 I am Rogelio Sainz, I'm the Dean of the College of Public Policy here at UTSA and it is my pleasure to welcome you to our beautiful downtown campus for this very important event. For what will certainly be an informative discussion on the movement of unoccupied Central American children to the Texas-Mexico border. Today we have two excellent panels of scholars and practitioners who will address the roots and causes of the movement of children to the United States as well as the legal policy as well as social responses here in this country. A little bit of background, while this is an issue that has been in the news the last several months, in reality we know that the journalist who often have their ears to the ground on trends that are taking place, social trends, demographic trends and political trends had began talking about this movement as early as three years ago. Nevertheless we've seen a significant increase over the last five years. So for example in Honduras the number of children appearing on the border increased from about 970 to 15,000. What the model is about 1100 to close to 13,000 Salvadorans from about 1200 to more than 11,000. Some points to consider as we think about this particular issue is that we've seen for example younger and younger children being part of this movement as well as more girls that are involved in this migration. And in addition we also need to consider that in a lot of reports we also see this not covered but in reality the role that the U.S. government has played in this movement. So for example a long history of the U.S. having major involvement in the political and economic affairs of the three Central American countries where we see the migration. The U.S. deportations that have taken place and particularly the rising of gang activity in Central America associated with a deportation from the U.S. and also immigration laws, immigration policies that continue to split families across international borders. And what has been the reaction of Americans? On the one hand you see some people viewing the undocumented children that are coming from Central America kind of seeing them as adventurers almost out on a lark kind of a modern day huckleberry fin coming and making their way to the United States rather than as vulnerable children who are fleeing violence. Many of who run the risk of being killed if they are returned. And we also see the race narrative that has been well timed and throughout the history of American immigration so that we indeed we have seen for example accusations that these are children that are bringing violence for example bringing disease and so forth to this country. Indeed we have seen frequent occurrences of otherwise good people up in arms about the scourge that unaccompanied children from Central America will bring if they are sheltered in their communities. And we have also seen politicians pontificating about the urgent need to return these children to their countries of origin immediately due process of law and irksome nuisance should not get in the way of protecting our nation 319 million people against child invaders. What is the future of these children the panelists should have insights into what is likely to happen and so forth so that before I turn it over to to my colleague Harriet Romo I'd like to to thank Olivia Lopez program coordinator of UT SA Mexico Center who has worked tirelessly putting this together and and I would also like to acknowledge now cast and Charlotte and Lucas who is the the now cast managing director and they've been really a tremendous help for us here at UTSA in publicizing a lot of our events so we can so our appreciation and thank you also to to my colleague Harriet Romo who who spearheaded this and I'm particularly appreciative that she reached out to the College of Public Policy as well as to other universities as well so I'll turn it over to to Harriet. Well we we welcome you tomorrow is the first day of classes this is a very busy week at UTSA and this was the only room available or we would have had more space so it's an exciting time for the campus and this is an important event to make our community aware of and our our students aware of these issues and we always call on our students to help get our PowerPoints ready. Raquel you want to come log on I am the director of the UTSA Mexico Center and the Mexico Center does a lot of these events in collaboration with other organizations in the community and with our faculty so we hope that you signed up outside on the at the desk because that will put you on our mailing list so we can get you invited as we do more events throughout the year. Now when when all of this happened I realized you know this is not new my dissertation research was on a Mexican undocumented families who had brought children to the United States and I started thinking of the similarities and so that's what I'm going to present to you today some of the research that I did almost 20 years ago and the similarities are very strong and I'll point out some of them and there are distinctions you know it's a different time it's a it's a different political period but you'll see a lot of things in common. I did my research in a rural community in the state of Mexico the Hucos there were only about 6,000 people in that area many of them in ranchos in a kind of a mountainous areas there the people who lived on the ranchos had to either walk or take a donkey into the little community when they went to the markets there was no public transportation there that community had already a long history of migration when I did my fieldwork in the community people knew street names they knew community names they were very familiar with various locations throughout the United States where people in that community had gone for a long time the people there estimated and the census estimated that about 30 to 50 percent of the residents in that community were living in the United States at the time when I was doing the research in that community so this is the typical of a rural community that has a migration sending pattern many of the young people of working age are able to go and make money and send it back are working in the United States there were no opportunities for jobs for young people in that community some of the things that were happening globally people who were these subsistence farmers were being displaced and they couldn't even make a living and a food for their their family so they saw the United States with the wage differentials tremendous wage differentials you know you could make more in one day than you might make in the year in in that rural community so those opportunities were in the United