert. We made a full night of it. When we got to a house that they had told us about, they put us in a car and took us to an apartment.
Can you describe to us what that apartment looked like?
A two-room apartment, but there were a lot of people there, a lot of people. What were the two rooms and the living room were full of people. They were waiting for the people who were helping them through. There was a lady who arrived with a child who arrived alone with a T-shirt, and they had nothing to eat during the passing of the desert. The child was very hungry, poor thing, because he didn't have any milk or anything. When they arrived they prepared the food for them and the child began to eat when they were told that their (the people who came with the child) ticket was ready. The child was carrying the soup in his hand.
Who did you come to the United States with?
We came with my husband's sister and some nieces. Then my husband's sister said that she was tired of doing nothing, because we had been waiting there for about four days, she was a person who was used to doing everything in her village, going around cooking and so on. And she started cooking for all of us who were there, and there was plenty of food for everyone, there was soap for bathing, new towels. That same amount of food that she made was finished on the same day because there were too many people in that apartment. People came in and out of that apartment every day, groups of people came in and out almost every day. We had to stay two more weeks in Arizona (which was the first place they arrived after crossing the border) because my sister-in-law's husband and my husband were taken by immigration and returned to Mexico.
How difficult was the job placement?
Well, I arrived on the Fourth of July and thanks to a cousin of mine, the next day I got a job in a factory. I stayed working twelve and fourteen hours while my cousin came to pick me up because the ride was looking for her.
Did you have kids?
We already had two children, but we came without them. I lasted here a year and seven months. I left her (pointing to her 23-year-old daughter who was with us during the interview) with her grandmother, but the grandmother is a lady who did not have an education and I could not send any money to them because they did not have an ID. So I had to ask him the favor with her daughter-in-law. And on one occasion, my husband's father told me "listen, daughter, you always send money for your children, but your children are not in the best conditions, your children do not get the money you send them, they do not get anything you ask for". I called one Saturday, and the next day I went to buy my ticket to go back because I wanted to get my kids because they were in need.
When you arrived in Mexico in what condition did you find your children?
My son was six years old and when I called him while he was in Mexico he couldn't believe that I had returned, because the lady he lived with told him that I didn't love him and that I had already forgotten about him. So when I arrived he had the door open waiting for me. When I got out of the car, there were a lot of kids, so I said, "Which one is my kid?" and a baby jumped out and said "yo mami, yo" and ran to me. But to me - between tears and sobs - it made me want to cry - he apologizes for crying while he runs his hand down his cheeks to wipe away the tears - He was an abandoned child when I saw him. I was sending them money for clothes, but all his clothes were torn, he was practically a street kid. It made me sad because they thought I didn't love them, that I had abandoned them.
While it's hard to leave the family behind, Patricia says technology has closed the gap between her and her parents, who are now older and living in Mexico. For her the most important thing was to have her children close and enjoy them because "I don't like those families that leave their children behind and when they return to Mexico they are already grown up and don't remember their parents" that was Patricia's main fear when she first came here without her children. Now they all live in northern New Jersey in a house that as the song of Vicente Fernandez says "away from the noise and false society".