NALACC: Migrant Mothers Bear the Burden of Outdated and Prejudiced Immigration Laws

Photo by Frank_am_Main

As we commemorate Mother’s Day, millions of mothers around the world suffer as a result of immigration laws that disregard the human dimension of this issue, as well as the root causes of migration. These laws rooted in prejudice and recklessly enforced, have only led to heartache and humiliation for millions of migrant mothers and their families. The systematic disregard for migrants’ basic rights has made migrants who dare to travel by land through Central America and Mexico especially vulnerable to abuse, rape, abductions, disappearances and even mass executions.

“As we celebrate Mother’s Day, we regret the fact that outdated immigration laws as well as anti-immigrant laws, characterized by their utter disrespect for migrants’ human rights, continue to cause sorrow to migrant mothers and their loved ones” stated Angela Sanbrano, NALACC’s president. “The relentless application of current immigration law continues and has resulted in the forced separation of hundreds of thousands of mothers from their children and loved ones over the past few years,” she added. “A valuable gift for migrant mothers living in the United States would be the termination, once and for all, of the ill-conceived ‘Secure Communities’ program.”

“In addition to the outdated and unfair U.S. federal immigration law, migrants and their families have also been victimized by more severe laws in many localities and states around the country,” said Juvencio Rocha Peralta, president of the Association of Mexicans of North Carolina (AMEXCAN), as well as NALACC’s vice president. “Migrants have been demonized by those with political agendas motivated by hatred and fear as the cause for the economic, social and political deterioration of the last decades, which has led to high levels of anxiety and insecurity in our society. Anti-immigrant laws like those recently passed in Arizona, South Carolina and Alabama; do nothing when it comes to fixing the most challenging problems facing U.S. societies, and instead, they harshly punish immigrant mothers and other hard working, tax paying immigrants in our society.”

“In the case of the migration corridor between Central America, Mexico and the United States, the obsolete migration laws now in effect have led to a pattern of systematic human rights violations against migrants and those who dare to defend them,” said Clelia Sabio, a NALACC board member based in New York City. “From the United States, we stand in solidarity with the mothers and relatives of missing migrants. We hope for a future in which the whereabouts of all missing migrants is answered, where perpetrators are brought to justice and where immigration laws no longer cause pain and sorrow to migrant mothers and their love ones.”

In addition to media and communication activities in the United States, organizations of families of missing migrants will be organizing demonstrations in Mexico, Honduras and El Salvador as part of a regional effort that aims to reclaim the value of migrants, their right to justice and punishment of those responsible for crimes committed against them.