Family Matters: Claiming Rights across the US-Mexico Migratory System

Abstract

Executive Summary Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (INA) created an immigration system favoring the immigration of spouses, children, and parents of US citizens, thereby establishing family unity as the cornerstone of US immigration policy. Despite this historical emphasis on family unity, backlogs and limited visas for non-immediate relatives of US citizens and legal permanent residents, the militarization of the US-Mexico border, punitive measures for those who enter without inspection, such as the forced separation of children from their parents at the US border, and an aggressive policy of deportation have made it more difficult for members of Mexican binational families to unify. How do members of Mexican binational families manage the hardships that result from US immigration policies that prolong and force family separation? Immigrants and return migrants alike may not be aware of their rights and the legal remedies that exist to enforce them. Structural barriers such as poverty, legal status, fear of deportation, lack of proficiency in English, and lack of familiarity with government bureaucracies no doubt prevent many migrants in the United States and return migrants in Mexico from coming forward to request legal assistance and relief in the courts. Despite these barriers, when it comes to family matters, members of some Mexican binational families can and do assert their rights. In this article, we analyze an administrative database of the Department of Legal Protection of the Mexican consular network that documents migrant legal claims resulting from family separation, along with findings from 21 interviews with consular staff and community organizations in three consular jurisdictions — El Paso, Raleigh, and San Francisco — to investigate the sociolegal processes of claims. Our investigation centers on the mediating role the Mexican state — via its consular network — has developed to assist binational families as they attempt to assert their rights and resolve child support and child custody problems resulting from prolonged and forced family separation. We find that the resolution of binational family claims in part depends on the institutional infrastructure that has developed at local, state, and federal levels, along with the commitment and capacity of the receiving and sending states and the binational structures they establish. These binational structures transcend the limitations of national legal systems to achieve and implement family rights and obligations across borders.

The Role of the Mexican Consulate Network in Assisting Migrant Labor Claims across the U.S.-Mexico Migratory System

“…Notably, we find evidence that consular support in labor claims systematically varies across our research sites. Consistent with prior studies, our results indicate that consular assistance depends on consulates' locations and relationships with institutions in the larger sociopolitical field of actors that aid mistreated workers (Bada and Gleeson 2014;Délano 2018;Gleeson 2012;Hagan et al 2018;Weissman et al 2018). However, our analysis of administrative files also reveals that consular support varies across contexts in relation to the circumstances of labor claims that emerge in each location.…”

“…Consular officials may refer claimants to local governmental agencies and non-profit organizations, provide information and guidance on socio-legal issues and remedies, offer economic assistance to migrants as they await the resolution of claims, draw on institutional connections to locate persons, or take other supportive actions. The authors further connect variation in the actions available to consular officials to the social context and migration histories of the local geographies within which consulates are embedded (Hagan et al 2018). Consular officials in Raleigh, for example, are constrained by the weakest and least connected network of local community organizations and institutions that advocate on behalf of migrants as well as by a dearth of bilingual services, which limits their ability to direct migrants to other specialized agencies or organizations.…”

“…A growing body of research has assessed how local contexts shape consular services, primarily by relying on interviews with consulate staff, migrants, and members of civil-society organizations (Bada and Gleeson 2014;Gleeson 2012;Hagan et al 2018;Weissman et al 2018). Gleeson (2012), for example, interviewed staff from the Mexican consulate, U.S. labor enforcement officials, and members of civil-society organizations to assess how labor rights are enforced in Houston and San Jose.…”

“…When migrant workers do come forward, they must engage in an adjudicative process, which includes establishing that a rights violation occurred, confirming eligibility for a remedy, locating and filing the necessary paperwork, and navigating labor enforcement bureaucracies and courts (Gleeson 2016). Migrants often lack the necessary social, human, cultural, or economic capital required to successfully file and resolve claims in receiving societies (Hagan et al 2018;Weissman et al 2018).…”

“…As emigrants, however, migrant workers retain home-country citizenship and may maintain cross-border social or institutional ties, which can allow them to strategically draw support from origin states to resolve issues in receiving societies (Délano and Gamlen 2014;Hagan et al 2018;Waldinger 2015;Weissman et al 2018). In recent decades, migrant-sending states have developed emigrant policies to remain connected to their diasporas for a variety of reasons, including to extract taxes or remittances (Gamlen 2006;Pedroza and Palop-García 2017).…”