Children of the Deported Wonder, "Who Gets A Family?"

Over the 10 years up to 2007, the U.S. deported 108,434 adults whose children were U.S. citizens, according to a Department of Homeland Security report. The exact number of citizen children left behind in these deportations is unknown, because no one in the government cared to count them. The homeland security of these citizen children does not seem to have been the paramount concern of the U.S. government. Well, maybe excepting 13 of the removed adults, who were deported for "national security and related grounds." (Altogether, about half were undocumented immigrants and half were deported for criminal violations.)

Either keeping your parents from being dumped over the border isn't a right Americans enjoy, or someone in power doesn't really think these kids are American. Or both.

The New York Times quoted an anti-immigration spokesman as saying, "Should those parents get off the hook just because their kids are put in a difficult position? . . . Children often suffer because of the mistakes of their parents." As if this is unavoidable.

It is true that children suffer for the mistakes of their parents. They also suffer for the policies of their neighbors' parents, and for the poverty and discrimination their parents experience. Most children lose out to those whose parents have one advantage or another, but the extent of this intergenerational transfer is something we can affect.

One measure of a society's meritocracy is the level of advantage - and disadvantage - passed from parents to children. Whatever your own ability and effort, equal opportunity only exists to the extent that your parents' problems are not your own.

If children get burned by their origins, adults also face unequal opportunities to originate the families they want. Just as deported immigrant workers are denied the right to parent their children, poor parents can't get Medicaid to cover their infertility treatments - though it might pay for some Viagra. (Even without fertility coverage, economists worry that just providing prenatal care and other services to poor women might increase their tendency to have children. Now that would be a shame.)

Having a family - your family - is not a right of American citizenship, for parents or children. And in a society where intergenerational privilege and disadvantage are deeply entrenched, the denial of that right is a cornerstone of our system of inequality.

Comments

[Philip N. Cohen - Huffpost Blogger]

I appreciate the comments. Couple quick responses:

1. I don't know what happened to the kids, where they are, how many stayed or left with their parents. Part of the problem is no one seems to keep track of this.

2. I am not implying changes to the law in this post, just saying we ought to consider having one's own family explicitly as a right that we have or don't. And if the government takes it away, acknowledge it. If children born to immigrants are U.S. citizens, there ought to be a reason to take rights from them that other U.S. citizens enjoy. Punishing children for the crimes of their parents seems to me a preventable injustice in many cases (and yes, prison has this problem, too).

3. My personal perspective is that "us" is humanity, not Americans. So the question of whether immigrants, undocumented or otherwise, benefit "us" is pretty clear: yes. Whether various situations or problems are good for America is a different question -- one with a narrow moral horizon, in my opinion.

[caterpol]

I'd love it if you fleshed this out. It's an important subject. But as it is, you refuse to take a pragmatic viewpoint.

According to you, you have no idea what happened to these children, yet you blame the US gov't for leaving them behind. And without any proof, whatsoever, you then go on to aver that US citizen-children have rights that immigrant citizen-children don't have---that of keeping their families together.

If minor children of any citizenship have that rght in this country, I'd love to read an example of it.

Further, I'm not sure that deportation is "punishment". The parents might see it that way, but I'm not sure that minor children would. I'm sure the kid's number one priority would be staying with his parents.

[ReasonIsMyReligion]

How about an "equal protection" angle?

I'd love to see the data of US-born children of the Dearly Deported sorted by white / black / brown / yellow babies -- all US Citizens.

[ReasonIsMyReligion]

What takes longer:

Pushing paper through INS?

The gestational period of a human baby?

[ReasonIsMyReligion]

Huzzah.

[caterpol]

A few things.

You make it sound as if the parents are being forced to leave their legal children behind, as orphans. Making it sound as if the gov't, not the parents, are abandoning them. Deportation is not the same as prison. The latter absolutely separates child and parent, the former does not. Which do you consider more humane?

So is deporting criminal illegal aliens (with children) a bad thing? Does the fact that they have children mitigate the crime? Or, in terms of the non-documented, should having citizen children automatically guarantee legal residency for the parents?

Deported immigrant parents ARE NOT denied the right to parent their children (unless there is some law that I'm unaware of) which makes it quite a jump to compare them to poor parents denied infertility treatments because they can't pay. Obviously, denying prenatal care to mothers is obscene (a child's welfare is at stake), but is that really the same as refusing to provide "free" tax-payer funded infertility treatments?

Finally, I don't see fertility as a "right". Any more than I see "improving" yourself by plastic surgery a "right". Neither procedure is necessary to live a healthy life. Further, biology is always going to be a crap shoot. Society will never be able to level the biological playing field so that all of us are eqully endowed, either naturally or surgically.

[mkant99]

thank for your courage in this issue of immigration.most people when they comment in immigration
issue they always focus on law,YES we all must abide by the rules but if the law is broken what do you inspect?no matter how you see immigration you can`t take human side out.remember people, this country used to have slavery as law.WE as people make law and can change them if they make innocent people life miserable.human law it`s not divine law:because people who make them you don`t know their intention when they make those decisions.
THE BENEFITS OF LAW IT`s not the law himself IT`s what the law produce:FREEDOM....

