During my time in Ecuador, I have met a number of people who came to the United States to work sin papeles, or as undocumented workers. The current debate about immigration in my country is just as heated as ever, so I won’t get into the politics of immigration. I’ll just tell you what I’ve learned here.
It takes a huge amount of planning, courage and desperation to make it to the United States without a visa. It’s a heart-wrenching decision to leave behind your family to go to a country where you don’t speak the language, live in constant fear of being deported and work in harsh conditions for little pay. Most people I’ve met took whatever job they could find, worked very hard and sent back the remittances to their families. To give you an idea of how important this flow of money has become, last year remittances sent back to Ecuador from abroad accounted for over $4 billion, making it the second biggest source of national income after petroleum exports.
From an economic stand-point, it makes sense. Marco, a Spanish teacher I met in Baños, spent seven years working in Italy. He made more in one month cleaning houses and cooking for wealthy Florentine families than in a year in Ecuador. With the money he earned, he opened a shoe store in Baños and purchased a house for his family. Given that as a child he still remembers when his mother worked as a slave under Ecuador’s hacienda system, or encomienda system, he has certainly come along way. (A quick aside: even as late as the 1960s, in many parts of rural Ecuador people were bought and sold with the land they lived on, working permanently as indentured servants.)
My time spent in Ecuador has made me feel both lucky and somewhat guilty to have been born in America. While the process of applying for a visa to come here was annoying, I knew I would get one. I have a bank account and I could afford a round-trip plane ticket– the two things most countries check for when you say you want to spend more than a few months. But when people here ask me if it would be hard for them to come to the United States, I’m honest with them. Yes, I say, it will be hard. Even if you can afford the round-trip plane ticket (the equivalent of three month’s average gross income in the town where I’m staying), if you don’t own a house, car or have a bank account, American immigration officials will be skeptical that you plan on returning before your visa expires.
“That’s not fair,” they tell me. I shrug my shoulders, “No, it isn’t fair. But unfortunately that’s just how it is.”
What’s your opinion? Politics aside, if you were in a similar situation and were presented with the option to work abroad, would you take it? Would you risk going without documents?
Dan Malin is currently volunteering as the coordinator for the Intag Spanish School, a development project of CASA Interamericana. For more on his experiences, check out his blog or follow him on Twitter.
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