Family Finding Success in Mexico Using Internet Severely Limited Compared to U.S.

The Internet is not the best resource when doing family finding in Mexico. Family finding is about the identification and location of a biological parent, grandparent and other adult family members when a child is entering foster care. It's very important that these family members are notified so they can participate to help ensure the well-being of the child and, if necessary, provide a permanent, loving home.

Now one of the tools that state agencies, non-profits and attorneys use to do family finding is the Internet. Let's face it. Everyone in the U.S. is online. People are sharing stories on Facebook or tweeting about their weekends and what they had for lunch. Meanwhile kids and their grandparents are sharing photos and videos on YouTube and Flickr. All of this information is open to the public. If that isn't enough, many documents such as birth certificates and marriage licenses are just a few clicks away as long as you bring your plastic.

In fact, the guide "Making 'Relative Search' Happen" published by ChildFocus states, "Internet resources are a fast-growing part of the [family finding] search toolkit. The more details about possible relatives that have been obtained from personal contacts and other databases, the more effective internet searches are likely to be."

Now even though the Internet is a powerful tool that in part allows agencies and attorneys to successfully do family finding in the U.S., this doesn't mean the same results can be expected when doing family finding in Mexico. In fact, when it comes to Mexico, the number of people that can be found using the Internet is almost the complete opposite from the U.S. Whereas up to 80% of relatives can be identified using the Internet and online databases from companies such as LexisNexis and U.S. Search, less than 20% of personal information about people living in Mexico can be found online.

So why is this? One reason is the lack of information on people living in Mexico. For instance, years ago Telmex, the national phone company, had a website where you could search for people listed in the Mexico white pages. Now this didn’t by any means include all 110 million residents, but it did provide access to a significant portion of the population. However, this site has been gone for years.

Now there is no central website for Mexico where Child Welfare agencies and non-profits can do family finding. The same is true of online databases. There is no equivalent to online database companies such as U.S. Search or LexisNexis for Mexico. One of the key problems is the majority of information from legal documents such as birth certificates and marriage licenses haven't yet been digitized. It's been estimated that only about 15% of all information on Mexican residents is available online. The majority of personal information is still only in print and in file cabinets, boxes in some storage closet or in government warehouses.

The Internet is a powerful tool to do family finding. However, when it comes to Mexico the likelihood of finding information about a parent or family member is much lower compared to the U.S. It's important to remember that Mexico is not the U.S. and what works there doesn't automatically work in Mexico.

The solution is that state agencies and non-profits must look for additional resources to help them do family finding so they can identify and locate more parents and adult family members in Mexico of children entering U.S. foster care. Only then will more foster children be able to connect and form important bonds with their blood family and learn about where they come from. These same relatives may choose to care for the child. When this happens, one more boy or girl will now have permanency with a loving family while reducing the financial burden on state welfare agencies. That’s a win-win worth striving for.

Saludos,


  Richard

Richard Villasana
The Mexico Guru
Find Families In Mexico

Proud to be listed on the Child Welfare website.

PS. For more tips and advice about family finding in Mexico, follow us on Facebook at Family Finding MX. Click here if your agency or organization has a case requiring family finding services to identify and locate biological family members in Mexico.

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Family Finding in Mexico: Having the City and State are Key

Successful family finding depends on case workers being able to collect vital information during interviews. During their initial court appearance, a parent is often asked to give a list of up to three relatives who can be contacted and who may be willing to participate in the planning for the future of the child relative entering foster care. A key roadblock can occur for the State and non-profit organizations that are contracted to perform this mandated family finding when listed family members are living in Mexico. Many state case workers may have little or no experience with family finding outside the U.S.

The name of the city and state in Mexico where a parent or other adult relatives are living is one of the essential pieces of information that must be gathered. Unfortunately, many case workers have little knowledge about the names of Mexican states. Here is a breakdown about these states along with some of the challenges to getting the right information so a good family finding effort in Mexico can be initiated.

Mexico has thirty-one states along with an area called Distrito Federal, meaning federal district. This is the equivalent to the District of Colombia (D.C.). For Mexico, the federal district is often referred to as D.F. Click here for a list of Mexican states and their respective capitals.

Even though the country is called Mexico, one of the Mexican states is sometimes referred to as Mexico. So how can you tell the difference? In most cases, Mexican documents and addresses will use the form Edo. de Mexico meaning “State of Mexico” when referring to the state itself. You may also see the complete name, Estado de Mexico, and the less common state abbreviation, Edomex. If you were trying to find someone living in the city of Toluca in the State of Mexico, the proper form could be any of the following:

• Toluca, Estado de Mexico
• Toluca, Edo. de Mexico
• Toluca, Edomex.

Unfortunately, a few prominent Mexican publications such as the national Mexico telephone books and the Mexican company, Guia Roji, that publishes Mexican maps and atlases refer to Edo. de Mexico as simply Mexico. It’s important that interviewers understand the information they are being given with regard to the name of a Mexican state. Family finding efforts will be unsuccessful if based on inaccurate or erroneous information.

One of the challenges for U.S. case workers is that they don’t receive training that includes a general overview of Mexico. This should be part of standard family finding training given that there are more than 50 million Hispanics in the U.S. Census records showing that two-thirds of Hispanics are of Mexican origin or roughly 33 million U.S. residents. Take those statistics a step further and of the nearly 60,000 foster children identified as being Hispanic, several thousands of these children should have a biological parent, grandparents and other adult family members living in Mexico. Pursuant to the Fostering Connections Act of 2008, state agencies are mandated to identify and locate these adult relatives whether they live in the U.S., Mexico or other countries.

