Migration is often driven by conflict or natural disasters.
However, economic motivations or the desire to reunify family also drive many people's decisions to migrate.
These migrants are not all adults.
Thousands of children, accompanied and unaccompanied, make these journeys too.
Official estimates indicate that approximately 48,000 children enter the United States from Central America and Mexico each year illegally and without a parent.
Roughly two thirds of these children successfully evade the U.
S.
Immigration and Naturalization Service.
Millions more children are severely impacted by family members' departures.
They are left with distant relatives, suffer from depression and often are left to wonder if they will ever see their parents again.
Yet the 2005 report of the Global Commission on International Migration barely mentions children.
Who is responsible for child migrants - often found far from home and without parents? The answers to this question are certainly not simple.
This paper attempts to understand the challenges children confront in sending, transit and receiving countries.
Seeking best practice and identifying poor practice too, this paper focuses primarily on Central American children traveling north to the United States.
The paper concludes with recommendations regarding effective existing practices, how progress might be monitored, and which actors must be engaged in protecting the Americas' many migrant children: within their home countries, along their journey, and in destination countries.
Departing Home Most Central American countries do not publicly track the numbers of migrant children returned home via formal channels involving the Mexican or U.
S.
governments; but even without concrete data, the evidence is clear.
Large numbers of children are attempting the dangerous journey north.
Some Central American children make the decision to leave home and travel north because of severe poverty at home, a desire to avoid gang initiation or a wish to find parents who migrated to the United States.
Others are trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation and labor purposes.
Yet others are sent with coyotes (Coyote is the Spanish word used to describe a smuggler) who have been paid large sums of money to deliver them to family members in the United States.
Regardless of the reasons that prompt their journeys and whether they are accompanied or not, all of these children face significant risk along the way.
The Journey Through Mexico - A Transit Country Experience For hundreds of thousands of Central American migrants each year, Mexico is not a destination.
The country represents a perilous journey to a destination further north.
This transit migration is referred to as "irregular" migration.
It is difficult to know the exact magnitude of "irregular migration" through Mexico since the Mexican government is only now implementing better data tracking mechanisms.
The Mexican Instituto Nacional de Migración (INM) estimated that in 2004 more than two million migrants crossed into Mexico from the southern border alone - and approximately 400,000 of these migrants were Central Americans entering without authorization.
While no exact numbers were available regarding how many of the 400,000 were children, one report on women migrants indicated that at the largest migrant detention center in the country 16% of females were minors.
Considering that females typically represent a smaller proportion of the migrant population (even though the number of female migrants has increased steadily in recent years), it is safe to assume that the percentage of minor male detainees is even larger.
During their travels many become seriously ill, lose limbs or are killed by falling from the tops of the moving freight trains on which hundreds of them travel each day.
They are often robbed, extorted, and physically abused - even by those whose job it is to enforce the law.
Women and children who travel together with smugglers are often permanently separated from each other while attempting to evade detection.
Enrique's Journey, by author Sonia Nazario is the non-fiction account of a Honduran boy's journey northward.
For those interested in better understanding the reality of a journey they will luckily never experience, it is a worthwhile read.
In similar fashion, a recent NY Times article illustrated one young man's experience:
They have expanded law enforcement efforts and constructed nine more detention facilities, with plans for eleven more.
INM estimates that over 240,000 people were detained in facilities during 2005.
But the Pew Hispanic Center offers evidence that over 400,000 non-Mexicans enter the United States illegally every year, and most of those individuals come through Mexico.
Thus, there are large numbers of people who manage to successfully avoid detention.
Even without exact numbers, the picture is clear.
Hundreds of thousands of people traverse from the south to the north of Mexico each year on a journey to the United States.
A not insignificant number of these migrants are children.
Unfortunately, evidence also suggests that the Mexican government's efforts to deter migration by increasing detention have resulted not in better protection of migrants, but in an expansion of human rights abuses, corruption, smuggling, and trafficking.
Since Mexican law states that only INM agents and the Federal Preventative Police may detain migrants who have violated the law, the large number of people detained each year is upon first consideration, puzzling.
However, since "irregular entry" is considered to be a crime in Mexico, any law enforcement official can claim he is authorized and in fact obligated to arrest all irregular migrants he encounters.
Numerous studies involving interviews with detainees indicate that this law encourages significant extortion and even violence by law enforcement officials who know they will suffer no recourse from these migrants - most especially the children - who just want to move along in their journey.
