Destroying families is 'collateral damage' of immigration policy
In just the first six months of 2011, the U.S. government deported over 46,000 moms and dads, in most cases separating them from their young U.S. citizen children. These alarming numbers come from a recent report obtained by the publisher of Colorlines.com, the Applied Research Center. The report does not include the number of citizen children of these 46,000 parents, but the Applied Research Center estimates that there will be around 15,000 U.S. citizen children in foster care because of these deportations over the next five years.
Parents risk losing custody of their children forever, as children in foster care have been ridiculously deemed by the State as “abandoned” by their parents. In reality, they want nothing more than to be together. There are currently 4.5 million U.S. citizen children with at least one undocumented parent living in the U.S., and every day their right to live in a family, with a mom and a dad, are threatened.On a personal note, despite being here for over 20 years, paying taxes, never being in trouble with the law and pursuing higher education, both my parents still face the risk of deportation even though their sons are now legal residents.
Citizens with parents who are deported or are at risk of deportation are forced to choose between following their parents and leaving the only country they know, or staying in the U.S. and being denied a parent-child relationship forever.
Living with parents: an internationally recognized right for children
The fundamental human right of a child to live with his or her parents has been articulated in the “United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child,” a document only two nations have refused to sign: the U.S. and Somalia.
Article 9 of the Convention states that nations “shall ensure that a child shall not be separated from his or her parents against their will, except when ... such separation is necessary for the best interests of the child.” Furthermore, “In all actions concerning children … undertaken by … courts of law, administrative authorities or legislative bodies, the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration.”
In a reminder of the shared struggles between the Black and immigrant communities, the criminal justice system has produced a similar human rights disaster in the Black community as the U.S. continues to imprison low-level property offenders and non-violent drug offenders at a record breaking pace. In 1990, one in four Black children had a parent imprisoned, and by the year 2000 the number of children with a parent in prison rose by over one-third to 1,531,500. The negative effects of these sudden and indefinite separations have been documented extensively over the past decade.
Despite the lip service both Republicans and Democrats pay to the “sanctity of the family” in the presidential election campaigns, neither are advocating for family rights when it comes to undocumented workers or the racist prison-industrial complex. The Obama administration claims that it only wants to deport the criminal element of the undocumented population. However, without calling for the immediate legalization of every hardworking person in the United States whose only crime is crossing an imaginary line, families will continue to be cruelly and needlessly separated.
The current administration does not attempt to hide this fact. The White House has wholeheartedly accepted the deportation of parents as unavoidable “collateral damage” in the prosecution of its immigration policies. The administration’s top advisor on immigration, Cecilia Muñoz, has herself said, “Even if the law is executed with perfection, there will be parents separated from their children.”
Politicians compete in racist, anti-immigrant posturing
In an attempt to score political points with the anti-immigrant sector of the electorate, all the presidential candidates are competing to pose as the toughest “defender of the border.” In reality, they are doing nothing more than engaging in political posturing and using the lives of millions in order to win votes from racists.
In fact, by most accounts so-called “illegal immigration” has slowed to a trickle if not become virtually non-existent since the economic crisis peaked in 2009. Last year, The New York Times interviewed Douglas S. Massey, co-director of the Mexican Migration Project at Princeton, about an extensive, long-term survey in Mexican emigration hubs. (July 6, 2011) Massey said his research showed that “[f]or the first time in 60 years, the net traffic [of undocumented Mexicans] has gone to zero and is probably a little bit negative.” He continued, “No one wants to hear it, but the flow has already stopped.”
This fact is underscored by data suggesting that the few immigrants who do continue to risk their lives crossing the U.S.-Mexico border mainly do so because they are trying to regain the lives they lost in the U.S. after being deported. A mother trying to re-unite with her citizen children, for example, or a father attempting to return to the only world he knows after working decades in the U.S. without papers. According to recent Department of Homeland Security figures, 56 percent of apprehensions at the Mexican border in 2010 involved people who had been caught previously, up from 44 percent in 2005. According to officials, the most prosecuted federal felony is now “illegal re-entry” into the U.S.
Despite having “more boots on the border than ever before,” as Obama bragged in his State of the Union address, and despite the dwindling job opportunities, immigrants will continue to cross the border because they have fundamental social, financial and cultural ties in the United States and not in their countries of birth.
Anti-immigrant policies mean profits for capitalists
The Party for Socialism and Liberation fights for socialism because it is a system where the right to live freely and with your family would replace the right of Wall Street and the big business goons to profit from undocumented workers and the immigration system.
On top of the cheap and “flexible” labor force that immigrants provide the U.S. economy, the “free market” has produced a huge detention and imprisonment industry, turning immigrant and citizen parents alike from human beings into dollar signs.
According to Wall Street analysts, the prison industry has become one of the few “reliable American growth industries” despite and even because of the recession.
According to the report by the Applied Research Center, if rates of parental deportation remain steady, the country will remove about as many parents in just two years as it did in the 10-year period Immigration and Customs Enforcement tracked previously. Each deportation represents a tragedy to those of us who fight for justice, but to Wall Street and the growing network of private prisons, this rapid rise in deportations represents more profits for their shareholders.
The New York Times estimates that deportation costs taxpayers “at least $12,500 per person.” (Oct. 2, 2011) Between October 2008 and July 2011, “Immigration and Customs Enforcement spent $2.25 billion sending back 180,229 people who had been deported before and came back anyway.” Private prison companies like the Corrections Corporation of America and the GEO Group have made their shareholders and CEOs millions of dollars on the backs of innocent workers, and ultimately the U.S. taxpayer as well.
In the U.S., the right of a child to his or her parents is being systematically violated. The need to radically change the prison and detention system and to pass just immigration reform becomes more pressing every day.
The PSL will bring our presidential campaign to immigrant communities around the country and state unequivocally our support for full rights for all immigrants. Our 10-Point Program calls for abolishing all anti-immigrant laws, an immediate end to the raids and deportations, and a dismantling of the border wall. This year, immigrants and their allies across the country do not have to stand on the sidelines in the 2012 elections or vote for who they think is the “lesser of two evils.” This year, our immigrant brothers and sisters will be able to join our candidates on the streets, where we always are, fighting for the rights of all working people!
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