MEXICO.- If I could turn back time, Miguel Ángel Lujano, from 65 years, I would not work in a bar. He would not have gotten into trouble, managing a business that involved alcohol or getting involved with drug dealers and policemen in the United States, where he lived for almost 30 years.
If all that hadn’t happened, “I would still be there”, he says in an interview with this newspaper from Mexico City, the place he chose to live since he became an elderly returnee two years ago and his life took a turn.
“It doesn’t matter how old you are, you find work very easily; here they put you aside”.
In recent years, the deportation of adults seniors has increased . According to calculations by the Center for Research and Higher Studies in Social Anthropology (CIESAS), in a single decade a 130%.
The calculation was made in 2016 and there was already talk of around 130,000 Elders officially repatriated in a decade and without taking into account those who returned voluntarily.
The government The Mexican government does not record in its statistics from the Ministry of the Interior the specific age of the undocumented immigrants returned by the United States authorities. Classify the information between greater than or less than 13 years.
After 27 years of living between Los Angeles, San Fernando and Pasadena, California, and Harvey, Illinois, Miguel Ángel Lujano did not want to return to his native Tototlán, in the state of Jalisco.
He stayed in the Mexican capital to fight for his “claim” with the support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but the case did not prosper and he was left wanting to clean up his image.
He swears and perjures that he was not guilty of the crimes he was accused of and for which he was returned to Mexico with nothing more than willpower.
“All the accusations made against me were false”, warns from the organization’s headquarters Comunidad en Retorno, which focuses mainly on providing help to the elderly.
Comunidad en Retorno frequently goes to the International Airport of Mexico City, where two flights arrive weekly with returnees. There it provides them with information on bureaucratic procedures and invites them to visit the offices for any particular help.
Martha Adriana Sandoval, co-founder of the organization, says that adults Returning older adults currently represent one of the main challenges of migration because most of them are people who went to the United States very young and are not familiar with the country.
“ They have no idea of the paperwork that needs to be done for personal documentationlo can’t find a job and that frustrates them a lot. They have many duels at the same time: the loss of their environment, of the family, of being self-sufficient… ”, she details.
“Those who are lucky survive with remittances, but the rest are very complicated”.
Community in Return currently maintains contact, for example, with a deportee older than 27 years of name Salvador. This Mexican was the coach of a basketball team in Cincinnati, where he contracted a virus that affected his nervous system and lost his mobility. Shortly after, he was deported.
He landed in the Mexican capital in a wheelchair and without knowing anyone.
In recent months he got a job as a security guard at a high school, where they let him live. But he is not comfortable. “She resists accepting her reality. So much so that he does not allow himself to be helped, despite the fact that he has a mobility problem and a skin injury”, details Martha Adriana Sandoval. “He has a family, but they support him very little”.
Old age
The reality of old age has come upon Mexico. The aging of the population was seen by State policies as a projection into the future. It was not until last October, when for the first time the Ministry of Health recognized that its population is rushing to third age.
“Currently there are more older adults than children under five years old,” said Jorge Alcocer Varela, head of the agency, who warned that these population changes “have important economic and social repercussions.”
According to the last National Population Census, in the country there are 14. 5 million older adults who represent the 11% of the total population and the forecast is that the proportion of people older than will continue to increase years. By the end of this decade, the number of older adults will be greater than that of minors 15 years.
Deported migrants are added with disadvantages. It is the civil organizations that help explain the processes for basic procedures such as the voting card with a photograph that serves as identification, the passport. Those that track possible employment opportunities, social support such as pantries, etc.
José Francisco Falcón, from 66 years, have been looking for a job since returning from the United States, where he lived 13 years. He is not unfamiliar with the Mexican system, but he was surprised by the lack of opportunities for older people.
“I left because I lost my job and now it’s worse”, he says.
In 2011 was fired from PCTV, a cable television channel where he worked as a switcher. He found work at TV Azteca, where he spent a few months, but there was soon a cut. In his desperation to feed his two children and his wife, he emigrated to the United States, where he found employment as a roofer and dishwasher; cleaning a hospital and a school, where he stayed the longest.
He was doing well. He soon became the head of maintenance at the Texas school. In the pandemic, he missed his family that he stayed in Mexico and came back. That was a year and a half ago.
When in Comunidad en Retorno they found out that there would be a job bank in the Polanco neighborhood, they told him.
In your resume, you describe that you started as a channel switcher 11 in August 1500, where I spent five years. Then he went to Televisa San Angel to be a production and camera assistant and image director to later jump in the year 2006 to PCTV in the areas of transmission, masters, operator and head of post production studio.
