They Can’t Just Pack Their Bags and Go Home

A common refrain in the immigration debate in Southern California is, “Why don’t the Central Americans go home, now that there are no wars to run from?” In an interview with Times staffer KEVIN BAXTER, South Gate businessman ROBERTO ROSSIL gave one family’s answer:

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Recently I was looking at turn-of-the-century pictures of immigrants passing through Ellis Island and I was struck by the amount of stuff these new Americans were bringing with them. There were whole families loaded down with bags and boxes and crates packed with all their worldly possessions.

I compared that with my own humble entrance to this country 29 years ago. I came across the Mexican border with nothing more than the shirt on my back and some change in my pocket. The contrasts were striking: Those who passed through Ellis Island clearly intended to stay a while; those of us who crossed over from Mexico always intended to go back.

But when?

For many, now would seem to be the time. Like many Central Americans, I came north to escape war. I left behind a house, a job, a family--in short, everything and everyone I knew--for a chance to live without war in a country I had known only through television.

But those wars are over. Elections have been held in El Salvador and Nicaragua, while in my native Guatemala, a peace accord was signed last December.

It’s a fragile peace in all three countries, certainly; yet it’s a peace we gladly would have embraced two decades ago. Today, in fact, there’s probably more gunplay on the streets of Compton than in Guatemala City.

What’s more, a political climate that has spawned English-only initiatives, bilingual education bans and legislation such as Propositions 187 and 209 has sown fear and uncertainty throughout the community of recent immigrants, both legal and undocumented.

Even a tentative peace would seem preferable to definite discrimination. That’s a theme that runs through “Ya Me Voy Pa’ Mi Pais” (“Now I’m Going to My Country”), a song I wrote and my wife recorded recently for a local music distributor. The lyrics tell the story of a Latin American immigrant who chooses to return to the land he knows, one where “no one knows discrimination.”

In the song, it sounds so easy. Just pack up and go home. In a lot of ways, the trip would be easier than the one that brought us here. But that’s a sentimental view. When we think with our brains and not with our hearts, most of us choose to remain here--even if we do so with our bags packed, next to the front door.

So why aren’t we going? Every one of us has a different answer to that question. Many of us who left jobs and families behind have built new ones here. Some, such as myself, operate our own businesses and our children are U.S. citizens who speak more English than Spanish.

Others have determined that there is no home to return to. In all three countries, entire villages were wiped out by war and many of the family members we left behind have died off or fell victim to the violence.

But more than all that, the real reason we’re still here is because our countries aren’t ready for us yet. Nicaragua, for example, is now the second-poorest country in the hemisphere. Only one in four workers has a steady job and street gangs roam the capital. Likewise in El Salvador, crushing poverty and unemployment have given rise to a level of street crime unknown before the war. Clearly neither country is ready for a mass repatriation, which is why the governments of both countries have energetically opposed U.S. plans to deport undocumented immigrants.

In my own Guatemala, by far the most prosperous of the Central American countries, the situation is slightly different. The government has been reaching out to us, warmly inviting us back. But the cynics among us see this as little more than a ploy to make the country appear stable while legitimizing the government in the eyes of international investors.

In any case, low wages and high prices continue to hold down the standard of living even as peace takes hold. And, as in the neighboring countries, crime is on the rise. Kidnappings are common. Just the other day my niece was accosted on a street corner in broad daylight by a man who tried to pry her infant daughter from her arms.

All this weighed heavily on me as I wrestled with the decision to sell my last physical tie to Guatemala--my house. As my wife and I debated the issue, she reminded me we had kept the house for our children. But the thought of our U.S.-born, English-speaking children in Guatemala was so difficult to imagine, the debate ended there and the house went on the market the next day.

Central Americans who fled decades of war see many deterrents to uprooting again.