A brave tale by Valeria Luiselli about the obstacles for illegal immigrant children.
Migrants learn the Immigrant´s Prayer. A friend who had been aboard La Bestia for a few days, working on a documentary, read it to me once. I didn´t learn the entire thing, but I remember these lines: "Partir es morir un poco / Llegar nunca es llegar" – “To leave is to die a little / To arrive is never to arrive”.
Tell me how it ends. These first words could be easily recognized as said by a child in the middle of storytelling time. An innocent image we are all acquainted with and one that is shattered by family separation in our contemporary world. But they are these words that the Mexican author received from her daughter when she asked about the childrens' stories.
Valeria Luiselli started to work as a volunteer interpreter in 2015 in a federal immigration court in NYC. Her story, like those of many others, has been marked by the endurance needed to live through her Green Card process. As the author puts it, writing this book "It can be confusing and bewildering and I find myself not knowing where translation ends and interpretation begins". The book is divided into four parts: Frontier, Court, Home and Community which replicate the division used at the centers to organize the information the youngsters bring.
Tell me how it ends poses an uncomfortable question: What happens to children who start the process to become US citizens when they cross the border alone?
The child enters through a system that must categorize him/her, sometimes putting them in a situation where they must grow up earlier than expected to deal with life. The book not only goes through the author's experiences but also through the laws that have limited the available time for children to find a suitable lawyer to defend them, even when they are young enough to not know how to speak.
“As soon as a child is in custody of Border patrol officials, he or she is placed in a detention center, commonly known as the hielera, or the "icebox". The icebox derives its name from the fact that the children in it are under ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) custody”.
Although what this essay contains is hard to digest, the final message is of hope for us as a society to make us think what we can do to help. As an immigrant myself, the words from the immortal poem by Edmond Haraucourt (present in this book) striked me as I had heard them before from my grandfather who was also an immigrant.
Partir, c'est mourir un peu,
C'est mourir à ce qu'on aime ;
On laisse un peu de soi-même
En toute heure et dans tout lieu.
C'est toujours le deuil d'un vœu,
Le dernier vers d'un poème ;
Partir, c'est mourir un peu.
Et l'on part, et c'est un jeu,
Et jusqu'à l'adieu suprême
C'est son âme que l'on sème,
Que l'on sème à chaque adieu...
Partir, c'est mourir un peu.
To leave is to die a little, even more when no certain future awaits and you are too young to be conscious about it: “it is not even the American Dream that they pursue”.
The fight is never over for the “aliens”, for that's what they/we are called.
“That's the term used to describe anyone from outside the United States - "alien" - whether or not they are residents. There are "nonresident aliens", "resident aliens", and even "removable aliens"”.
A heartbreaking reality for everyone and the author asks to herself:
“Would my own children survive?”
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