Are human beings considered illegal? If so, what makes a person illegal? Is it because of their race, gender, social status, sexual orientation, beliefs, etc. Or is it because they come to a place with hope of a better future despite that they aren't allowed too. By this, I'm talking about the issue of illegal immigration. Illegal immigration is the problem concerning people who illegally immigrate into the U.S. Specifically, people from areas like Central America, including Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. They usually leave behind their families in order to complete this journey and that can have dire consequences. It is my strongest opinion that there needs to be more awareness raised on the issue of separations occurring between families …show more content…
Its important to know about this because illegal immigration and deportations not only affects the families but also others as well. An article titled, 'Immigration, Deportation, and Family Separation, written by Vanessa Cecna, states that, "Deportations cause economic hardship, emotional distress, and family separation. They leave children in foster care and create a large number of struggling mothers trying to make ends meet." San Diego Free Press. Family separations have already been established that they occur to deportation, but emotional/mental trauma, economic hardships like loss of money or home, and parentless children are what happens to many families when usually the parents are deported. Though this situation is dreadful, deportation isn't the only thing affecting people. When parents, the article, 'The Heartache of an Immigrant Family," by Sonia Nazario also states two things which are, "They (the separated children) feel abandoned, and disproportionately join gangs or get pregnant, searching for the love they feel they missed." The other thing is, "The United States is spending billions on walls that don’t really keep migrants out (a University of California, San Diego, study showed that 97 percent of migrants who want to cross the border eventually get through), and on locking up and deporting people, many …show more content…
By solving the problem, Im not talking about by shutting down the border, building a wall, or having dire consequences for those who have illegally immigrated and striking fear in others. I'm proposing and believe that the way we solve the problem is by improving the economies and changing the conditions for those who live in countries like Honduras, Mexico, El Salvador, etc. The book Enrique's Journey, by Sonia Nazario, states that, "In the United States, many immigration experts have concluded that the only effective strategy for change is to improve the economies of immigrant-sending countries, so people will not want or need to leave." On pages 241 and
Especially the children of the person being deported. Migrants that are greatly affected by this are mainly from Mexico and central America. Once a family member is deported the family faces the question of what they will do. Will they move their whole family, even their U. S born children from the culture and society they have grown up in the country of their origin? Or will the family split up creating a single parent home or leave their child with another caregiver? Or lastly will they live in risk as an undocumented migrant? Undocumented migrant workers are much more likely to face economic struggles, lack of social usage of programs, and social remoteness. Although these directly affect the adult migrant the children suffer from these effects as well. They do get a proper education or amount of healthy foods, which untimely lead to many obstacles and setbacks for the child. There have been studies to prove that children of undocumented parents are more likely to be developmentally delayed. There is a long chain of effects on the children of undocumented parents. In the article it states “Yoshikawa (2011) found that when a parent is undocumented, he/she experiences greater social exclusion, which results in greater economic hardship and job-related stress, lower social support, parental psychological distress, and decreased use of center-based care, which in turn affects children's cognitive development at 24 months of age. Children of undocumented parents are also less likely to have health insurance (Lurie, 2008) and be rated in good health by their parents” (Kalil & Ziol-Guest, 2009). Also, when a child is separated from a parent or parents, they deal with the feeling of trauma, abonnement, isolation, depression, and fear. Not only do the children deal with these emotions, but their entire family also faces many economic problems since once one of the parents leave,
The immigration patterns of the United States have fluctuated over the years, some years having little while others see a rising amount of immigrants, both legal and illegal, looking for opportunities to improve their lives. The amount of illegal immigration is a problem since many take advantage of the social services provided by the government without contributing towards the country since they are not citizens and many people see these illegal immigrants as a threat to their employment. Illegal immigrants do affect the U.S negatively in a number of ways, but if those illegal immigrants were to have a safe passageway towards gaining citizenship, the immigrants would contribute greatly towards the
In the United States, US born children also suffer when it comes to immigration and deportation because although they are US born, their parents are not, parents are at major risk of being deported because a large part of them entered the country illegally or with a Visa but remained in the country after it expired. In the past decade, nearly 2 million persons were removed from the country, 81 % of them to Latin America. Of the estimated 11.7 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States, 52 % are from Mexico (Passel et al. 2013), placing them at greatest risk for deportation. Because of the workplace raids that occurred in 2006 and 2007, 900 undocumented
Illegal immigration is the migration of people across national borders in a way that violates the immigration laws of the destination country. Some countries have millions of illegal immigrants. Immigration, including illegal immigration, is overwhelmingly upward, from a poorer to a richer country. The easy definition of an undocumented immigrant is someone who was not born in the United States and therefore has no legal right to be or remain in the United States. Not all undocumented immigrants snuck across the border illegally. Although it is hard to get an accurate number on the amount that did, some undocumented immigrants originally came here legally as tourists or some came on a temporary visa and just did not leave. The reasons on why they decided to stay and not go back to their countries are numerous. Some immigrants come to the United States to work and escape the poor economy in their country, while others come to be with their family. Whatever the reason may be, at the end of the day they all come here to achieve the american dream.
