Children wearing T-shirts reading "Born in the USA, Don't take my mommy, daddy away" talked knowledgably about deportation to reporters on the plaza at the Supreme Court July 17, explaining what happens when family members are sent away to another country.
The same day, Human Rights Watch issued a report estimating that 1.6 million children and adults, including perhaps 540,000 U.S. citizens, have had a family member deported since a 1996 law reclassified many minor crimes as deportable offenses and eliminated judicial discretion in waiving the penalty.
Joshua James, 9, from Jersey City, N.J., was 6 when his dad, Calvin James, was deported to Jamaica three years ago.
At a press conference and prayer vigil at the Supreme Court, Joshua carried a poster reading "Another fatherless child" and bearing photos of himself and his family in happier times. He took the microphone to describe what it's like to be apart.
Others at the event urged Congress to pass legislation such as the Child Citizen Protection Act, which would give immigration judges more discretion in deciding when deportation is not in the best interests of children who are U.S. citizens. They also asked the Bush administration to stop immigration raids and deportations.
The Supreme Court and the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights both have pending cases about the rights of U.S. citizen children of immigrants who are in deportation proceedings.
Diego Lino of Chicago and his children, Jonathan, 12, Britzy, 6, and twins Juliana and Judith, 5, talked to reporters about their fears of their wife and mother being deported to Mexico. All five of the other Linos are U.S. citizens, but an error made in filling out the application form for Francesca Lino to legalize her status could force the whole family into a two-country existence, with the children and their dad shuttling across the border every few months for school and work.
Diego Lino explained that when his wife applied to legalize her status as the spouse of a U.S. citizen, the aide at a church agency helping her fill out the paperwork didn't accurately take down her response to a question about whether she had been arrested for illegal entry. Her answer was "yes." But the caseworker wrote down "no."
The government caught the mistake as her application proceeded through background checks.
Lino said when his wife went to what she thought was her final interview before receiving her permanent residency visa, she was arrested. While answering "yes" to the arrest question would not have prevented her from getting a "green card," lying on the application form is a deportable offense.
For now, Francesca Lino remains in Chicago, awaiting final deportation orders, said her husband. When those arrive, "we'll have to go," even though in her home state of Zacatecas, Mexico, good jobs are scarce and schools are not as good as in Chicago, Lino said.
He said they would sell their home in Chicago and he, and maybe the children, would shuttle back and forth every six months or so, enabling him to work at higher paying jobs in the United States.
The Linos' case is typical of many of those studied by Human Rights Watch for the report "Forced Apart: Families Separated and Immigrants Harmed by United States Deportation Policy."
Since a 1996 immigration law criminalized many minor crimes and made their status as deportable offenses retroactive, the United States has deported 673,000 immigrants because of criminal convictions.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement data showed that 65 percent of immigrants deported for crimes in 2005 were convicted of nonviolent offenses, including petty crimes such as shoplifting, the report said.
Extrapolating census data about immigrants and their families, Human Rights Watch estimated that as many as 1.6 million people have been affected by those 673,000 deportations. Of those, about 540,000 people are U.S. citizens, the organization estimated.
The report included anecdotal stories of people who were deported decades after committing minor crimes for which they had served only probation or minor jail time and had lived without legal trouble since then.
"When these members of American society are deported," the report's executive summary said, "their absence is felt because shops close, entrepreneurs lose their business partners, tax revenues are lost, and, most tragically, U.S. citizen and lawful permanent resident children and spouses are forced to confront life without their fathers, mothers, children, husbands and wives."
Joshua James and his mother, Cathy McArdle, know that situation well. For three years they have had a two-country family. Joshua and his mom have visited their father and husband, Calvin James, in Jamaica over the summer. But he's unable to get work there that pays as much as he earned in the New York area, so it's more of a financial struggle and such trips must be rare.
"We considered moving with him but there are not a lot of ways to make a good living there," McArdle told Catholic News Service in a phone interview July 18. Instead, the whole family is considering moving to Canada so they can be together.
To immigrate to Canada, Calvin James would need to provide a letter of evidence that he has been rehabilitated from his early 1990s crime that triggered his deportation, she said. But there isn't a way to accomplish the same thing to enable the family to live in the United States, where both McArdle and Joshua were born, she said.
At the very least, she said, her son has a good attitude about the separation.
"He told me, 'Mom, at least we still have Daddy's love. We'd be much worse off if Daddy had chosen to leave us.'" ---CNS |