Garcia's lawyers call an expert witness, Joseph Wiltberger, a professor of Central American Studies at California State University, Northridge. Wiltberger has conducted more than a decade of ethnographic research in El Salvador. He is called on the telephone, and his voice is piped in over speakerphone. He explains that though legal marriage exists in El Salvador, in rural areas such as the one Garcia is from, it is rare. Much more common are informal unions. The fact that the couple had children together would have made them a family unit in the eyes of the community. And, he says, the visibility of her employer’s wealth in the community, displayed by their large plot of land, put Garcia in a high-status social group.
http://kbia.org/post/migrant-el-salvador-gets-her-chance-immigration-court
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