Elián: Not Just a Cuban Story

We all saw the headlines about Elián González, the Cuban boy living in a state of legal limbo, and many of us were drawn into the family conflict as his relatives here in the U.S. and those in Cuba vied for custody. But the Elián González story was really a political one: about the delicate balance between Cuban relations and much-valued Cuban-American votes in Miami. Lift the story from its Cuban context and there are other, less-known stories of Asian, Latino, African, and Caribbean immigrant children who live in another kind of limbo. Perhaps not as dramatic as a boy drifting off the coast of Florida in a rubber raft, or caught in an INS legal tangle, these immigrant children and teenagers live in a constant state of suspension, a twilight world of not belonging anywhere.

The reality of today's immigration, particularly from the Third World, is that parents often immigrate first, and years later send for their child. Often the child arrives just on the cusp of adolescence, in the hopes that she or he will receive a better education and get that golden passport to American success: a college degree. Teenage years are hard enough. Imagine landing on the doorstep of a complete stranger, trying to make this your new home. That's the limbo that these young people often live in; they are floating in the choppy seas of a new country and a new, cobbled-together family.

Sometimes it all works out. I spoke to a girl from war-torn Ethiopia who was reunited with a father she barely knew, a stepmother, and a new baby sister, and for the first time in her life she felt real hope and and belonging. "I have a family," she told me, tears glistening in her eyes.

But many times these reunions are problematic, or they leave the children and teenagers in an ambiguous and frightening place. For instance, a Korean boy in Los Angeles lived with a father who was virtually a stranger to him and his brother. They knew their father held some kind of part-time job, but they didn't know what it was. Their father's green card was expired, yet he seemed to be doing nothing about it, and often disappeared for short trips to Korea. A few nights a week he went to stay with a woman they'd never met. The two brothers relied on each other, supporting themselves with wages one of them earned as a delivery boy. Most of the time, though, they lived in terror of being deported.

A Haitian girl I interviewed was brought over by her father, a "traveler" whose job it was to smuggle illegal immigrants into the U.S. This girl found herself in Florida, not far from where Elián González was welcomed by his relatives. In her case, though, she was handed from relative to relative, who treated her as a babysitter or servant. Finally she went north with an aunt who physically abused her for three years. When she ran away and sought shelter with friends, she learned her immigration status was in jeopardy. The only person who could help her--her father--had disappeared.

There are countless stories of young people such as these, "reunited" with a parent, only to wind up on the streets, in gangs, or in shelters. Going back to their countries is usually not an option: They are often raised by elderly grandparents who love them, but expect them to make it in America. Their parents can be unreliable, alcoholics, or simply burned out from working grueling, low-wage jobs. These children are supposed to make no trouble for anyone, fit in, take their seats in school, learn English, not make trouble.

Many of the debates around bilingual education and affirmative action, particularly the recent Unz initiative in California, which restricts how long children should remain in bilingual classes, obscure the larger, more complex realities of immigrants' lives. School can often be a mere slice of their existence. In speaking to young immigrants, I noticed that those who had immigrated with intact families, whose roles were clearly to succeed in school, were often best able to see their way through bilingual and ESL classes toward mainstreaming and succeeding in their new country. Others were often bogged down with other responsibilities, or dealing with the oftentimes brutal blows of family adjustments.

There are the exceptions, of course: A young Cambodian woman who wound up in a shelter, due to her father's negligence, was elected president of her high school student body a mere two years after immigrating to the U.S. But we can't always hold up the exceptions. Instead, we have to ask ourselves: Do we know who these children are? Are our social systems adequate enough to catch these children before they slip into their twilight world, disappear from our radar of compassion? Are school guidance counselors able to spot a child who has no place to live? Can teachers tell whether an immigrant's problems learning English are less rooted in vocabulary acquisition and more in a troubled situation with their new families? Do we know how to help these children cope with not only the pressures of assimilating into America, but adjusting to a completely new relatives? Are we capable of looking beyond our cherished myths of the hearty immigrant family, working together at the corner store, to see the more complex realities of our new, young immigrants?

It's time to stop thinking about the Elián González story as a Cuban story. And let's also think about immigrant children whose lives are in limbo, who are not so fortunate to have two sides of a family fighting for them, and who could use their time in the national spotlight.