http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihLm_BYVRcc
The deportation of a parent creates a gut wrenching dilemma: Should the family separate? But a New Mexico school five miles north of the border is allowing families to stay together while still providing the benefits of a U.S. education.
It is 5th grade graduation at Columbus Elementary School in New Mexico.
Students are in their best dress shirts, polished shoes, and dresses filling in to the gymnasium packed with proud and applauding family members. But not all of these students’ parents are here.
Instead, a lot of them are watching the ceremony via a Skype connection five miles away, at a restaurant in Palomas, Mexico.
About 470 students come across the US/Mexico border to attend classes at Deming Public Schools every day. Armando Chavez is Principal of Columbus Elementary he saids the majority of students crossing the border have at least one parent who’s been deported.
“They slowly find out that we will educate their children here, so they come across so it’s a amazing. The situation we are dealing with children that come from South Dakota, Missouri, it can be any state that they come. We embrace our children that come to our door everyday.” Chavez said.
Chavez said families come to live in Palomas, Mexico, so they can keep their kids in the U.S. education system and their families together.
This school year, the Columbus Elementary School has students from as far away as South Dakota, Illinois, and Tennessee Chavez said the school usually gets an influx of students whenever a state enacts stricter immigration laws, like Arizona did in 2010.
“We are sometimes the holding spot for them, for them to fix the papers correctly. If anything, we want them to do it correctly.” Chavez said.
4th grader Joanna Rodriguez moved to Palomas three years ago from Hatch, New Mexico with her mother and little sister, after her father was busted living in the U.S. illegally. Joanna’s mother Arianna said she didn’t know how her family was going to stay together after U.S. immigration banned her husband from entering the country for ten years.
“When he left, I remember Joanna waiting for him at the door, to get home from work. But I think those moments were the hardest for me to know he wasn’t going to come back.”
Rodriguez tried to make it work for a while raising her kids as a single mother and taking her girls to visit their father where he was living in Juarez, Mexico, every other weekend. But she said it took its toll, especially on her daughter Joanna.
"When we would go visit him to Juarez she would hang on him, she wouldn’t let go and he would tell her you have to go to school and learn how to read. Because you are the one that is going to fix my papers. We think that is why she loves to read.” Rodriguez said.
That was until she found out about Columbus Elementary in New Mexico, they could live as a family in Palomas, Mexico- while the girls could go to school across the border in New Mexico, USA.
“I couldn’t believe that were going to be together, that my husband was going to be there with me in the mornings to help me get the girls ready it was a blessing to me.” Rodriguez said
But not everyone living in the Deming Public School district area says state money should be used to educate students who don’t live in the country.
In 1993, two Columbus, New Mexico, residents filed a lawsuit to stop state money from being used to educate students crossing into the district from Palomas, but the court ruled against them.
Texas and California also allow Mexican children to come to their state’s public schools, but only if they pay an out-of-district fee, which is often prohibitively expensive. Even by New Mexico standards Columbus Elementary is an anomaly. Rodriguez said when she tried to enroll her daughter in the neighboring school district, Gadsden, they threatened a court case to prove she was not residing in the district.
But Principal Chavez says the Deming Public Schools evaluates the costs of educating U.S. citizens living just across the border differently.
“We educate our children here at our school that come to our door in order to for them to be productive members of society, not everyone agrees with the philosophy of educating the kids. But when you are looking at the larger picture of where these children will be in the next 20 to 25 years and they are going to more than likely live in the United States. We want to educate them, we want to get them to the highest level of education possible so they can be successful, so they can become productive members and contribute back.” Chavez said.
Arianna’s husband only has to wait one more year before he can return to the U.S., and Arianna says, they like it here and will probably stay in the area.
“Hopefully with gods will, everything will go smooth and my husband is able to come back. But whenever I see families that are barely starting this process, I automatically say you guys should go to Palomas and bring your kids to Columbus.” Rodriguez said.