Further, a recent monitoring trip by Catholic Relief Services culminated in a report in which the group expressed serious reservations not only about the treatment of children in detention centers in Mexico, but also with the inconsistency of transport back to their home countries.
The report stated that "some home countries send transportation to pick up children from Mexican detention centers, while others hire Mexican buses and drivers to return the children...
this lack of supervision over the children's transportation leaves room for their rights to be abused.
" Destination Country - USA A study conducted by the Pew Hispanic Center indicated that there were approximately 11.
1 million unauthorized migrants in the United States as of March 2005.
66% percent of this population had been in the United States for less than ten years.
While men represent 49% of this population, and women represent 35%, there are also 1.
8 million unauthorized children estimated to be living in the United States.
2Furthermore, an estimated 3.
1 million children who are U.
S.
citizens by birth currently live in families where one or both parents are unauthorized.
In total, close to five million children, more than the entire population of some Central American countries, currently live in U.
S.
households where an immediate family member is dealing with the daily fear of deportation.
Such households are often referred to as "mixed status" and they beg the question "where do the children of these families belong?" For the many unaccompanied undocumented children under age eighteen who are apprehended in the United States, the system into which they enter has changed significantly in recent years.
The category "unaccompanied undocumented" includes refugees, migrants and trafficking victims.
In 2004, when INS became part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the responsibility for the care of unaccompanied undocumented children was transferred to the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR).
Many people celebrate this change as a "success" for these children because they are no longer being cared for by the same agency responsible for eventually deporting them.
However, advocates maintain that much work remains in order to improve the legal labyrinth these children face.
In terms of the magnitude of each of these subcategories, a recent report by the organization Bridging Refugee Youth and Children's Services (BRYCS) noted that while unaccompanied children are legally able to arrive as refugees destined for foster care, in the last ten years fewer than 1,000 children received this status.
Similarly, only 50 trafficked children have been identified since the authorizing legislation including them in this category was passed in 2000.
On the other hand, the U.
S.
government apprehends close to 100,000 migrant children in the U.
S.
each year.
Most are immediately sent back to their countries of origin, but almost 10,000 typically spend time in federal custody under the care of ORR's Division of Unaccompanied Children's Services (DUCS).
For these children, the UAC program is comprised of non-profit and for-profit organizations that secure contracts through a competitive grants process requiring experience with child welfare, social service or related experience and a license to provide shelter care, foster care, or group care and related services to dependent children.
Currently there are UAC facilities in 14 States.
The actual experience of a child in one of these programs varies tremendously.
Legislation currently pending in both the Senate and the House of Representatives seeks to more clearly and effectively protect unaccompanied alien children's rights.
Both bills address custody, release, family reunification and detention issues.
Additionally, they provide for legal representation for children and clarify instances in which the statuses of "Special Immigrant Juvenile" (SIJS) or "refugee" can be conferred.
The legislation also seeks to guarantee children's access to appropriate legal services, education, health services, interpretation, spiritual/religious needs and methods of communication.
Introduced unsuccessfully in each Congress since the 106th, many advocates believe the 110th Congress presents the first real possibility of passage.
Recommendations The Development Research Centre on Migration, Globalisation and Poverty (Migration DRC) recently released a report entitled "Voices of Child Migrants: A Better Understanding of How Life Is" in an effort to help policymakers and others understand how many children perceive their own migration.
Researchers spoke with several hundred children in Africa about their own migration experience and the report is in the words of those children.
The report concludes with a series of broad recommendations regarding the steps policymakers ought to take to guarantee that policies accurately reflect the needs and wishes of migrant children.
Recommendations include the need to address the stark poverty that motivates migration in the first place, to initiate local-level and national dialogues regarding what constitutes appropriate and inappropriate child labor, and to expand educational access.
While there are clear differences between migration decisions of African children and those decisions made by children in Central American and Mexico, the "Voices of Child Migrants" report offers much sound advice that can inform policy-making in the Americas too.
Included here are some preliminary recommendations regarding steps that countries in the American corridor must take in order to better serve the needs of migrant children.
Sending Countries While adult migration clearly leads to child migration, there are many reasons for child migration beyond family reunification and economic motivations.
At a minimum, Central American countries must do more to combat the gang violence that drives so many young people from their home countries.
