November 14, 2006

A Family, Divided

By Liz Fox
Special to the Neighborhood Newswire

On October 18th Carolina celebrated her second birthday, like her first, in San Pedro de Sula, about 4,000 miles away from her mom and dad.   Her paternal grandmother was there, just like she’s been every day since Carolina was two-months-old and her parents, Elena and Jorge, fled Honduras for a new life in San Francisco.

Elena and Jorge did not hear Carolina’s first word or see her first step.  It’s easier not to think about missed milestones, Elena said in an Excelsior neighborhood hole-in-the-wall restaurant, which she often visits for a low-cost meal of hot soup.

Elena and Jorge each paid a coyote $2,500 to cross the U.S.-Mexico border to escape the notoriously violent and impoverished San Pedro de Sula that had claimed Jorge’s father’s, brother’s and sister’s lives.  Jorge’s family members were killed in either gang-related violence or as a result of street crimes.  Elena’s father was murdered during a robbery in the capital city of Tegucigalpa.

But the illegal trek was too dangerous to take their young infant.  “She was too little, we couldn’t bring her,” Elena said, cradling Carmen, their second daughter, who, at four-months-old, hasn’t met her sister. Elena, 22, doesn’t know when she will again see her firstborn.  

Elena said she worries that Carolina is not safe in San Pedro de Sula, which, in the late-1990s, was second only to war-plagued Calí, Columbia for the number of homicides in Central and northern South America, according to the World Health Organization.

It’s impossible to know how many families like Elena and Jorge’s are separated by the U.S. border and immigration status.  Immigrant advocates believe that a significant number of the nation’s estimated 12 million undocumented workers – mostly teen boys and adult men  -- have left immediate family members behind.  Almost all immigration cases “either directly or indirectly” have to do with family reunification, said Ricardo Calderón, legal services director for the non-profit Carecen San Francisco, one of a number of organizations that serve the City’s immigrant communities.   “It’s not like one person comes and it’s over. It’s a chain reaction,” he said.  Husbands want to bring their wives; wives want to bring their children, parents, brothers and sisters.  And so on.

Family reunification is the leading category of legal admittance to the United States. Nationwide, 75 percent of Latin Americans who receive legal residence status are related in some fashion to U.S. citizens.  However, the number of people who obtain legal status pales in comparison to the number who seek it, Calderón said.  At Carecen, legal advisors see 10,000 to 12,000 clients a year, just a fraction of the more than 100,000 undocumented immigrants Calderón estimates live in Northern California.   Those who apply for legal status for their family members often experience years of bureaucratic backlogs and delays.
Many immigrants don’t apply for legal status because the hurdles are too high, said Mark Silverman of San Francisco’s Immigration Legal Resource Center. He said about half of the immigrants in the Bay Area who could apply for residency through their family members’ actually petition do so. U.S.-born children must be 21 years old to petition for their parents. Once a request is filed, the parents have to leave the U.S. for an interview with employees at an American consulate abroad, with many Central Americans interviewing in Mexico. If the consulate approves an applicant who spent more than one year in the United States illegally, he or she wouldn’t be allowed back into the country for another 10 years. 

For Elena’s family, life has been full of separation.  Her father was rarely around before his murder when Elena was 17. Her mother moved to Los Angeles for work and left Elena in the care of her grandmother when she was still in elementary school.

Though there were no family members here to welcome them, San Francisco became home for Elena and Jorge’s fresh start.  Jorge found jobs as a dishwasher and line cook; Elena picked up extra income as a house cleaner. Carmen made them a unit again, if incomplete. The family was on the rebound, she said.

That ended suddenly when a San Francisco police officer stopped Jorge for crossing a Tenderloin neighborhood street outside the bounds of a crosswalk last July.  A pending deportation order from Jorge’s failed first attempt to cross the U.S.-Mexico border was Jorge’s ticket to a Bakersfield prison, where he awaits deportation.

Carmen, like her sister before her, now meets her childhood milestones without her father.  With their savings running out, Elena’s walks the hilly San Francisco streets looking for help-wanted posters on church and community bulletin boards, occasionally ducking into a laundromat for cover when Carmen cries from the cold and foggy wind.

“It’s like not having a family,” Elena said.

Editor’s note:  Elena, Carolina, Carmen and Jorge’s names have been changed, per Elena’s request.