Immigrants Now Choosing to Leave the U.S. Voluntarily
By: Gerri L. Elder
According to information collected in various informal surveys, bolstered by anecdotal evidence, it seems that more and more immigrants, mostly Latin Americans, are choosing to pack up and voluntarily head home.
In some cases, immigrants have found that the United States, with its faltering economy, is no longer the land of milk and honey. With food, gas and energy prices rising, coupled with the collapse of the housing market and subsequent layoffs in the construction industry, many immigrants can no longer make ends meet, let alone send money home to their families as they had in the past. Immigration raids and crackdowns on employers have also gone a long way towards pushing illegal immigrants to leave the United States. There is no longer a better life here for them.
Aside from the financial difficulties that many illegal immigrants are now experiencing, many are separated from their families and are on their own while they attempt to work in the United States. With no financial incentives to stay in the U.S. and the constant threat of being arrested, detained and deported by immigration authorities, the loneliness hardly seems worth it anymore and can influence an immigrant's decision to return to their country of origin.
Agricultural and food processing and service jobs usually held by illegal immigrants are now vacant or filled with higher paid legal workers. Employers are now reluctant to hire illegal immigrants and the illegal immigrants who did much of the labor in these industries have found it difficult to find jobs.
Some people feel that the growing trend of illegal immigrants voluntarily leaving the U.S. is a sign that Bush's crackdown on employers is working. Others say the economy is such a mess that immigrants are better off in their home countries - and they know it. Either reason is plausible, but it is likely that both are major factors in this trend.
The Miami Herald reported that Cuba does not publish records of the number of people who return to the island after leaving to find a better life elsewhere. Cubans who leave the island for longer than 11 months are then considered by Cuba to be permanent residents of somewhere else and must re-apply for identity papers in Cuba and then report to Cuban immigration authorities every month for a year. It is not clear if Cubans who leave the island without proper exit paperwork are ever allowed to legally return to Cuba.
Many immigrants find it difficult to legally return home and are also sometimes subject to poor treatment by their communities when they do return home. It is definitely not easy for illegal immigrants as any way they turn there are obstacles and hardships. Many are now simply choosing what they feel is the lesser evil and returning to their own countries to be treated as outcasts.