"Enrique's Journey" Story aired: Tuesday, March 07, 2006
This month, politicians are once again fighting it out over what to do about illegal immigration. Proposals range from a guest worker program that would grant citizenship to illegal immigrants to a 700 mile wall along the southern border of the U.S.
And while politicians debate, every day in countless poor villages across Central America and Mexico, young boys and girls leave their homes for the United States in a desperate journey to find the mothers who left them behind.
Sonia Nazario is a reporter for The Los Angeles Times. She thought she knew everything about immigration and poverty, but one morning before she left for work she started talking with her housekeeper Carmen who told her how she'd left behind four children behind in Guatemala to come to the U.S. to work.
Nazario discovered that 48,000 children a year make the trip from Central America and Mexico to the United States. Most of these children are in search of their mothers. Nazario wrote a Pulitzer Prize winning newspaper series and now a book titled "Enrique's Journey" about one boy's quest.