Governments in these countries must also continue to strive to improve not only educational enrollment rates, but also educational quality.
The detrimental impact of poor quality schooling is perhaps most clearly seen in the small percentage of students who continue to secondary school in these countries - and therefore seek economic livelihoods at a young age.
Governments must also work towards better enforcement of the numerous international conventions they have signed onto related to migration, trafficking and smuggling.
Finally, the "Voices of Children" report provides one perspective on the thoughtful decision-making process that may accompany some children's decisions to migrate.
Along these lines, since it is likely that even attempts at deterrence will never completely stem the tide of child migrants, children in Central America must be, at a minimum, provided with information regarding the dangers associated with migrating through Mexico and on into the United States.
The Casa Alianza program, with programs throughout Central America, is a best practice example of civil society cooperation towards serving the needs of migrant children and providing such information.
In addition to providing housing and rehabilitation services for street children - many of whom are migrant children waylaid upon their journeys north - and attempting to permanently reunify them with their families, Casa Alianza also runs educational programs for children and youth that highlight the risks involved in attempting to migrate illegally to the United States.
Using the Casa Alianza model, funding should be sought from both government sources and civil society to allow for the needs of more children to be served in such environments.
In order to monitor such efforts, the government should play a role in certifying such institutions and providing economic support to those institutions that provide a minimum set of required services.
Transit Countries Mexico too must do a better job of complying with the various conventions and treaties signed relating to the treatment of migrants.
Along these lines, Mexico must invest more significantly in the fight against both corruption and organized crime.
Doing so effectively will most likely necessitate legislative reform as well as efforts to monitor implementation at the local and state levels.
One example of best practice in Mexico that should be extended throughout the country, and that should be engaged in directly addressing the needs of migrating children, is Grupo Beta.
Grupo Beta was created in 1991 as an immigrant protection/police agency.
They do not have any responsibility for immigration enforcement but are responsible for protecting migrants.
Many organizations consider Grupo Beta's numbers to be the most accurate numbers related to immigration flows in Northern Mexico.
Clearly the expansion of Grupo Beta will require funding by the Mexican government, which might be best justified as an anti-corruption initiative by Mexican President Calderon.
Receiving Countries Several child welfare organizations in the U.
S.
, including the Lutheran Immigrant and Refugee Service, have convened conversations in recent years regarding the development of "standards of care" for migrating children.
Once fully outlined, these standards of care should be implemented at all UAC facilities.
Appropriate training to guarantee implementation and on-going use of these standards should be funded by the ORR.
Additionally, efforts to guarantee the passage of the proposed federal legislation should be supported by advocacy organizations committed to appropriately serving the needs of migrant children.
In order to guarantee that the needs of the many children with family members at risk of deportation are also met, innovative local efforts like the "Language Card' implemented by the New York City Administration for Children's Services and New York City's Executive Order 41 and Local Law 73, should be advocated nationally so that other localities can consider such innovations.
Local Law 73 requires New York City health and human services agencies to assess and provide services in the primary language of the recipient.
Executive Order 41 articulates that immigration status is confidential information that cannot be shared with others by city employees.
This Executive Order aims to guarantee that underserved families secure the services they need without fear of deportation.
Conclusion Ultimately, guaranteeing positive outcomes for migrating children will require efforts at the local, state, national and international levels.
Identifying organizations well-placed to both monitor and train others in "best practices" will be critical.
Some organizations/government offices/legislation that should be looked to for these purposes include Casa Alianza, Catholic Relief Services, the Lutheran Immigrant and Refugee Service, Bridging Refugee and Youth Child Services, Grupo Beta, and U.
S.
legislators that support the bill currently under consideration in both the House and Senate.
Citations 1 The New York Times, "Despite Crackdown, Migrants Stream Into South Mexico," James C.
McKinley Jr.
(Section 1; Column 1; Foreign Desk; Pg.
12): January 28, 2007 2 http://pewhispanic.
org/reports/report.
php?ReportID=61
However, economic motivations or the desire to reunify family also drive many people's decisions to migrate.
These migrants are not all adults.
Thousands of children, accompanied and unaccompanied, make these journeys too.
Official estimates indicate that approximately 48,000 children enter the United States from Central America and Mexico each year illegally and without a parent.
Roughly two thirds of these children successfully evade the U.
S.
Immigration and Naturalization Service.
Millions more children are severely impacted by family members' departures.
