Deported to Mexico: a lost generation

*This story picks-up where the reports of deported men, women and children leave off. What happens to the deported who, save for a paper that would make them “legal,” are American in their minds and in their culture. They’re kicked-out into countries that are nonetheless “foreign” to them. VL

By Nina Lakhani, The Guardian

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.

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