US-Raised Immigrants Try to Return Across Border

Nearly three dozen migrants marched across the U.S.-Mexico border without papers Monday, the latest group of a younger generation brought to the U.S. illegally as children that seeks to confront head-on immigration policies they consider unjust.

Wearing a colorful array of graduation-style caps and gowns, 34 young people who spent long stretches of their childhoods in U.S. cities like Phoenix and Boston chanted "undocumented and unafraid" as they crossed the Rio Grande into Texas. Customs officials separated them from regular pedestrian traffic and the rest of their entourage before beginning lengthy interviews.

The risks born by their parents' generation involved dangerous journeys through darkness across desert and river. The teenagers and 20-somethings who crossed Monday face what could be weeks in detention and possible deportation as part of what could be a growing form of public protest.

Love the excuses..."I wanted to have a sense of my roots," Rivera said of his decision to return to Mexico, where he hadn't been since he was 1. "I wanted to know where I was from." He considered studying to become a chef specializing in the seafood dishes of Sinaloa, but was forced to start high school over again in Mexico.

The experience was rewarding in some ways. He got to know both sets of grandparents. But after 19 months away he missed his parents and three siblings who remained in Los Angeles. He also found he didn't fit in after having grown up in Los Angeles.

"When I got to Sinaloa I didn't dress like anyone. My haircut was different. My style of walking was different. My Spanish was like way off," he said.

Lorena Marisol Vargas, 19, left her home in Tucson, Arizona, in April 2012, less than two months before the deferred action announcement. She had travelled to Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, across the border from El Paso, Texas, to interview in the hope of getting a visa to be in the U.S. But the visa was denied and she was not permitted to return.

Vargas' mother, a naturalized U.S. citizen, had to return to the United States without her. The teenager who had lived in the U.S. since she was 6 went to Uruapan in Michoacan state to live with relatives she hardly knew.

"To me, my home is Tucson, Arizona. I was raised there," Vargas said. They disrespect our laws,immigration policies they consider unjust.They get deported,they left to go back to Mexico and now have a change of mind and demand asylum.After Obama grants them asylum,is the public going to raise hell ?

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.