They are left with distant relatives, suffer from depression and often are left to wonder if they will ever see their parents again.
Yet the 2005 report of the Global Commission on International Migration barely mentions children.
Who is responsible for child migrants - often found far from home and without parents? The answers to this question are certainly not simple.
This paper attempts to understand the challenges children confront in sending, transit and receiving countries.
Seeking best practice and identifying poor practice too, this paper focuses primarily on Central American children traveling north to the United States.
The paper concludes with recommendations regarding effective existing practices, how progress might be monitored, and which actors must be engaged in protecting the Americas' many migrant children: within their home countries, along their journey, and in destination countries.
Departing Home Most Central American countries do not publicly track the numbers of migrant children returned home via formal channels involving the Mexican or U.
S.
governments; but even without concrete data, the evidence is clear.
Large numbers of children are attempting the dangerous journey north.
Some Central American children make the decision to leave home and travel north because of severe poverty at home, a desire to avoid gang initiation or a wish to find parents who migrated to the United States.
Others are trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation and labor purposes.
Yet others are sent with coyotes (Coyote is the Spanish word used to describe a smuggler) who have been paid large sums of money to deliver them to family members in the United States.
Regardless of the reasons that prompt their journeys and whether they are accompanied or not, all of these children face significant risk along the way.
The Journey Through Mexico - A Transit Country Experience For hundreds of thousands of Central American migrants each year, Mexico is not a destination.
The country represents a perilous journey to a destination further north.
This transit migration is referred to as "irregular" migration.
It is difficult to know the exact magnitude of "irregular migration" through Mexico since the Mexican government is only now implementing better data tracking mechanisms.
The Mexican Instituto Nacional de Migración (INM) estimated that in 2004 more than two million migrants crossed into Mexico from the southern border alone - and approximately 400,000 of these migrants were Central Americans entering without authorization.
While no exact numbers were available regarding how many of the 400,000 were children, one report on women migrants indicated that at the largest migrant detention center in the country 16% of females were minors.
Considering that females typically represent a smaller proportion of the migrant population (even though the number of female migrants has increased steadily in recent years), it is safe to assume that the percentage of minor male detainees is even larger.
During their travels many become seriously ill, lose limbs or are killed by falling from the tops of the moving freight trains on which hundreds of them travel each day.
They are often robbed, extorted, and physically abused - even by those whose job it is to enforce the law.
Women and children who travel together with smugglers are often permanently separated from each other while attempting to evade detection.
Enrique's Journey, by author Sonia Nazario is the non-fiction account of a Honduran boy's journey northward.
For those interested in better understanding the reality of a journey they will luckily never experience, it is a worthwhile read.
In similar fashion, a recent NY Times article illustrated one young man's experience:
Down the street from the tracks, at the Hearth of Mercy shelter, where illegal immigrants can get a free hot meal and medicine, Juan Antonio Cruz, 16, hunched over a bowl of rice and told how he had left El Salvador after members of the Mara Salvatrucha street gang had threatened to kill him.In the last decade Mexico has significantly increased efforts to identify, detain and deport irregular migrants.
''They wanted me to join them,'' he said.
It was his second attempt to reach Arizona, he said.
The first time he had endured eight freezing nights and sweltering days aboard the train by strapping his belt to a bar atop a tanker car.
The border patrol caught him as he crossed into Nogales, Ariz.
, and sent him back home to Usulutan, where the gang members threatened him again.
''When I think about the train, I feel fear and panic, for the thieves who attack you, and also for falling off,'' he said softly.
For some, that is how the dream ends, with a fall under the train's heavy, whirring wheels.
1
They have expanded law enforcement efforts and constructed nine more detention facilities, with plans for eleven more.
INM estimates that over 240,000 people were detained in facilities during 2005.
But the Pew Hispanic Center offers evidence that over 400,000 non-Mexicans enter the United States illegally every year, and most of those individuals come through Mexico.
Thus, there are large numbers of people who manage to successfully avoid detention.
Even without exact numbers, the picture is clear.
Hundreds of thousands of people traverse from the south to the north of Mexico each year on a journey to the United States.
A not insignificant number of these migrants are children.
Unfortunately, evidence also suggests that the Mexican government's efforts to deter migration by increasing detention have resulted not in better protection of migrants, but in an expansion of human rights abuses, corruption, smuggling, and trafficking.