States why do these families take risk it's not that they don't care about their children at all the major thing is many of these young people are trying to reunite with family members already in the United States when I was in that community I saw family negotiating with a coyote who was a respected member of the community they trusted him to take their son 14 years old to the United States so that he could work and send money back get a stake for making maybe a better future for him and his family there were lack of schooling opportunities that community if you had a seven-year-old or an eight-year-old and you lived in one of those rural ranchills you're not going to let that child walk three miles to the little two-room school in Bejukos the city part the city was building or the little community was building a residential dormitory to try to help some of the other children the older children come in and spend the night so they could go to school but if you're a mother you know that'd be very hard to send your child to live in another place when they're very young and and go to school so they saw the opportunities of coming to the United States their kids could go to school they could learn English they would be together as a family they wanted a better life for their children this resonated strongly through the interviews with the youth through the interviews with the parents and immigration was kind of a ride of passage for those young people who were 14 and 15 for the young men particularly their uncles had done it their family their fathers had done it mother members of their family had done it so this was something that you kind of expected to do it was an adventure and in that community once you were 14 or 15 or 16 you were considered an adult so it was not like sending a small child to work somewhere you were expected to work and support your family the drug violence was beginning there the week before I arrived in that community there had been a shooting and it was associated with some of the drunk drug dealers in that area we were recently in Toluca which is not too far away from there and the government workers are afraid to go into be who goes now because of the drug violence there so the violence is still there what happened to those children many of them became the dreamers today of Plylar V. Doe the case was working its way through the Supreme Court when I was doing these interviews and that allowed them to go to school and the argument was if you deny an education to children at that age you are handicapped them for their lives for their futures so you cannot deny them the right for an education so those children when they came had a right to go to our public schools from K to 12 nobody was really thinking what happens after they graduate so now we have DACA the deferred action for unaccompanied minors which allows them to work some of these who qualify but the restrictions are very tight and not all of the children qualify for that so there are a number of those children still in the United States now adults now 14 well older they have their own children who were born here and they're here their parents are here without documents in a very nebulous kind of liminal state there's no route to citizenship are legal residents for them their children who were born here are the ones who grew up here have no knowledge of this community be who coast if they had to go back there there's no opportunity for them there the violence there if the government workers won't go back to work there what about these youth if we send back there what's going to happen to them we've seen a real decrease in migrations from Mexico so what was going on in Mexico that might have prevented and has decreased some of these migrations first of all the government has been investing in education they are investing in early childhood education they're investing in rural education trying to send better qualified teachers there they're working on the curriculum they're teaching English now there's a big initiative throughout the country to teach English in all the public schools so that this will give the children better job opportunities global job opportunities they worked on reducing their population there are fewer people young people being born so there are more opportunities for their those who are there the government has been stable for a long period of time and their economy has been doing well their economy has grown faster than the US economy so that's brought some prosperity and many of these young people who would have migrated before can now stay in Mexico and get jobs there's been a lot of effort on economic development particularly along the border and in some of these rural areas but they still have not been able to control the violence and the insecurity so we still see some of these migrations it has not stopped the the the numbers going back whether it's voluntary or involuntary have kind of met the same numbers coming in so it's kind of a balance right now but we don't know what's going to happen if the violence increases in some of these communities if the economic economics go down or the PESO is devalued like it was at one time which caused a crisis in migration any of these amounts of migration could occur again we of course have played a part in some of these issues the United States policies as Rogelio mentioned of our increased border security which a lot of people still urged what we need more and more actually has stopped the return migration that used to be a very important part of the people coming to the United States and then going back the families that I interviewed often came to the United States stayed a short time maybe six months 12 months then they'd go back and they had a stake to one man took money back and bought sewing machines another one bought a truck so that he could transport goods for other people so this was an opportunity to come to the United States get you know your capital that you couldn't borrow from the bank you couldn't raise from your family or community you get a stake and take it back and invest so that you could be profitable in your community well the increased border security has made that very very difficult and very very costly so that's increased the separation time of the parents who left their children to come and work it's caused the children to want to come and reunite with those family members and it's caused longer separations and more difficult conflicts for the families for a long time our US policy either ignored Latin America or intervened in ways that maybe wasn't best for the economic development of the people who were migrating and my first teaching job