Unaccompanied Minors at the Border: Opinions of Latino Adults

Abstract: Since the summer of 2014, U.S. citizens have become increasingly aware of a new wave of border crossers, children who are making the journey alone, without a parent or guardian, and who left their home countries to find their way to the U.S. These children became known by many names on the news, but their official federal label is Unaccompanied Alien Children. The group makes up 18.7% of the U.S. population. It is the fastest growing group in the U.S. While the overwhelming majority of the Latino origin population in the U. S. is of Mexican, Puerto Rican, or Cuban descent. The last decennial census reports that the proportional distribution of these three subpopulation groups actually decreased (Ennis et al., 2011), giving rise to the new Latino immigrants coming from Central and South America and the Caribbean. The official and academic literature have been criticized for offering broad generalizations about Latinos. The group has been virtually invisible in national data sets; when present, they are compared with other racial and ethnic groups. Few studies rely on the opinions of Latinos alone. To fill this gap and learn about Latinos\u27 opinions about unaccompanied minors crossing the border, three focus groups were conducted with 28 Latino adults representing seven Spanish-speaking countries. The findings highlight three themes in their opinions, the new wave of immigrants, opinions about the unaccompanied children’s parents, and their opinions about the U.S. government immigration policies. The paper has implications for policymakers and researchers