Rural Mexicans who rely on funds sent by their undocumented relatives in the U.S. are praying for Donald Trump to lose on Election Day, says Reuters. Trump has said he would deport illegal immigrants if he were president, cutting off a vital economic lifeline.
“I am Catholic and I have asked God and the Virgin of Asuncion that he lose,” Alicia Villa, whose salary as a receptionist in Molcaxac, Mexico, isn’t enough to pay her bills. She depends on money sent from her daughter, who works illegally as a housecleaner in Sacramento, California.
In Molcaxac, 650 miles from the U.S. border, officials say that more than 70 percent of the population lives on remittances from over the border, says Reuters. The five million Mexicans living in the U.S. without papers wired more than $20 billion this year through September. That money has transformed some small towns like Molcaxac, turning it into “a picturesque town dotted with well-built homes.”
Teresa Amador, a flower seller in the local market, said she hopes Hillary Clinton will win because she supports a path to citizenship. “I think she will win, and that gives us hope that our relatives will be able to regularize (their papers),” said Amador. “I have a son who was born there, and he is going to vote for the lady.”