The Complexities of Helping At Risk Children in Mexico

A well worn saying claims that if you like laws and sausages, you should never watch either one being made. When you see what goes into making some things, it can really spoil the enjoyment. The same should be said about the complexities of trying to help some at risk children. Most people have no idea how frustratingly difficult kindness can sometimes be. What is a beautiful, loving, and positive thing on the outside, is grinding and painful once you see what goes on in the background.

By: DJ Schuetze

DJ Schuetze is the President of Door of Faith Orphanage: Changing lives through serving others; President of Strong Tower Ministries: Helping people fulfill their life’s purpose; Author of: Reciprocal Missions – Short-term Missions That Serve Everyone.

I’m aware of, or involved with, a few examples of bureaucratic quagmire that are currently taking place in order for good people to help children in need. There obviously needs to be laws in place to guide and protect at risk children, but what happens when those children, through no fault of their own, land just outside of the parameters of the laws created to protect them in the first place?

There are two couples that I’m aware of that have jumped through ridiculous hoops and accomplished something that is very rare. Two different American couples have adopted children in Mexico, including one boy with special needs. There were lengthy, expensive, complicated procedures, interviews, background checks, etc. It’s not unlike adopting in the US, but both these couples accomplished something everyone said was impossible. These children have been legally adopted; in the eyes of the law, they are the children of these two adoptive families. After this complicated and frustrating process is when the bureaucracy kind of caves in on itself.

Although these children have been adopted, they are not US citizens. They can not legally enter the US. Everyone wants to help them, but this situation is so rare there is no system in place on the US side to recognize them as adopted. These families are stuck in a weird place not being able to bring their own children home. There is just no path set up for visas in this situation, no forms to fill out, no appeal process, this falls JUST outside the system. Even professional US immigration attorneys are at a loss. Good people are doing great things who are getting ground up in the system designed to help. Human Sausage.

The next example is even more complicated; Two sweet young sisters, one fourteen, one fifteen, are currently in Tijuana. One of them is pregnant through assault. They escaped abuse in their home country and traveled across Mexico alone with many of the migrants hoping for a better life in the US. They are now living in a crowded migrant center in Tijuana. Many people in our area want to help them but are stuck in a bureaucratic maze. Several local orphanages wish to take them in and help them, but technically they are not in Mexico legally, so helping these girls puts the orphanage licensing at risk. The local child protective service wants to help them but since there is no paperwork the government workers don’t know what to do, and they are not chartered to help foreign children. Politicians and highly placed government workers from both the US and Mexico are aware of the girls’ situation but have been unable to find a way through the dozen agencies involved in “protecting” these girls. The girls have shelter, they are being fed, but none of it is legal. A situation has come up where these girls fall JUST outside the system designed to help the at risk children who fall through the cracks of society. Human Sausage.

Talk to anyone who works in foster-care in the US. You will generally find good people doing their best to help at risk children, often handcuffed and frustrated by a mountain of bureaucratic roadblocks that grow larger every month. Many children are helped; some fall through the cracks. Human sausage being ground up by the system.

The point of this rambling complaint is to encourage you to support those who battle the system every day to help the at risk children who society has left behind. Until you’re in the middle of working to help children, you have no idea how soul-crushing it can be some days.

The second point of this ramble is, strangely enough, meant to encourage those who are in the middle of these types of frustrating circumstance. Please know you are not alone. What you’re doing is worth the headaches, the lost sleep, the skipped vacations used to help others who’ve fallen through every last safety net society has in place. Keep it up; it matters.

If you can get past the idea of what goes into the making of sausage, you know how enjoyable and unrecognizable the end product can be. All of the grinding, at the end of the day, changes lives. Keep it up.