“I am qualified, but I can’t find anything”, he concludes before going out with a cane that helps him walk better in the face of health difficulties due to various illnesses.
At the beginning of this year, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador declared that, in case of wanting to return to the country, elderly Mexicans who are in the United States States will be able to obtain three supports from the Government.
For housing, pension of the Welfare of Older Adults program (around 69 dollars per two months) and the opportunity to participate in the “Sembrando vida” program.
“We can commit to housing because, although it may seem contradictory by name, it is not credit, it is support, a certain amount is given for the improvement and construction of housing for humble people like migrants who have helped millions of people.”
The president said that if the returnee has a small plot and there are still forces that should take advantage of the Sembrando Vida reforestation program because many of them “know about the cam po and they like it”.
Regarding the pension, he promised that it will increase. “For 2024 there will be enough for food, food for the elderly will be guaranteed.”
AMLO asked the organizations involved in the issue to generate agreements in the Mexican consulates in the United States and announced the presentation of a plan by the Secretary of Welfare , Javier May Rodríguez, but he has not yet appeared.
For now, José Francisco Falcón receives little more than 150 dollars in their equivalent in pesos, but he says that it is not enough and that is why he is still looking for work.
Family networks
In Community in return , Martha Adriana Sandoval observes that in order to serve the elderly community, a comprehensive plan is needed that involves all the secretariats of State because a subsidy is not enough, if there is no physical and mental health care in times of crisis, training , employment…
“There is no policy complete ica. For example: there are shelters for them and then they cannot access because they do not have documents and they are not allowed to enter. If they are injured, physically or emotionally, there is no one to care for them or they do not have money to cope with day to day.”
The study Return migration of older adults in Mexico
published in 2021 by Sandra Martínez, a CIESAS researcher, concludes that the difference between the quality of life between one elderly returnee and another depend on the family networks that each one has and their level of support.
In his research, he documents the case of two families. In the first, they are two sisters (Belén and Uri) who voluntarily returned to Mexico to their rural community of origin because diabetes prevented them from continuing to work in the US.
When they arrived they discovered that their parents’ house had deteriorated due to the passage of time and due to being unoccupied and they had not been able to completely remodel it. They live off the charity of their nephews.
In the other case, Andrés, who returned to Guadalajara after five decades. He had emigrated to the US because they convinced him that he had talent for soccer and that he could do better there. How long was he gone 13 years and, although the football thing did not last long, he found work as a laborer and other trades.
Over time he became a legal resident. He could have had a retirement but the police entered the house that he shared with other relatives to look for drugs. Andrés says that he saw that in a corner there were always a lot of boxes stacked up. He did not know what they were but in the judicial process he was accused of complicity.
He was repatriated. In the US he left a house for his children and, somehow, that gives him some satisfaction because the family supports him.
Miguel Ángel Lujano had a similar accusation. He says that when he was the manager of the bar in Harvey, Illinois, he sold alcohol and, if someone secretly sold drugs, he was not aware. On a certain occasion, a guy came to shout in the center of the tables that he had all kinds of drugs for sale
“I asked him to leave and he became my enemy”, he details. “Then the DEA wanted me to tell them who was selling and I didn’t want any problems: I also made them enemies.”
Over time, an agent infiltrated. he became p asar as a buyer and insistently asked him to take him to the person who sold drugs. “I remembered that guy who was yelling and who lived in the neighborhood and to get rid of the buyer I took him to where the other one lived and that’s how they arrested me for the first time.”
Then in the parking lot they found small bags with traces of chemicals and they charged him again.
The Mexican affirms that his process was riddled with inconsistencies and that is why he wanted help from the Foreign Ministry, but, not getting it, he resigned himself.
He likes CDMX, where he rents a rooftop room in the Historic Center. On any given day he walks around to look at the colonial buildings, he heads down Reforma Avenue to the Bosque de Chapulpepec and there he feeds the squirrels while waiting for a job offer call.
The Ministry of Labor has channeled him to work at the restaurant La Casa de Toño , the El Péndulo bookstore and a building surveillance company, but after the interviews they do not contact us again. She lives off what her sister sends her from the United States, but she is also elderly, works selling tamales and her immigration status is uncertain.
“I hope the situation improves soon” , sign Miguel Angel Lujano, from Community in return. The returnee gets up and opens the exit door to help José Francisco Falcón to walk towards Polanco. Chopping stone.
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