was in Managua Nicaragua and I saw some of that upfront Samoza had been in power for a long time and you drive through the countryside and you'd say who owns that automobile dealership Samoza who owns that beautiful farm Samoza who owns the you know this this beautiful house right here Samoza so what about the people who needed jobs and the people who needed work that eventually led to a revolution or a conflict in Nicaragua where change of government occurred but in the meantime and Nestor is going to talk about that there was a lot of conflict and that drove some of those children that I taught who were Nicaraguan to the United States so this is an issue this is some of what causes some of the migrations the US market for narcotics Mexico keeps raising this issue Central America is raising this issue we are their biggest buyers of narcotics so if we don't stop that here in the United States the violence is going to continue the drug dealers are going to offer jobs to the young people if they can't get jobs in other viable places so this is a very difficult situation that needs resolve on both sides of the border we now have almost 12 million undocumented residents living in the United States and we can't get our Congress to look at the issues and come up with some effective solutions and policies so what are these young people going to do if they can't find a viable way of coming and working and maybe getting an economic stake and people hire them here there are jobs for them here there's a need for them here for many of them this is going to continue unless we get some kind of policy that will address a lot of these issues that look at the dreamers you know many of them have done very very well in in the United States but they're not the only ones some of the others I recently was able to recontact one of the families that I worked with she had come with eight children every one of those children is working the majority of them graduated from high school they are contributing to their communities we've done a research project interviewing leaders in the Dream Act movement they are very committed to giving back to their community to helping other people to working in the United States to improve what they see as problems facing Latinos in the United States there are many just educational disruptions we saw it in the caragua when the turmoil was going on kids were out of school for maybe their whole from preschool to 12th grade when they should have been getting an education that's happening in Central America as well if you interview some of these youth and those of you're going to see this wonderful community panel that we have put together these youth are suffering the trauma of the deportations the divided families the just this migration process themselves this is going to stay with them for a long time and it has very many psychological social personal implications for the future even though we have some wonderful people and we're going to hear from them right he says today trying to address the legal issues for these children it's an overwhelming task but as Rogelio said we can't ignore the legal rights that these young people have in order to solve a crisis we're a democracy we're a country that believes in the rule of law and we really need to try to make sure that we're handling these issues the way that we should and be representative of what a democracy a major power in the United in the world how should handle migration because this is not just a US issue these issues are occurring globally Mexico itself is receiving Central American children Central American migrants there they're trying to figure out what do they do with the children who are returned what do they do with the families who are deported what can we do the reason that we brought this panel together is that we think that if we collaborate if we address the issues in a rational way if we try to get researchers like our academics involved to gather the facts to try to present research that's been done in a systematic way get the real accurate information out there the news media tends to play up the the spectacular the the crisis issues we need to know the facts we need to know what is really happening with the children with their families in the countries of origin we want our researchers to collaborate with these non-profits that are serving the youth certainly there are ways and you're going to hear some examples of the ways that some of our own faculty here at UTSA have worked with these groups but we can do more of that across our universities in the city we can try to calm these fears about you know ISIS coming across the Mexican border or you know that terrorism is rampant among these children these just create more hostilities more hate more fear and if we get accurate information out and talk about it in a rational way we can calm those anxieties and we need to raise an awareness of what the realities are and these are children why are they coming it's not because their parents don't care about them it's because their parents care about them so much they want them to have a better life than they had one of the exciting things that is happening at UTSA to try to help in economic development in some of these countries particularly in Honduras they've done it already throughout Mexico is they're helping universities in those countries start small business development centers you're not going to have a Toyota start a big plant in El Salvador you're not going to have some of these big companies moving into these small communities but you will have small businesses people that hire one or two or five or six or later 10 people in their communities and so they're trying to develop more of these centers like we have here at UTSA to help these small businesses prosper and develop a capacity to serve and hire more people we can provide teachers to the centers that are hosting these youth are our student volunteers you can come and help so that that education is not completely neglected while they're here while they're being processed so it's a complicated issue and it's not one that any of us have the answer to today but I feel very strongly by getting the information out by working together that we can have some positive solutions and I'm very pleased to have my colleague Nestor Rodriguez here from UT Austin he and I actually worked on the same undocumented worker project when both of us were graduate students so so we have a long history together and both of us are very committed to these issues so we're going to have a moderator here and she's she's supposed to keep me on track with time okay so thank you and we'll continue with our panel