Immigrant grandparents come to U.S. to babysit

When Rita Shekhtman came to America from Ukraine in 1991, her two grandchildren were already living with their parents in Northeast Philadelphia.

She and her husband arrived to take care of the little ones, ages 6 and 7, while their parents worked.

"I cooked, I washed, I took them to school and sat with them for homework, through college," Shekhtman, 81, now an American citizen, said through a translator. "Here, families need money for day care, but cannot pay for it. That's why I'm so happy I came to America."

For years, immigrant grandparents have trekked to the United States not necessarily for better jobs or a fancier life, but to help their children raise kids. And lately, it seems, even larger numbers of older immigrants are doing so.

Thanks to these international babysitters, more immigrant mothers are free to enter the U.S. workforce, recent research shows. And, families happily report, grandchildren learn their ancestors' language and culture, keeping heritage alive and vital amid the overwhelming influence of digital American life.

But not all is well.

Looking to limit the number of foreign-born people entering the country, the Trump administration has specifically discussed curtailing family reunification, the kind of immigration utilized by some grandparents who come here to stay. President Trump derides this as "chain migration," and immigration experts have speculated that such restrictions could block the entry of some elders.

Meanwhile, though, foreign-born grandparents are continuing to arrive in record numbers.

"I am proud I helped," said Shekhtman, who spends her days interacting with other immigrants at KleinLife, a community center in the Northeast. "My grandchildren are grown, but they call me every day and ask me, 'Baba, how are you?'"

Shekhtman couldn't have known it, but she was part of a trend, according to researcher Xiaochu Hu.

"I think it's safe to say more elders are coming here to help raise their grandchildren," said Hu, a professor of immigration policy and economics at the University of the District of Columbia. "There is a kind of grandparents wave."

She said the immigration of people 65 and older into the United States has increased from 9 percent to 12 percent since the 1990s. And, Hu added, these grandparents comprise an overlooked niche in the U.S. labor market: By providing care for their grandchildren, they are freeing  the kids' mothers to go to work.

Hu has calculated that when immigrant grandparents live with their daughters and grandchildren, the labor force participation of the daughters rises 7.4 percent.

She believes that recent increases in the number of Chinese and Indians immigrants arriving to work in high-tech jobs here "drives the grandparent wave."

Hu has noticed a large increase in the number of older people with B-2 visas entering the country. These are visitor visas that allow people to stay for up to six months. Between 2000 and 2014, the number of B-2 visas for those 50 and older increased from just under 5 million to around 13 million, according to Hu's research.

Not all grandparents looking to babysit show up in the United States with the aim of staying permanently.

Susan Eckstein, an immigration expert at Boston University, said that a maternal grandmother from a foreign country with a B-2 visa will come here for six months to take care of the grandkids, then return home so the grandfather can arrive and do the same for another six months. Sometimes, other experts said, the paternal grandparents will get involved in the round robin as well, long enough for the maternal grandmother to get another six-month visa.

In Philadelphia, there are around 42,000 foreign-born people aged 60 and older, according to Allen Glicksman, director of research for the Philadelphia Corp. for Aging. About 12 percent of them live with a grandchild, as opposed to 6 percent of the approximately 225,633 American-born older adults here.

It's not clear whether the grandparents are helping to raise the grandchildren, or whether they're being looked after themselves, Glicksman said. U.S. census figures show that of the total 70 million or so grandparents living in this country, more than 10 percent live with at least one grandchild, up from 7 percent in 1992. Older people are living longer, and there are more single-parent families and families with mothers working who need the help of elders, Census researchers reported.

"Culturally in the United States, Americans want kids in day care, and American grandparents want their own lives," said Inna Gulko, a director at KleinLife and a Russian immigrant.

Among Philadelphia immigrants, many in the Cambodian community bring in their parents to look after their children, noted Rorng Sorn, executive director of the Cambodian Association of Greater Philadelphia Inc.

It can be beneficial as well as problematic. Older folks have a harder time picking up English, she said, especially when they have to stay home with grandchildren. "They can't really integrate into America," she said. "This can be a hardship for them."

Patience Lehrman, executive director of the Intergenerational Center at Temple University, which provides a range of services to the community, said she understands that. But, she added, "I made the decision to bring my mother here from Cameroon because I had two young children and needed her support. Immigrant families are simply so stretched and overwhelmed and don't have networks that native-born citizens have."

Lehrman, who is 46 and married, said that her mother, who is 61 and does not want to be named, came here when she was 54, and now has a green card. Elders want to raise their grandkids, she said, "because they feel the grandchildren get lost in this society and don't have the core of who they are."

Sympathetic to her mother's situation, however, she said, "Do you know what happens when I'm at work and the kids are buried in their iPhones and my mother has to watch TV and can't walk around to be with her friends? There's something terribly isolating there."

But Lehrman's mother said she enjoys being with her grandchildren, adding, "This is my chance to show [my family] the love and concern I have for them." She added, "I don't want [the grandchildren] to forget me. It is our tradition not to be separated from our grandchildren.

"I want them to always remember that I love them and cared for them when they were young."