As US Election Looms, Undocumented Now Free to Visit Mexico, Face Iffy Future Kirk Semple - The New York Times
go to original November 7, 2016

The 2016 American presidential election is especially important for the millions of undocumented immigrants. Lalo Mendez, who was brought to America from Mexico in the trunk of a car, shares his personal perspective on what is at stake. (The Economist)

The young Mexican couple packed their possessions in boxes and garbage bags 20 years ago, locked them in a room of their half-built house in Mexico City and then migrated illegally to the United States with their 3-year-old daughter in search of work, taking only what they could carry.

The plan was to return a couple of years later, but instead they remained, undocumented, in New York City. The boxes and bags stayed where they had left them, their contents mostly forgotten: a family’s beacon of hope.

One recent morning, the daughter, Guadalupe Ambrosio, now 23, stood in front of the locked door of that room, the key in her hand. It was her first visit to Mexico since she had left when she was 3. She was about to open those boxes and bags for the first time since they had been stored, reconnecting with her interrupted childhood and closing a yawning circle for her family.

Ms. Ambrosio, an undergraduate at Borough of Manhattan Community College, was never sure she would have this chance. She, too, is undocumented. For most of her life, had she tried to visit Mexico, she would have been barred from re-entering the United States.

But in 2012, she enrolled in a federal program that allows young, undocumented immigrants to remain in the United States temporarily and work legally. Participants in the program, known as deferred action, can also apply to travel abroad for humanitarian, educational or work purposes, and re-enter the United States without penalty. Since the advent of the program in 2012, thousands of young undocumented immigrants have used the travel permission to visit the countries they left as children.

But with the American presidential election at hand, the future of the program, an initiative of the Obama administration, remains uncertain. The new president could cancel it, leaving young undocumented immigrants to wonder whether they can ever return to their homelands without having to forsake their lives in the United States.

“People are scared,” Ms. Ambrosio said. “We’ve been fighting for this.”

Read the rest at The New York Times

Related: Immigrants Living ‘On Pause’ Fear Obama’s Leniency Will Not Outlast Election (The New York Times)

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