New Study Highlights Cruelty of US Immigration Policy to Children

[AlphaCentauri]

A newly released study by the law firm of Dorsey and Whitney, LLP for the Urban Institute should be required reading for anyone who thinks that reform of our immigration laws and procedures is something that can be put off indefinitely.

The study, “Severing a Lifeline: The Neglect of Citizen Children in America’s Immigration Enforcement Policy”, whose principal authors are James D. Kremer, Kathleen A. Moccio and Joseph W. Hammell, focuses on the impact of the Bush-initiated wave of factory and home raids on the US citizen children of undocumented immigrants, as well as of documented immigrants subjected to deportation proceedings.

During George W. Bush’s first term, the number of immigration raids was relatively low. But after the big immigrants’ rights of the spring of 2006, Bush, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and ICE chief Julie Myers announced a new crackdown which quickly escalated into a near doubling of deportations over previous years. Starting with a series of raids on operations of the IFCO company in April 2006, the government hit workplaces all over the country, while also organizing around 100 “Fugitive Operations Teams” to go to houses and apartments, supposedly to arrest specific people, but often to pick up anyone they run into who appears to be an undocumented immigrant.

This study examines some of the human results of this new “enforcement only” policy. It also provides much useful contextual material on the overall immigration situation in this country. The authors estimate that the between 11 and 12 million undocumented immigrants in the United States today have about 5 million children, 3.1 million of whom are US citizens. They further estimate that in recent years, at least several tens of thousands, and possibly well over a hundred thousand, US citizen children have been directly affected by the arrest and/or deportation of a parent.

more... http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/8319/

[barbtries]

1. thanks for posting

will read it now.

[AlphaCentauri]

3. you are welcome

hope others have a chance to read it and comment about it

[barbtries]

2. a couple other paragraphs:

*Erosion of due process. Most people in this country do not know that normal constitutional protections of “due process” do not apply in immigration raids, arrests and deportation proceedings. For example, while persons accused of murder are provided a lawyer by the government if they can not afford one themselves, people in immigration proceedings have no such right, leading to situations such as that produced by the Postville raid in which, according to a government interpreter, Dr. Erik Camayd-Frexias, who was outraged by what he saw, the right to any kind of due process is simply steamrollered out of existence.

*No protection for children. Since the passage of the “Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act” of 1996, immigration judges have been stripped of most of their power to take the interests of minor children, including those who are US citizens, into account when determining whether a parent should be deported or not. (Legislation in Congress sponsored by Rep. Jose Serrano, D-NY, HR 182 would correct this). This put the US seriously out of kilter with practices accepted internationally, as well as with US law covering other situations in which children may be harmed by legal action against parents. The norm in other circumstances is to always take into consideration “the best interests of the child” in any judicial decision; but this does not apply to children of immigrants undergoing deportation. This same law created a situation in which undocumented immigrant parents of US citizen children, once deported, can not return to the US even to visit for a period of three to 10 years, depending on how long they had resided illegally in the United States. This virtually forces thousands of minor US citizen children to be, effectively, “deported,” the alternative often being to be put in foster or institutional care in the United States. Finally, this law has mandated detention, lasting months or years, for many detained immigrants, which has further endangered their minor children.

the united states has become a cruel country in more ways than one. this is saddening.

[barbtries]

4. Error: You've already recommended that thread.

this thread should not have sunk.