Since Mexican law states that only INM agents and the Federal Preventative Police may detain migrants who have violated the law, the large number of people detained each year is upon first consideration, puzzling.
However, since "irregular entry" is considered to be a crime in Mexico, any law enforcement official can claim he is authorized and in fact obligated to arrest all irregular migrants he encounters.
Numerous studies involving interviews with detainees indicate that this law encourages significant extortion and even violence by law enforcement officials who know they will suffer no recourse from these migrants - most especially the children - who just want to move along in their journey.
Further, a recent monitoring trip by Catholic Relief Services culminated in a report in which the group expressed serious reservations not only about the treatment of children in detention centers in Mexico, but also with the inconsistency of transport back to their home countries.
The report stated that "some home countries send transportation to pick up children from Mexican detention centers, while others hire Mexican buses and drivers to return the children...
this lack of supervision over the children's transportation leaves room for their rights to be abused.
" Destination Country - USA A study conducted by the Pew Hispanic Center indicated that there were approximately 11.
1 million unauthorized migrants in the United States as of March 2005.
66% percent of this population had been in the United States for less than ten years.
While men represent 49% of this population, and women represent 35%, there are also 1.
8 million unauthorized children estimated to be living in the United States.
2Furthermore, an estimated 3.
1 million children who are U.
S.
citizens by birth currently live in families where one or both parents are unauthorized.
In total, close to five million children, more than the entire population of some Central American countries, currently live in U.
S.
households where an immediate family member is dealing with the daily fear of deportation.
Such households are often referred to as "mixed status" and they beg the question "where do the children of these families belong?" For the many unaccompanied undocumented children under age eighteen who are apprehended in the United States, the system into which they enter has changed significantly in recent years.
The category "unaccompanied undocumented" includes refugees, migrants and trafficking victims.
In 2004, when INS became part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the responsibility for the care of unaccompanied undocumented children was transferred to the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR).
Many people celebrate this change as a "success" for these children because they are no longer being cared for by the same agency responsible for eventually deporting them.
However, advocates maintain that much work remains in order to improve the legal labyrinth these children face.
In terms of the magnitude of each of these subcategories, a recent report by the organization Bridging Refugee Youth and Children's Services (BRYCS) noted that while unaccompanied children are legally able to arrive as refugees destined for foster care, in the last ten years fewer than 1,000 children received this status.
Similarly, only 50 trafficked children have been identified since the authorizing legislation including them in this category was passed in 2000.
On the other hand, the U.
S.
government apprehends close to 100,000 migrant children in the U.
S.
each year.
Most are immediately sent back to their countries of origin, but almost 10,000 typically spend time in federal custody under the care of ORR's Division of Unaccompanied Children's Services (DUCS).
For these children, the UAC program is comprised of non-profit and for-profit organizations that secure contracts through a competitive grants process requiring experience with child welfare, social service or related experience and a license to provide shelter care, foster care, or group care and related services to dependent children.
Currently there are UAC facilities in 14 States.
The actual experience of a child in one of these programs varies tremendously.
Legislation currently pending in both the Senate and the House of Representatives seeks to more clearly and effectively protect unaccompanied alien children's rights.
Both bills address custody, release, family reunification and detention issues.
Additionally, they provide for legal representation for children and clarify instances in which the statuses of "Special Immigrant Juvenile" (SIJS) or "refugee" can be conferred.
The legislation also seeks to guarantee children's access to appropriate legal services, education, health services, interpretation, spiritual/religious needs and methods of communication.
Introduced unsuccessfully in each Congress since the 106th, many advocates believe the 110th Congress presents the first real possibility of passage.
Recommendations The Development Research Centre on Migration, Globalisation and Poverty (Migration DRC) recently released a report entitled "Voices of Child Migrants: A Better Understanding of How Life Is" in an effort to help policymakers and others understand how many children perceive their own migration.
Researchers spoke with several hundred children in Africa about their own migration experience and the report is in the words of those children.
The report concludes with a series of broad recommendations regarding the steps policymakers ought to take to guarantee that policies accurately reflect the needs and wishes of migrant children.
Recommendations include the need to address the stark poverty that motivates migration in the first place, to initiate local-level and national dialogues regarding what constitutes appropriate and inappropriate child labor, and to expand educational access.
While there are clear differences between migration decisions of African children and those decisions made by children in Central American and Mexico, the "Voices of Child Migrants" report offers much sound advice that can inform policy-making in the Americas too.