[Pleneras]

Your article doesn't explain how and why these people left their children behind. Was it by force or choice? These kids are born in the USA and should return with their parents if the parents came here illegally. They are minors. If they are not minors then the parents returned to their homeland will have their of age children apply to have their parents enter the US legally. If they are minors depending on the country of parents origins I could see why some parents leave their children with close friends or relatives. Either way they will return once the child becomes of age and request entry for the parent. In letting these parents stay, no matter how good and hard working they were, it will only promote more illegal entry into the US. Yes we need reform but giving illegal parents a head of the line just because they purposely had children in the US is unfair to those who are waiting in line legally.

[Aldyth]

The children should be returned with their parents to their country of origin. When the children are of age, they can return to the United States as citizens.

Illegal is illegal.

[KillTheMessenger]

The children are not illegal.

[RachelMc]

so let the parents abandon them and put them in our already stressed orphanages? its their parents faults and no one else. so if the parents abandon them dont act like its the govt fault. they are most likely not forced to give up their kids.

[SaucyB]

half for criminal violations? better the kids visit their parents in another country than in prison - which I have to pay for

[nee]

All ILLEGAL ALIENS need to be deported. The children. anchor babies, need to go with their parents. We need to return to the original intent of the 14th amendment and do away with anchor babies. If parents came here LEGALLY this wouldn't be an issue. The parents not the US take the blame for this one. They knowingly enter the US ILLEGALLY. They know what they are doing and are willing to take the risks.

[KillTheMessenger]

Unborn children enter the US illegally? And they understand immigration law? Really? Wow. That's some intelligent children right there. We should make them supreme court judges.

[nee]

I never said unborn children enter the US illegally. Where did you learn how to read? I said, "The parents no the US take the blame for this on." Their parents knowingly entered the US ILLEGALLY. They put their children in harms way purposely. The parents alone are to blame. LEGAL immigration is possible - they didn't make that choice.

[texastrixie]

What normal parent leaves their children "behind?" This would argue for removal of parental rights to me, not that the parents should somehow be granted immunity to stay. Any parent who would leave children in another country just because they were beinge deported has no right to be called a parent (unless of course the parent faced a firing squad, etc. because they were a political refugee). Excepting the surety of either imprisonment or death upon returning to one's homeland, I can see no valid reason to leave one's children anywhere except by the parent's side. When Elian Gonzalez was in this country, his father fought to take him home to Cuba because that's where a kid belongs - with his parent(s), no matter where that is.

[KillTheMessenger]

"What normal parent leaves their children "behind?"

A parent who knows what kind of hopeless life awaits their child in their own country.

You need to learn to see this trough the eyes of parents who were desperate enough to break the law of a foreign country for less than minimal wage for slave work. They will probably believe that ANY life in the US will be better for their child than life in the place they grew up in.

If you think there are no circles of hell between a four bedroom three bath McMansion and a firing squad, you know very little about life.

[OkayWhatNow]

HuffPost's Pick

This really made me pause and think after I read this. It was a very interesting perspective on the very hot issue of immigration laws. I have to question what your solution though would be to this problem of the parents being deported. I don’t think I understand one thing though: Why can't the children travel with their parents?
I realize it’s not the most simple issue in the world, but should every person who has a child in the United States be permitted to stay in the country forever? That doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense to me. I don’t know what I’d do either, but that doesn’t seem to fit.

There really needs to be something done about this, I agree. Parents and children shouldn’t be separated unless there is a much better reason than this. Unfortunately, it’s such a complicated issue, who knows when we’ll actually see something useful done about any of this.

[Henryk A. Kowalczyk - Huffpost Blogger]

I applaud your voice for people affected by stupidity of our immigration laws.

Please recognize that nothing will change until we will revoke the current law.
The Freedom of Migration Act proposal is the only way to go,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/henryk-a-kowalczyk/the-freedom-of-migration_b_164505.html .
Please let me know if you know a better proposal.

[got2Bkidding]

My better proposal would be to eliminate the "anchor baby" provision. This problem would then no longer exist.

If a child is born to tourists, or illegal immigrants in the US, they need to be defined as citizens of the parents home country.

nuff said.

[nee]

Exactly!

[SardonicBastard]

Am I missing something? Are the children not able to travel back with their parents when they are deported? I am a supporter of immigration reform, and fairness for all. At the same time, I understand what the complexities of an issue like this are. You have to realize what kind of message a statement like "have a child in the U.S., and get to stay forever" sends. It's just not feasible.

[pennybear7777]

As far as I can see, the only negative aspect of the report that led to this "bas akward" blog was that ONLY 108,000 plus were deported. And did I misunderstand the sentence that stated that HALF of those were CRIMINAL DEPORTATIONS?! Though of course, by definition, illegal immigration is, yes, ILLEGAL!! The central problem is that our Constitution grants automatic citizenship to anyone born on U.S. soil regardless of what nefarious means the mother used to get herself onto that soil to have the kid in the first place. Illegal immigration COSTS our economy and society far, far more than it benefits us, regardless of what a "Day Without a mexican" would have us believe. And if other recent reports are accurate, many are leaving of their own accord as the job prospects here aren't much better than back home. I just hope they take their little citizens with them when they go. The kids can come back on their own later when they're grown. They are citizens after all. Unless we really want to try to change the Constitution. But how about we defer the rights of citizenship to age 18. Then the rights of the criminals to parent their children will be preserved until, at age 18, those that are citizens by birth, and ONLY them, are welcome to return across the border and have the right to come and go as they please just like the rest of us do.