Research (Week 5): A Regretful Mother

Found another mother to talk about the sending-kids-back-to-China issue.

In 1991, Xue Pin-Zhu and her husband moved to Japan to work for 9 years, leaving her elder daughter in China. Now, the whole family has moved to Argentina, with a younger son. She said that the long separation has caused behavioral problems in the older daughter. First of all, the daughter suffered emotional trauma of being abandoned by her parents.

"When she wrote essays in school, many of them were about how she hoped that it could be her parents that came to pick her up from school," Xue said.

Also, since they were separated for so long, the daughter does not listen to her or communicate with her much. They are not close. Now, Xue has another younger son that is 5 years old. "I've learned my lesson," she said. "I'm not going to leave this child's side."

Yaming Hsu is an accountant that serves many recent mainland immigrants, and also is active in a church that serves the same group. He said that he knows countless cases like this. "Many immigrants actually have a child here in order to obtain residency," he said. "Then they don't have time to take care of it and send it back, sometimes alone on a plane. How can you do this to a child?"

In addition to not having the time to take care of the children, these immigrants all believe what others in their circle say, how Argentine education is poor, Argentine hospitals are bad, and other negative things about having their kid grow up in Argentina.

Hsu said that the Argentine hospitals have noticed that after the child is born, they disappear. They never come back for immunization and other checkups. He also said that the government has actually passed a law in which they will revoke the parent's residency if they discover that the child is sent back for a long period of time before they turn 5.

"All they want to do is to make money," he said. "You can't buy family. The future of these kids is very worrisome."

Hsu then told me of an international organization, Family Keepers, that deals a lot with such issues. Will try to set up and interview with them.