Day Five in Guadalajara

Thursday was my fifth day in Guadalajara with The Rhizome Center for Migrants. The focus of the day was children.

We began in the offices of the Registro Civil (the office of civil records). We spoke with Oscar Uribe about his program Soy México directed the USC children of Mexican deportees.

Birth certificates in Mexico are not issued as of right at the hospital when a child is born. Rather, birth certificates must be obtained from the Registro Civil. That said, any child born in Mexico can get a Mexican birth certificate even if they are the child of migrants. Yet without a birth certificate, an individual has no proof that they are a Mexican national. And without that proof, one living in Mexico would be considered undocumented (even if they would be eligible for a birth certificate).

Children born in the United States to Mexican nationals can obtain a Mexican birth certificate by going to their consulate or by traveling into Mexico and visiting the Registro Civil. But many deportees have not registered their children's births with Mexico before they follow their deported family member(s) to this country.

The "Soy México" program is designed to smooth the process for USC kids to get officially recognized as Mexican with the issuance of a birth certificate. Requirements vary by office, but, in Guadalajara, the only requirements are:

• The child's US birth certificate. It does not need an apostle. The Registro Civil is able to verify the authenticity of nearly all US birth certificates through an online database called Naphsis. Unfortunately, Texas does not participate in this database. The Rhizome Center, however, has a relationship with a law firm in Austin that can obtain a birth certificate, get the apostle, and courier it to Guadalajara within a week!
• The parents' birth certificates
• Proof of address in Mexico
• Some sort of ID like a passport or driver's license to verify identity

I believe Oscar said that his office issued 10,000 birth certificates to USC kids just in the state of Jalisco last year. I had no idea that many USC children were moving to Mexico annually.

From the Registro Civil, we walked just a few blocks to the offices of PROBEM. There was one PROBLEM with PROBEM: It was located on the 7th floor and the elevators were out. All those summer (and winter and fall and spring) days of not exercising really caught up with me. 

We met with Helga García, the current head of PROBEM. She told us about the work of her agency, which is all about getting migrant children into the Mexican school system. They also run educational programs for adults.

Here are some tidbits that I learned about the Mexican school system:

• Public schools are nationalized (every kid in every grade is learning the same thing at the same time), non-religious, mandatory, and free.
• "Free" isn't "free." Parent groups at the public schools set a charge to cover maintenance of the school. We didn't get a solid answer on how much that would be. "It varies." Some parents pay in barter by doing school repairs themselves.
• Schooling can start as early as 3 months!
• Students receive certificates when they complete each stage of schooling: pre-pre school, preschool (3 years), elementary (6 years), middle (3 years), and high (3 years).
• Schools do not have a "Spanish as a Second Language" program comparable to ESL or ELL in the United States. I highlight that one because it seems the easiest change that Mexico could make to facilitate the integration of USC children and other non-Spanish speaking migrants.
  

After lunch (at a birriería), we met with María Lourdes Sepúlveda and two of her colleagues from the PPNNA.

The PPNNA is located within a 10 story building (with a functioning elevator, thank the Lord) called Ciudad Niñez. The entire building is designed to care for abused children in the most humane way possible. The state has organized all of the necessary offices that support abused children within one building so that children do not have to be schlepped from one office to another nor do they have to constantly repeat their trauma in front of new audiences.

There are prosecutors, medical examination rooms, napping spaces, TV spaces, foster care and adoption services, vital records... everything and anything you can think of in a one-stop-shop. The US could really learn from this set up.

We also learned about a special building called CASMEC for migrant children. It can house up to 8 family units or 50 kids. Any unaccompanied minor migrant will end up there, as will pregnant teens.

Whether in Ciudad Niñez or CASMEC, the goal for children is always the same: reinstating their human rights--be they the right to family, safety, education, food, housing, or something else.

It was an extremely emotional meeting that I will be thinking about for a long time to come.

-KitJ