Ayuda financiera para que mejicanos y centroamericanos trabajen en su país natal
In 2006, more than 1,000 Mexican migrant groups contributed close to $20 million to community improvement projects in 845 rural and urban locations, according to Martha Esquivel of Mexico's Department of Social Development.
From her office on the edge of San Francisco's Financial District, Diana Campoamor was networking - meeting for drinks with a banker, compiling a briefing book for a foundation trustee, exchanging phone calls with colleagues in Mexico City.
She was putting all the pieces in place so her group, Hispanics in Philanthropy, could cut its first check this month for a three-year, $219,000 grant to expand a goat-cheese cooperative in the state of Guanajuato, Mexico.
More goats, corrals, pasteurizing equipment and refrigerators should allow the operation to grow from one village to four, providing work for hundreds of peasant farmers who might otherwise join their siblings and cousins as illegal immigrants harvesting peaches, slaughtering chickens, driving nails and scrubbing dishes across the United States.
The group's decision to fund economic development projects in Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America, after almost 25 years working in U.S. Latino communities, is part of a movement taking hold in Northern California to tackle the root causes of illegal immigration.
"People don't leave their homes unless there's a hardship, economic or political," said Campoamor, the president of Hispanics in Philanthropy, who is herself a refugee from Cuba. "Everyone should have a choice. We want to help people have a job and a chance to stay where they are, and to have a voice in their communities and their countries."
Immigration is again moving front and center on the U.S. political stage. On the presidential campaign trail, Republicans are vying to be the toughest on sealing the border and enforcing immigration law, while Democrats temper the bad-cop rhetoric with talk of guest worker programs and a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants already here.
But if there is to be a lasting solution to illegal immigration, experts say, it will involve changes not just on this side of the border but in Mexico and Central America, which together account for three fourths of the estimated 12 million undocumented people in the United States.
"As far as what I've read about what the candidates are saying, I don't see much discussion. It's cheap rhetoric," said Luis Guarnizo, a professor in the school of agriculture at UC Davis. "Everybody's looking for a quick fix, the right slogan. ... But we have to look at the larger picture. This is not just a law-and-order issue, it involves economic issues, social issues. Migration is a global process."
In Northern California, some grassroots development and immigrant groups are trying a different approach. They reason that if people in Latin America had a way to lift themselves and their communities out of poverty, they wouldn't need to leave home, risk their lives crossing the border and live on the margins of U.S. society to earn a living and support their relatives back home.
The projects range from small to large, and involve a variety of players - major foundations, socially conscious consumers and migrant workers themselves - in diverse approaches to improving life in some of the communities that are sending undocumented immigrants north. They're helping build lagging village infrastructure, incubating productive rural projects and giving farmers fair access to global markets.