A common misconception is that legalizing illegal immigrants would just result in “criminals” running around the streets causing disturbances. Who is ignored is the benefit of a very specific population of Americans, the sons and daughters of illegal immigrants. American children are harmed every time one or both of their parents is deported as a result of the lack of an immigration reform. In the article, “Children of Illegal Immigrants Struggle When Parents Are Deported” Valbrun states that “the government deported more than 46,000 parents of children with U.S. citizenship in the first half of 2011, according to the ARC report.” In these conditions, jailed parents cannot fight for their children’s custody and at times lose it to the government who then puts the children out for adoption or in foster care when they already have loving parents. Properly legalizing immigrants would improve the lives of many American children and improve the American social aspects with more
Illegal immigration into the United States has caused America's population to grow, but has also kept jobs from Americans and has ultimately been a negative since illegal immigration into the United States is undermining our federal government. Immigration began in the 1920's and the number of illegal immigrants into the U.S. has quickly escalated in the past 96 years. Even after Ronald Reagan put restrictions on the border to prevent illegals from coming in, illegal immigrants continue to come to America. Illegal immigration is a huge problem for the U.S. that needs to be solved, it can be solved with more restrictive laws that prevent immigrants from coming to the States illegally. Illegal immigration into the U.S. has been a problem for over 90 years, but there are ways and laws that would prevent as many illegal immigrants.
So what is immigration? The definition stands as the action of coming to live permanently in a foreign country. However, outside of a narrow definition we can see that it is actually so much more. It is the action of someone uprooting everything they have ever known in hopes of finding something better. Many times as we have seen through Enrique’s Journey means that children and entire families are left behind in hopes that one day they will once again be reunited (Nazario). Though many hope to see their families once again, their hopes slowly turn into dreams. Between 2010 and 2012 nearly 205,00 parents of U.S. citizen born children were deported in a staggering 26 months (Lincroft). Given that this is a statistic based upon families that are already in the US it leaves us to wonder how many families are torn
Families are meant to be together, have fun and share the most important moments. Many families are being forced to be separated from each other and go through situations that no one would want to be in. Immigrant deportation breaks up families, denies certain individuals their rights and creates a great tension between races. Any more reason why all this must be stopped?
People around the world think distinctively from each other. Some think immigration and borders is great while others think the opposite. Separation of families has its cons as well as pros. Sometimes the separation of families is necessary when the child's parents have criminal records. Yes the children will not be with their family but in the long run it is best for them. The government has all kinds of help for people even if you’re not a citizen of the United States. “They [government] do a very, very good job of putting them in foster care or linking them up with parents or family members in the United States,” suggest John Kelly. Borders across the world has a great negative impact towards Hispanic immigrants such as increasing family separation, minimizing prosperity, and reducing educational opportunities.
Immigration can cause a lot of family separation. In Migration Photograph the people are leaving their family and friends in hopes for a better life across the border. They are still getting separated from their families with this. In The Red Umbrella Lucy’s parents want her to come to the U.S in hopes that she can have a better life, even tho she doesn’t want to go. In both stories they are crossing a border and leaving their families for not only a better life
According to the article, immigrants come, illegally, to the U.S. to provide a better life for their children. What most of them don’t comprehend is coming illegally will not benefit them. Doing so could only hurt and confuse the children. Michael Paulsen, husband of Emma Sanchez, travels 80 miles every weekend from
The article Notes “From the Field The Criminalization of Undocumented Migrants: Legalities and Realities” by Tanya Golash-Boza talks about how undocumented migrants are treated like criminal even though they are told that the detention center is not a prison, it is still a form of prison that separate people from their many. They also told that deportation is not a punishment but it is a form of punishment because it separate families from their love once, and sometimes put them back in a situation they were running from in the first place. Undocumented migrants feel as though this is a cruel punishment because most of them did not choose to be undocumented. They just happen to be especially those who parents brought them to the United State
Over the last quarter of a decade, illegal immigration and enforcement have dominated mainstream policy making (Meisnner, Kerwin, Chishti & Bergeron, 2013). There has been a lot of public debate too, on whether or not the successive governments of the US have been able to effectively address illegal immigration and its enforcement thereof. However, as Meisnner et al. (2013) state, in the wake of the terror attacks of 2001, a paradigm shift appears to have been established, with the enforcement of illegal immigration taking a de facto stance. As such, as Dreby (2012) intimates, the number of immigrants who have been deported or removed from the US since 2001 has risen from 190, 000 to close to 400, 000. Considering the fact that there are more than 11 million illegal immigrants living in America, deportation on such a large scale without a doubt will result in a continuous chain reaction. One such consequence, as The New York University School of Law (2012) states, is that families are inherently broken apart by the removal of a family member. Additionally, there are other psychological and psychosocial impacts on families that are far-reaching. Because of these and many other compelling factors, this paper argues that the US should work to prevent deportations, rather than enforce them.
Furthermore, another effect of families separation is fathers being deported and leaving the family behind. For example, if the father is the head of the household and gets deported he leaves his family with no support. Therefore, mothers need to find a way to provide for her children. Mothers may need to find childcare in order for her to work and provide for her children. Sometimes it is necessary for her to get two jobs and as a result children are felt in care of others. Frequently, families do not want to ask for welfare benefits because they are scared and fear that mothers might get deported as well. In some situations, single parents get deported and children are left in foster care or with extended family. According to an article,
The mold for an undocumented family typically consists of at least one if not both parents being undocumented and children who are natural born citizens. Families with mixed legal status have many hardships to face and overcome one of the most prominent and most fear inducing of all: deportation. The risk of one of their loved ones being deported and the chance of never seeing them again in the country is one that haunts millions of not only undocumented immigrants but their children as well. In a recent study conducted on multigenerational punishment Laura Enriquez stated the following, “In particular, scholars have shown how deportation policies impinge on the economic, social, and emotional well-being of family and community members in the United States and the country of origin” (Enriquez 941). Stating that immigration laws and illegal immigration status along with the risk of deportation tear families apart is an understatement; “…deportation threatens immigrant family stability. For fiscal years 2013 and 2014 (“ICE”) removed nearly 368,000 and 441,000 persons, respectively; making the total removed over the course of Obama’s presidency approximately two million” (Enriquez 940). A current web article by Derrick Rubenstein found most opponents argue that “…mass deportation would pay for itself in about four years. Plus, of course,