Immigrant Mothers Work to Raise Families, Integrate into Sparta Society

Like many other young immigrant women, Isabela* came to America from Mexico at a young age. She was only 19. She followed her boyfriend in search of a job and a better life, leaving behind her parents, ten siblings, and her infant daughter who was too young to make the trip.

“It’s hard when you come here, and the first couple months you say, ‘Oh, I want to go back!’ I feel bad, I don’t have a family. I don’t have my brothers. I don’t have friends…I miss my daughter,” she says.

Isabela has lived in America for ten years, nearly seven of those in Sparta. She lives with that same boyfriend, whom she refers to as her husband, and the three children they have raised in America.

She has not been able to return home to visit her daughter.

Alba* made the journey from Veracruz, Mexico to Sussex County seven years ago, at only 21. Crossing the border took seven harrowing days.

“I walked a lot. I didn’t eat – it was a lot of days without eating,” she says simply and in Spanish. She walked so much, for so long, that by the time she was able to stop, she noticed that her toenails had fallen off.

Alba wants to return home, but she knows that her husband, son, and daughter will have a better life here. “I had many friends there, but I’m alone. On the weekends, on Christmas, on holidays. But I wait because my children and my husband love it here.”

Raising children without help from family is a common thread in the narrative of immigrant mothers. Most are not able to come to America with parents and siblings; they struggle to raise children in a foreign country, where they often do not know the language, by themselves or with their husband.

Isabela’s husband works as a cook in a local restaurant for twelve hours a day. Between his job, and the cleaning she does to supplement their income, they barely see each other.

Several outreach programs emerged to help the young mothers. Pam Madzy, at Sparta’s Blessed Kateri, founded a Mom’s Club that meets once a month. Fifteen to twenty mothers attend, with their children, to meet and support each other.

Speakers from other Sussex County programs come to the meetings to teach the mothers about car seats or child nutrition or day care programs.

In June, Robin Vander Groef, the Education, Disabilities, and Transition Manager of Head Start, spoke to the women; so did Luz Quintero, an Early Head Start employee. Both organizations are national programs that operate in Sussex County under NORWESCAP.

Head Start works with children ages three to five; Early Head Start assists pregnant mothers and children too young to enter into Head Start’s day care programs. Both programs provide assistance to low-income families, educating and training the parents and offering information on social services and food pantries.

Approximately a third of the families served by these programs are immigrants.

Alba and Isabela appreciate all of the assistance that these organizations – which often work with El Refugio, the outreach center run by Sparta’s Lelia Gomez – offer. Only five years ago, many of the services did not exist, and the mothers had no outside help.

Today even the existing services are often unavailable to the undocumented migrants. “They don’t have papers,” Quintero explains. “So we can’t provide all of the services.”

The language barrier also poses a problem for many mothers, especially those who have children in school here. “My neighbor suffers a lot because her son is eight years old, and he can’t do his homework, and she can’t help him,” comments Alba.

The mothers want to learn English – and free classes are available – but many cannot. Alba explains that her husband would not approve: she must stay home and raise her children, not go to school.

Many of the children also face discrimination, which is painful for both them and their mothers. Lelia Gomez, a documented immigrant from Ecuador, has a son in middle school who was mistakenly called a border jumper.

“I was thinking, what if it really was a child from Mexico that had jumped the border?” she asks. “It would be so painful.”

* Names have been changed.