Migrants vs. family-fragmenting policy:

A Mexican home community proposes solutions

The Corner Project of Malinalco

Early-stage migration• Tends to be circular• Jobs tend to be rural, seasonal, insecure• Scattered, multiple destinations• Destination support is very limited• Family stays home• Migrants’ goal: earn & return

Early-stage migration: family and community

• Extended families provide support – Paying migration costs– Raising children

• Attempt to solve problems internally • Effects of migration not easily visible

outside families

Examples of family-breaking policy:• Deportation of migrant members of mixed-status families

– Family members stressed during long waits in home community

– U.S.-born children’s bureaucratic limbo• Enforcement that pushes people into clandestinity makes

for lost connections • Less permeable border raises costs: children wait longer to

see parents• Opaque detention system

– Migrant relatives difficult to locate– Communications prohibitively expensive– Health and other problems difficult to address

• Visa restrictions impede family visits for key family events, illness, other needs

Internet-facilitated communications

Job-creation for migrants’ widows

Locating missing migrant relatives

Family reunification

Family reunification

Family reunification

Programs for migrants’ children

Community accounting

Community accounting exchange

Solution-generating methodology:• Make services available to families in home community

– Build home community-destination connections via internet

– Provide translation and technical support to aid cross-border linking

• Build links to include – local home community– Home country agencies– Destination country agencies– local destination community

• Facilitate crisis resolution with two-way communications• Remedy communication gaps• Strengthen security via community accounting methods

Recommendations• Create apostille-support network for U.S.-born

children• Provide low-cost detainees’ communications with

family in home communities• Create network of home-region-based support

modules providing– Internet-facilitated low-cost communications– Volunteer-staffed English-language communications and

technical support

www.elrincon.org

Ellen Calmus: ecalmus@elrincon.org

The Corner Project of Malinalco