Young U.S. deportees search for a path in Mexico

 

Landa is part of a generation of young deportees struggling to build identities and carve out paths in a country they left as children, where they have few memories and tenuous ties. The journey for many has meant learning to live by new rules, navigate unfamiliar bureaucracies and overcome negative sterotypes.

“People are seeing us as a problem, we’re stigmatized, we’re the deportees,” said Landa, who was brought to the United States at 9 and deported at 29. “How can we be an asset for Mexico?”

 About 500,000 Mexicans between the ages of 18 and 35 living in the United States without authorization returned to Mexico between 2005 and 2010, said Jill Anderson, a postdoctoral fellow with the Center for North American Studies at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

Many of them are “bilingual, bicultural people who went to high school and really identify as an American,” Anderson said.

Together with photographer Nin Solis, she has made them the subject of an upcoming book, “Los Otros Dreamers” — which means “The Other Dreamers.” The name is inspired by the DREAMers movement of young unauthorized immigrants seeking legal status in the United States.

Anderson divides “Los Otros Dreamers” into three broad categories:

•unauthorized immigrants who voluntarily returned to Mexico after finding few opportunities in the United States

•those like Nancy, who might have qualified to remain in the U.S. if certain immigration changes were adopted before their deportation

•people convicted of felonies in the U.S. and were automatically repatriated to Mexico after being released from prison.

Back in Mexico, even educated and highly motivated deportees often face assimilation hurdles — from government red tape to social attitudes, Anderson said. Just obtaining Mexican identification documents, a prerequisite for employment, can be daunting for individuals with no ties to their birthplace.

“There are so many of us, and we’re not visible. Institutions are not responsive to our issues,” Landa said during a recent interview at her family’s small apartment in Tijuana’s Colonia Juárez.

Even when she lived in California, Landa knew she wanted to attendgraduate school. After being deported to Mexico, she decided to continue pursuing that ambition.

Administrators at public and private universities in Tijuana informed her that she would have to go through “revalidación de estudios” — a formal review of her U.S. coursework by governmental education authorities. The process involves submitting a birth certificate, transcripts and course descriptions, with official translations and certifications.

“That’s the regulation right now,” said Fernando León García, president of the private CETYS University, whose students enrolled at campuses in Mexicali, Tijuana and Ensenada include 316 U.S. high school graduates and 23 with U.S. bachelor’s degrees. The university’s staff members help students navigate the government’s re-validation requirements, and assuming a person has all the documentation, “typically the process takes 30 to 50 days,” León said.??

Mexico’s academic re-validation process is fairly typical of Latin American countries, though “it’s not something you would find in the United States or the United Kingdom,” León added.

Landa initially gave up her plan to attend graduate school after being told that her bachelor’s degree wouldn’t be recognized in Mexico unless she took extra classes.

While many others have faced a range of difficulties upon returning to Mexico, Landa is unusual in her willingness to speak out.

“Nancy’s really special in the sense that she’s so articulate about her experience. She’s made a conscious decision to come out as deported and unafraid,” Anderson said.”Just because we`re in Mexico doesn`t mean our dreams have to end,” said Nancy Landa, deported from California in 2009. — David Maung

Four years after being sent back to Mexico with only her cellphone and $20, Landa hopes to connect with others who share similar experiences. This month, she was a speaker at Colegio de La Frontera Norte, a government think tank in Tijuana, along with Eileen Truax, a Los Angeles-based journalist who wrote the recently released book “Dreamers.” Landa is featured in one of the book’s chapters.

Born in Mexico City and raised in Mexico state, Landa crossed together with her mother and younger brother from Tijuana into San Diego in 1990 under the guidance of smugglers. They reunited with her father in Los Angeles.

Landa graduated from Pacific Palisades High School and then earned a bachelor’s degree in business from Cal State Northridge, where she had a private scholarship and served as student body president. At the time of her deportation, Landa was a field representative for a state assemblyman in Long Beach with aspirations of a career in public service.

Her story is full of might-have-beens.

Had the DREAM Act, first introduced in Congress in 2001 and ultimately shelved in 2010 — passed before her September 2009 deportation, Landa would have likely become eligible to stay in the United States. Had the notary whom her parents hired not submitted a political asylum application on their behalf — which briefly allows applicants to obtain work permits but eventually sends them to deportation proceedings — they might still be in California. Had they still been in the U.S. after November 2011, when the Obama administration changed its deportation policy to focus on people with criminal records, the Landas might not have been targeted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at all.

Instead, authorities stopped Landa as she drove to her job and sent her back to Mexico the same day. A month later, her parents and brother were sent back as well.

Landa said she no longer dwells on the what if’s. “You just say, ‘Better to continue our fight in Mexico, and fight so that all Mexicans can have a better Mexico,” she said.

For a long time, Landa didn’t talk about her deportation — fearful it would cost her employment or stigmatize her in other ways. But she changed her mind last year, telling her story for the first time to Cal State Northridge’s Spanish-language newspaper, El Nuevo Sol.

“One of the bottom lines with Nancy is her incredible resilience,” Anderson said. “She’s an example of someone who’s decided there’s a whole world out there, beyond the United States and beyond Mexico.”

Discouraged by Mexico’s academic re-validation requirement, Landa applied to graduate school in England and was accepted at University College in London, where she plans to enroll later this month in a one-year master’s program on global migration.

Mexico’s National Council for Science and Technology, CONACYT, is helping to pay her way. Her plan is to return to Mexico and work with migrants and refugees.

“I always wanted to dedicate my life to public service,” Landa said, “and now I think I’m transitioning back to that.”

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