Nina Lakhani. The Guardian, Sun 17 May 2015
At least 500,000 young people, whose Mexican parents illegally crossed into the United States, have been forced back across the border, often knowing nothing of their new home. Nina Lakhani meets some of those they call the ‘dreamers’
For the children of undocumented Mexican migrants in the United States, life demands secrecy. They learn to navigate between the two cultures while hiding their illegal status – all the while praying for immigration reform. Their Mexican memories – if they remember at all – are replaced by American dreams. After a few years, they often feel, look and sound so American, they can forget that, in the eyes of the law, they are aliens.
But they are, and they can be arrested at any moment. At least 500,000 young adults who grew up in the US have been deported or have decided to return to Mexico in the past decade. For many it is akin to arriving in a foreign country for the second time, but this time they lack a child’s ability to acclimatise. For years, little was known about what happened to these youngsters, but a picture is now emerging of a well-educated, bilingual, bicultural group whose traumas and talents are being ignored. This is in part due to groups trying to raise awareness of their plight. One such network is Los Otros Dreamers – the Other Dreamers. The name is a reference to the young migrants who would benefit from the Dream Act, a US bill first introduced in 2001, but still not passed, which would have paved the way to citizenship for those brought to the US as children.
