Culture Crutches

SO today in class we were discussing about something that I felt like I saw SO MUCH on my mission. We were discussing a bit about the challenges that can take place on an immigrant family when they go to another country.  On my mission I saw alot of families that went through this in Spain.  It usually happened that the mom or dad, sometimes both came to Spain, leaving the kids in their country with Grandma or a sister or someone.  They came to Spain looking for work, which was near to impossible to find which not many immigrants knows before getting there.  They go years at a time without seeing their kids, scrounging for work, and then sending it back to send their kids through school and then trying to pay for 2 places and save enough to be able to go get their kids and bring them to Spain.  Of the families that I did see in Spain from other countries, I could tell that they were not accepted by the Spanish culture, and looked down upon. You can see that these immigrants kids are not accepted socially by the Spainards in school, and that Spainards label them as only capable of doing certain things. You could even see it segregated a bit within the church.  I can only imagine the stress that this brings upon a family, kids going through school, trying to make ends meat. Its a miracle when a family can make it through that.