Mexico City Gives Immigrant Children a Second Chance

May 30 2013—, 2013 -- Readjusting to life in Mexico is a difficult task for the thousands of Mexican immigrants who get deported from the United States each year. It's even harder for those, like Reyna Rodriguez, with children who were born in the United States.

Rodriguez went back to Mexico last December. She had been living in Georgia for the last 12 years, until a local cop pulled her over for not stopping at a stop sign and discovered she was an undocumented immigrant. She was then handed a notice to leave the country.

Reintegrating into life in Mexico has not been easy for Rodriguez.

"It is difficult here to give my children a lifestyle in which they are not lacking basic things," she said.

In Atlanta, Rodriguez rented a two-bedroom town house for herself and her children. Now, she and her two sons, aged 6 and 10, share a home with several relatives in a gritty neighborhood of Mexico City. Their rooms face a drab cement courtyard.

Rodriguez, who was working as a house cleaner in Atlanta, has found no fulltime job in Mexico, so keeping up with daily expenditures is a challenge. "My [eldest] son is going to school now, and I don't have any money to get him a uniform," Rodriguez said.

Besides her lack of money, Rodriguez encountered numerous other problems when she arrived in Mexico. Her sons were not eligible for free healthcare because they were not Mexican citizens. The local public school allowed them to take classes, but said that if they did not have Mexican citizenship, they could not be officially registered in the school and therefore could not proceed to the next grade level. She also couldn't get a necessary blood test for her son because the public clinic needed documentation that he was Mexican for him to be covered and she couldn't afford the test at a private clinic.

To fix these sorts of problems, Mexico City officials have started an initiative to get Mexican citizenship for the kids of deportees and other Mexicans who come back to the country.

The program is part of a broader push to make Mexico City a more immigrant friendly city. It includes legal assistance for Central American immigrants who are attempting to obtain residency status as well as a program to give grants to Mexicans who have returned from the United States and would like to start a business.

"The government of this city…is seeking to facilitate the integration of immigrants into the workplace, into education, and into society, so that their human rights can be respected," said Hegel Cortes, Mexico City's top official for immigration issues.

Reyna Rodriguez's sons, Christian and Hugo, got their Mexican citizenship papers in May at an event organized by the city government.

The citizenship program has grown rapidly since it was first launched in 2007.In that year, Mexico City's government helped two U.S. born children to get Mexican nationality. Nine kids were helped in 2008. In subsequent years, the program has picked up steam, helping 635 more kids who were born mostly in the U.S. and Canada to get their Mexican citizenship.

For parents it is particularly helpful as it assists them in filing the paperwork required for their children to become Mexican citizens. Without professional help, the process to obtain that citizenship can be lengthy and confusing. Any child born outside of Mexico who has at least one Mexican parent is eligible.

Other Mexican jurisdictions besides Mexico City have not yet helped returning Mexicans and their kids with such impetus, leading to some speculation that Mexico City will become a "magnet" for immigrants, and that social services will be overwhelmed with people applying for aid.

But most Mexicans who go back to their country tend to return to their home town, and Mexico City is not a place many people emigrate to the U.S. from.

According to data from Mexico's National Institute of Migration, fewer than 15,000 Mexicans who lived in the U.S. came back to the city in 2012, a small number for a city of 8 million people.

In any case, local officials argue that Mexico's capital city is already accustomed to absorbing thousands of newcomers.

"Since its orgins, Mexico City has been a city of migrants," Cortes said. "We see immigration as a process in which the capacities [of those who arrive] are a plus for our city."