Another challenge for case workers and people in general is that we are bombarded by inaccurate information that is then perceived as being correct. This is especially true when it comes to the names of Mexican cities and how the information is presented. I was watching the program, 48 Hours Mystery. The show opened with a scene from a city in Mexico. The caption read, "Ajijic, Mexico." I just happened to be watching the show with a friend from Guadalajara who immediately said, "Hey, that's in the Mexican state of Jalisco! There's no Ajijic, Mexico!" Guadalajara is the capital of the state of Jalisco, and my friend knows the town, Ajijic. The proper form for the city is Ajijic, Jalisco, Mexico.

Would any of us feel that saying or writing Houston, USA would seem appropriate or correct? To someone unfamiliar with the U.S. states, they may have no idea where Houston is based on this information. Worse, who can say if the post office would deliver a letter addressed to just Houston, USA? So when we talk about Mexican cities and states, accuracy is critical in how this information is written. Any family finding specialist would be challenged to do proper due diligence if they are working with incorrect information.

If you have had a family finding issue because of the name of a Mexican city or state, take heart. Not even CBS and 48 Hours seem to know how to correctly list a Mexican address. They may claim creative license, but when state agencies are working be in compliance with state and federal laws that mandate identifying and locating family members, in Mexico, of a child entering foster care, it’s imperative that all information is as accurate as possible. Anything less can slow down or stop a family finding effort altogether.

This lack of knowledge about Mexico is a prime reason why locating someone living in Mexico may require the services of family finding specialists who know the ins and outs of Mexican cities, states and much more. It is virtually impossible for state agencies to locate family members, in Mexico, of foster children when their staff doesn’t know the correct city and the state where these relatives may be living. For the sake of the thousands of Hispanic foster children, state agencies need to do better.

Saludos,


  Richard

Richard Villasana
The Mexico Guru
Find Families In Mexico

Proud to be listed on the Child Welfare website.

PS. For more tips and advice about family finding in Mexico, follow us on Facebook at Family Finding MX. Click here if your agency or organization has a case requiring family finding services to identify and locate biological family members in Mexico.

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Family Finding in Mexico Starts with a Name

Everything has a starting point. A family finding search starts with the name of the parent or family member you want to find. When doing family finding for a relative in Mexico, the other vital piece of information you must have is the state in Mexico where this person lives or lived. These are the two building blocks of information necessary before a family finding search can be conducted. So let's look at the structure of the name.

We received a post on Facebook asking for help to find the biological grandparents in Mexico. The only available information was the city and the one apellido. If you are unfamiliar with Spanish, apellido is the term for last name, commonly referred to as a surname. Now when I say that your starting point is a name, I'm always referring to a complete name that includes both the father and mother's last names.

Let's say that you have only one surname and it's Hernandez, one of the top 10 most popular names in Mexico, then more information would be needed to have any real hope of finding any adult relatives. In this case, the surname of the child's grandparents was listed as Gaimes. The city given for the family finding search was San Luis Potosi. Gaimes is not a very common name so a search was done to see if there were indications of any records with this surname in San Luis Potosi.

Unfortunately, no evidence was found that there are records for anyone in San Luis Potosi having the surname Gaimes. The family finding search was extended to several cities beyond San Luis Potosi. Nothing. At this point, the surname Gaimes is now suspect. I like the principle of Occam's Razor when it comes to a family finding in Mexico. This principle states that when there are two competing theories making exactly the same predictions, the simpler one is the better. In this case, which is the more likely, that all of the Gaimes family left San Luis Potosi or that Gaimes may be a misspelling?

When no records are identified, it often indicates that there is a misspelling of the surname. One of our experts in Onomastics, the study of proper names, reviewed the surname Gaimes. After an exhaustive search, no record could be found of Gaimes as a Hispanic surname. This search included surname origins from Spain and most of Latin America. The closest surname spelling was Gamez that shows up in many Spanish countries.

Of course, not everyone who lives in Mexico has ancestry in Mexico so it's quite possible that Gaimes is a legitimate surname from non-Hispanic origins. However, with no indication of the existence of current records with this surname, the probability is that Gaimes is a misspelling. The good news is that a potential issue has been identified. There is still the possibility that after review, better information can be gathered for a renewed family finding effort.

Anyone in Child Welfare should be familiar with the Fostering Connections Act of 2008 that requires state agencies to do family finding to identify and notify biological adult family members, especially grandparents, when a child is entering foster care. It's also the law for organizations to do family finding to notify a biological parent in cases where a child is up for adoption. Unfortunately, family finding in Mexico can be very challenging as this case demonstrates.

It's important for state agencies to acknowledge that specialized family finding services are often needed to help with cases involving family members, in Mexico, of children in foster care. This case is still ongoing and now that an expert in Onomastics has reviewed the information, it's possible that better information will allow for another family finding search that can ultimately unite the grandparents with their grandchild.

Saludos,


  Richard

Richard Villasana
The Mexico Guru
Find Families In Mexico

Proud to be listed on the Child Welfare website.

PS. For more tips and advice about family finding in Mexico, follow us on Facebook at Family Finding MX. Click here if your agency or organization has a case requiring family finding services to identify and locate biological family members in Mexico.

Read More »