The Flores Family:
Episode 3
The Flores Family stays in Juarez for a week,
calling cousins and friends to secure the
sponsorship needed to obtain visas for the
entire family. Finally, a sponsor comes through
and their visas are approved. But now they
must trek back to Guanajanto to pack up their
home before leaving for the border, only 500
yards from the consulate in Juarez.
Pedro, Ventura and the kids must say goodbye
to family, friends and their old way of life
before they begin their final journey to the
border. Their farewells are bittersweet. Ventura
is devastated to leave her beloved father,
who blesses the family in a tearful ceremony.
And Pedrito cries as he hugs the teacher who
taught him to read, one last time. Pedro's
father, Papa Verna, will join them in Kansas
on a tourist visa.
Garden City, Kansas has embraced its rapidly
growing immigrant population and provides
an unexpectedly supportive environment for
the Flores family. Twenty years ago, ninety
percent of students in Garden City schools
were native-born English speakers. Today,
more than half are from immigrant families.
All the older children are allowed to enroll
in high school—even the eldest daughter,
Nora, who is already 18. All of the kids do
well, especially Nora, who has dreamed of
going back to school. She becomes a star pupil,
much loved by her teachers, while young Pedrito
quickly begins to master English.
But Ventura is not doing as well. "I’m
here with my husband, we’re all together,
but I still miss Mexico," she says. "I’m
confused. Everything is different here. Sometimes
I think it’s not worth the grief."
After six months, Ventura only feels worse.
"I feel very sad here because I’m
alone, and I’m not working. Pedro, at
least, has work. He gets distracted at work,
but it’s not the same for me. I keep
all my worries inside my heart. I have all
this inside and no one to talk to."
Pedro and the kids are loath to leave Garden
City, but Ventura so misses her home and extended
family that they make the difficult decision
to leave Kansas for migrant agricultural work
in Mecca, California, where they can live
with Ventura's sister and family.
Friends are concerned. "Usually the only
people who work in the fields are the ones
that don’t have a green card,"
says Verna Franco, a friend and their visa
sponsor. "You think someone with papers
would work in the fields? Those with papers
try to work where they’ll get paid the
most. This is the first family we’ve
heard of that want to work in the fields.
The first family. Since they still want to
go, may God help them."
Again, the family must bid a sad farewell
to friends, teachers and co-workers.
In Mecca it becomes clear how much the family
has given up. They've left better jobs and
schools for back-breaking field work in a
state where their older children are not allowed
to attend high school. The family is living
with Ventura's sister—fifteen people
in a single-wide trailer.
Nora attempts to balance night school with
her job picking strawberries, but she is exhausted
and defeated. "I thought that if I could
finish high school, even if I didn’t
go any further, at least it would be a step
forward in my life," she says. "It
would have been something very beautiful,
complete happiness for me. I might never finish
high school, but I'm determined about one
thing, and that is to learn English, because
it may be the only dream that I can still
realize."
Ventura is finally happy, though, surrounded
by family like in Mexico. "I don’t
want anything bad for my daughters,"
she says. "Right now they don’t
like it yet, they aren’t used to it
here. We could always move. This is a world
made up of people from different countries,
different places. And only God knows what
kind of life and luck our family will have."
Learn
more about Mexican immigration >
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