Hardships and the Holidays: “It has been 15 years since I’ve seen my family”

By: Melissa Frasco 

The Christmas season has not been easy for everyone. This year may not be very different for some. Last year my family contracted Covid-19 a week before Christmas, and we all spent it together quarantined. Thankfully some neighbors left us holiday treats on the porch. This year we were lucky enough to be together: happy, healthy, and vaccinated (to prevent a repeat of last year). As I was home scrolling somewhat aimlessly through Facebook I came across the story of a mutual friend. I never spoke to him much before, but when I was in college and returned from a community service trip in Central America I spoke to him about his home country. He had such beautiful descriptions of his homeland, and he even still had some family there. After this connection we would make small talk in Spanish when our paths crossed. 

 It was just a few days ago I was brought back to his story on Facebook. He had a picture of plane and the caption “It has been 15 years since I have seen my family”. He never told me out right that he crossed the border to reach the United States, but from his travels and some mutual friends I had figured it out. The idea of not being able to return to one’s home country is painfully common for undocumented folks. It is also new pain for many of those like myself who have never these barriers placed on which family we could visit. 

 Contrary to more recent times the U.S. – Mexico border had been quite permeable. With mostly migrant men crossing the border to work and then return home with their earnings. These types of excursions were no less grueling but much more common and allowed circular migration. Therefore, connections were maintained on either side of the border.  

 The few years have seen increases of border apprehensions, militarization of the border, and increases in migrant death. If you have seen the any of the news covering the border situation you have seen that it is not just men crossing. There are women, children, and families making extremely dangerous journeys to only be subjected to punitive policies of border politics. Although I could write a separate blog on the unjust practices at the southern border, this blog will focus on the holiday experiences of the undocumented families I have worked with. 

 People do not just choose to stop visiting the visiting their families. Rather policies prevent families from being together, this has gone on long before the Covid-19 pandemic. Currently the necessary precautions need to be taken to contain these uncertain times. Aside from being unable to return to your country of origin families on one side of the border still face hardships. 

At the start of December, I was receiving requests for toy distribution drives. Most families involved single moms trying to pull off Christmas, caught between not having enough work and not having someone to babysit the children when they did have work. For other families a church or school sometimes could pick up the slack for food around the holidays. For toys the work becomes a bit harder, luckily in the two weeks leading up to Christmas I was able to find three local events with toy distribution. Unlike food donations which usually can subsist on one or two locations toy distributions go fast. More than one client I worked with expressed interests in toy distributions, but worried about showing up to a place where the toys had run out (which had happened more than once).  

Working with these families they are often of mixed status, their children are born in the U.S. (therefore are U.S. citizens) and their parents are undocumented as they were born in a different country. Getting work during the pandemic has been hard enough, getting extra work while being undocumented presents a whole new set of challenges. Typically, as soon as clients go for jobs which request a social security number, they are facing a dead-end, other times not even able to complete applications. Their work becomes more and more sporadic, sometimes work is babysitting for a friend or cleaning someone’s house for a few hours.  

To assist these families, I look for community type events where there may be food, music, events for children, and a toy distribution if we are lucky. For those in the most vulnerable situations it is often left to community organizers and charities to pick up the slack. Though their kindness warms the hearts of many these families should not have to rely on the generosity of others to have a holiday with their family. Undocumented folks do not only share our experiences of hardship in the pandemic, but they also face the complications of their own legal status and limited resources. 

This year my heart goes out to all those who have lost someone during the pandemic. Especially to those whose loved ones passed away in different countries. They were unable to visit them during the pandemic and possibly for years before that. My heart goes out to all the families just trying to make the holidays happen despite their circumstances.  

Suggested Reading  

Books: 

Greg Grandin. 2019. The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America. Metropolitan Books. https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/36743029-the-end-of-the-myth  

Todd Miller. 2019. Empire of Borders: The Expansion of the US Border Around the World. Verso. https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/42509298-empire-of-borders  

Jamie Longazel and Miranda Cady Hallett. 2021. Migration and Mortality: Social Death, Dispossession, and Survival in the Americas. Temple University Press. https://tupress.temple.edu/book/20000000010299  

Articles: 

 Massey, Douglas S et al. “Why Border Enforcement Backfired.” AJS; American journal of sociology vol. 121,5 (2016): 1557-1600. doi:10.1086/684200 

 In this article we undertake a systematic analysis of why border enforcement backfired as a strategy of immigration control in the United States. We argue theoretically that border enforcement emerged as a policy response to a moral panic about the perceived threat of Latino immigration to the United States propounded by self-interested bureaucrats, politicians, and pundits who sought to mobilize political and material resources for their own benefit. The end result was a self-perpetuating cycle of rising enforcement and increased apprehensions that resulted in the militarization of the border in a way that was disconnected from the actual size of the undocumented flow. Using an instrumental variable approach, we show how border militarization affected the behavior of unauthorized migrants and border outcomes to transform undocumented Mexican migration from a circular flow of male workers going to three states into an eleven-million person population of settled families living in 50 states.