Today’s newsletter is presented by Esparza Law Group.
Happy Mother’s Day.
This Sunday, give flowers. Make that phone call. Spend quality time together. The day has a heightened meaning this year for some families amid a flurry of family separations and deportations.
One of the many great things about the return of the Santa Barbara News-Press is the ability to read our history. In 2005, then-senior writer Melinda Burns wrote a Sunday, front page, news feature on how Mexicans in the United States send money back to their wives and mothers on Mother’s Day.
“Mexican workers are some of the lowest-paid workers in the United States, but they send $17 billion home every year — more than what Mexico earns in oil exports,” Burns wrote on May 8, 2005. “Driven out by poverty, and the hope for a better life, they sustain their parents, wives and children with the checks they send home.”
The story focused on agricultural workers, including one strawberry worker who wired $400 to his mother on the holiday — on top of the $200 he sends her monthly.
This still happens today, though the total number of remittances to Mexico has been on the decline and totaled $54 billion in 2025, according to U.S. News & World Report, down 1.7% from the year prior.
Many of the immigrants who work in the United States are working hard physical labor jobs just to send much of the money they earn back to their families in Mexico.
For them, Mother’s Day is not a Hallmark card. It’s a time to sustain their families in ways many in the U.S. cannot imagine.
This Mother’s Day, we’re thankful that the News-Press’ rich history of in-depth reporting has been preserved,and that we can continue to provide investigative coverage on the most important issues of the day. Burns, by the way, still writes for the News-Press, under its new nonprofit model. Her work is integral to our past and essential for our future.
Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms, wherever they are, and especially, to Melinda Burns.
Joshua Molina
News-Press Editor
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