When Andres Garcia was a baby in Toluca, Mexico, his teenage mother sent him to live with her parents in Houston, where she thought he could have a better life. At age 16, Garcia received DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) status and looked forward to attending college in the United States. His security crumbled in 2017 when President Donald J. Trump threatened to rescind the program.
With both his protection from deportation and his ability to work legally in jeopardy, Garcia felt paralyzed and unable to plan for his future. The uncertainty led to bouts of depression, anxiety and insomnia, and finally the stress motivated Garcia to move back to Mexico in November 2018. Now 20 years old, he’s relieved to be rid of the citizenship worries he endured in the United States. But as a young returnee to Mexico, Garcia must now clear numerous hurdles to pursue his dream to study filmmaking or psychology in college. He lacks the coursework in Spanish language and history needed for certain college entrance exams, and “it’s difficult for me to have conversations in Spanish, especially with new people I’m trying to get to know,” he says.
With an estimated 548,000 Mexican DACA recipients living in the United States and thousands of other young undocumented immigrants who are not enrolled in the program, Garcia is not alone in facing a quandary about whether to stay in this country or return to Mexico to start a new life. Psychologists, including Antonio Valdivia, PhD, a professor at Tecnológico de Monterrey in Mexico, are working to help them as they transition to a country largely unfamiliar to them and unprepared to help with the obstacles many of them are facing.
“There is little support in the United States or Mexico to help them with the transition, and both countries need to work together to assist these returnees,” says Valdivia, who grew up in Mexico and went to graduate school in the United States.
Working with Dream in Mexico, a nonprofit organization that connects returnees with educational and employment opportunities in Mexico and whose name references the U.S. Congress’s never-passed DREAM Act (a proposal with protections similar but not identical to those of the DACA program), Valdivia and other psychologists are hoping to give these young adults the support they need.
“We need to better prepare clinicians and educators to support them, because these bicultural students could be valuable assets to Mexico,” he says.
Forming new dreams in Mexico
Dream in Mexico founder Daniel Arenas, a returnee himself, reaches out to returnees who contact him via the organization’s Facebook page or website. Initially, they often need help navigating logistics such as applying for a government identification card, which is needed to drive and work in Mexico. He demystifies these processes and asks returnees about their academic and job aspirations. For those who are interested in applying to college, he shares information about which institutions might be a good fit financially, academically and geographically and about potential scholarship opportunities. Arenas also connects returnees with companies that are looking for employees who are bilingual.
To help returnees learn from one another, Arenas and Valdivia are partnering with Valdivia’s wife, Rubria Rocha de Luna, MA, MEd, a licensed psychologist in Mexico who lived in the United States during graduate school, to create a database that will show where returnees are living, studying and working, as well as list the resources that helped them transition.
Another important component of Valdivia’s work is conducting research. He has partnered with Eric C. Chen, PhD, an associate professor in the Graduate School of Education’s counseling psychology program at Fordham University in New York City, and two of Chen’s doctoral students to examine how undocumented immigrants in the United States and returnees in Mexico are affected by the experience of hiding their identities as a result of fear and stigmatization, particularly in today’s socio-political climate.
“Returnees in Mexico may not want to stand out by speaking English or talking about their experience in the United States,” says Chen. “My concern is that concealing these experiences could limit their access to social support and affect their psychological and physical health.”
Eventually, they want to develop interventions that bolster resilience in this population. For example, they are planning to create and study an online psychoeducational and support group to foster a sense of community among returnees by allowing them to share their feelings of stigmatization and learn about community resources.
The psychologists are particularly interested in learning why some “Dreamers” who move back to Mexico do remarkably well. Among them is Joshua Casillas, 23, who left Houston for Monterrey, Mexico in 2017. He learned of a University of Monterrey scholarship just for returnees and is now finishing his second year in the medical program. Though it was painful to leave the country that had become his home, Casillas has no regrets. “I feel freer because I don’t have to live in fear anymore,” he says. “I’ve replaced the American dream.”
As Valdivia and Chen delve into research to better understand the needs of returnees like Casillas, they hope other psychologists will be inspired to follow. “I feel compelled to give voice to this group of individuals who are often on the margins,” Chen says.
To learn more about volunteering with Dream in Mexico, contact Daniel Arenas at info@dreaminmexico.org.
To learn more about supporting “Dreamers” through counseling or research, contact Antonio Valdivia at javaldivia@tec.mx.
For more information about APA’s immigration research and advocacy efforts see: https://www.apaservices.org/advocacy/immigration