Included here are some preliminary recommendations regarding steps that countries in the American corridor must take in order to better serve the needs of migrant children.
Sending Countries While adult migration clearly leads to child migration, there are many reasons for child migration beyond family reunification and economic motivations.
At a minimum, Central American countries must do more to combat the gang violence that drives so many young people from their home countries.
Governments in these countries must also continue to strive to improve not only educational enrollment rates, but also educational quality.
The detrimental impact of poor quality schooling is perhaps most clearly seen in the small percentage of students who continue to secondary school in these countries - and therefore seek economic livelihoods at a young age.
Governments must also work towards better enforcement of the numerous international conventions they have signed onto related to migration, trafficking and smuggling.
Finally, the "Voices of Children" report provides one perspective on the thoughtful decision-making process that may accompany some children's decisions to migrate.
Along these lines, since it is likely that even attempts at deterrence will never completely stem the tide of child migrants, children in Central America must be, at a minimum, provided with information regarding the dangers associated with migrating through Mexico and on into the United States.
The Casa Alianza program, with programs throughout Central America, is a best practice example of civil society cooperation towards serving the needs of migrant children and providing such information.
In addition to providing housing and rehabilitation services for street children - many of whom are migrant children waylaid upon their journeys north - and attempting to permanently reunify them with their families, Casa Alianza also runs educational programs for children and youth that highlight the risks involved in attempting to migrate illegally to the United States.
Using the Casa Alianza model, funding should be sought from both government sources and civil society to allow for the needs of more children to be served in such environments.
In order to monitor such efforts, the government should play a role in certifying such institutions and providing economic support to those institutions that provide a minimum set of required services.
Transit Countries Mexico too must do a better job of complying with the various conventions and treaties signed relating to the treatment of migrants.
Along these lines, Mexico must invest more significantly in the fight against both corruption and organized crime.
Doing so effectively will most likely necessitate legislative reform as well as efforts to monitor implementation at the local and state levels.
One example of best practice in Mexico that should be extended throughout the country, and that should be engaged in directly addressing the needs of migrating children, is Grupo Beta.
Grupo Beta was created in 1991 as an immigrant protection/police agency.
They do not have any responsibility for immigration enforcement but are responsible for protecting migrants.
Many organizations consider Grupo Beta's numbers to be the most accurate numbers related to immigration flows in Northern Mexico.
Clearly the expansion of Grupo Beta will require funding by the Mexican government, which might be best justified as an anti-corruption initiative by Mexican President Calderon.
Receiving Countries Several child welfare organizations in the U.
S.
, including the Lutheran Immigrant and Refugee Service, have convened conversations in recent years regarding the development of "standards of care" for migrating children.
Once fully outlined, these standards of care should be implemented at all UAC facilities.
Appropriate training to guarantee implementation and on-going use of these standards should be funded by the ORR.
Additionally, efforts to guarantee the passage of the proposed federal legislation should be supported by advocacy organizations committed to appropriately serving the needs of migrant children.
In order to guarantee that the needs of the many children with family members at risk of deportation are also met, innovative local efforts like the "Language Card' implemented by the New York City Administration for Children's Services and New York City's Executive Order 41 and Local Law 73, should be advocated nationally so that other localities can consider such innovations.
Local Law 73 requires New York City health and human services agencies to assess and provide services in the primary language of the recipient.
Executive Order 41 articulates that immigration status is confidential information that cannot be shared with others by city employees.
This Executive Order aims to guarantee that underserved families secure the services they need without fear of deportation.
Conclusion Ultimately, guaranteeing positive outcomes for migrating children will require efforts at the local, state, national and international levels.
Identifying organizations well-placed to both monitor and train others in "best practices" will be critical.
Some organizations/government offices/legislation that should be looked to for these purposes include Casa Alianza, Catholic Relief Services, the Lutheran Immigrant and Refugee Service, Bridging Refugee and Youth Child Services, Grupo Beta, and U.
S.
legislators that support the bill currently under consideration in both the House and Senate.
Citations 1 The New York Times, "Despite Crackdown, Migrants Stream Into South Mexico," James C.
McKinley Jr.
(Section 1; Column 1; Foreign Desk; Pg.
12): January 28, 2007 2 http://pewhispanic.
org/reports/report.
php?ReportID=61