For many of you, no doubt your vote in this mid-term election hinges on where your states’ candidates stand on one of the major issues facing our country — unauthorized immigration. As part of our road trip across the country, we wanted to hear the arguments on both sides of the immigration spectrum and see what progress, if any, is being made towards a more civil and balanced discussion.
In Florida, like many states with high immigrant populations, one of the most heated debates surrounds the children of immigrants and The Dream Act—proposed legislation that would provide conditional permanent residency to unauthorized immigrant children who attend college or join the military. These are the children whose immigrant parents brought them to the United States at a very young age.
The debate among politicians focuses on the push by conservatives to amend the Constitution’s 14th amendment in order to deny children of unauthorized immigrants citizenship. Currently, parents are deported and for those families, separation wreaks emotional and financial havoc. I recently came across one of the most moving multimedia pieces I’ve seen in a while that touches on this very issue. The San Jose Mercury News spent a year following a California family struggling to stay together after losing one parent to deportation. If you have a half hour to spare, take a look at this piece, as the debate on immigration can often get bogged down in policies and we often forget who they are affecting.
In the debate on immigration, less attention is generally paid to the children of unauthorized immigrants. Many—if not all—of the ones I just mentioned share a home with siblings born in this country. This is where the discussion gets nuanced and the stories get painful. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, there are 4 million children—U.S. citizens—living with at least one parent who is in this country illegally. So what happens if their parents get deported? As it stands our government has no system in place to care for and protect these U.S. born children.
This is one slice of this very complicated topic so I open the discussion to hear your thoughts. Are these children victims of their parent’s poor choices, as some suggest? Do we have a moral obligation to keep these families together? Or should we, as some suggest, amend the Constitution in light of the increasing number of children born in the United States to unauthorized immigrants?
- Cristina
The children of these illegal aliens have no one but the parents to blame for the position they are in. The parents schould go back and take their children with them. I am against this illegal immigration, but I am also against separating a family. If the parent is deported, the children go with them. It’s that easy!
All I keep hearing is comprehensive immigration reform, comprehensive immigration reform, comprehensive immigration reform. How about some comprehensive ENFORCEMENT reform to get the illegal aliens out of this country?
These people who want amnesty for these illegal aliens better think about chain migration if amnesty is ever granted. This INVASION of the 20 million illegal aliens and amnesty is giving our Country away. Do you really want a third world country? I DON’T!
Get the illegal aliens out of this country and back to their own country where they belong with their families. NO AMNESTY! ENFORCE THE LAW!…AND GO ARIZONA
if you knew they brought them here for a better life then they would take the chance…they deserve to be here as well as everyone else…everyone here is an immigrant…we do not own this land but God.
learn to share Gods land. Just back off the people who work and come here to give their childrens better futures.
When are the parents of these children going to take FULL responsibility for their actions? First, they bring them over here, or have them knowing that they are in precarious living situations. They have as many children as they want, get them taken care of for free by US tax payers…have probably left a family back home in Mexico as well, AND NOW IT SUDDENLY OCCURS TO THEM/OR YOU, THAT THE CHILDREN SITUATION IS ONE THAT WE TAX PAYERS MUST GIVE SPECIAL CONSIDERATION TO! Dream on, We’ve had it!!!
This is all very tough.
1. No, I do not want people who sneak into the country to enjoy the same benefits as I without paying taxes. That stinks and its unfair.
But…
2. The United States is comprised of immigrants. That’s how we started and that’s how we grew.
3. The first immigrants could conceivably be considered “illegal” since they did, in fact, push the native inhabitants out of the way and take their land…
4. Then of course, the Declaration of Independence states very clearly that men (and yes, to extrapolate for historic differences and the basic intent of the time, women)… “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” To forcibly deprive a newly born infant of the (yes, currently questionable) benefits of living within our democratic framework is to negate everything our country was founded upon, stands for, and hopes to achieve (as our politicians would have us believe) as a beacon of “right” in the world.
5. No one asks to be born. The newly created human being should certainly not be punished for the “inattention” of their parents and should be given all the options available that we, as a supposedly moral, compassionate, democratic society can offer.
6. That said, those who would send any well-meaning, struggling, fellow adult human being back to a harder life—instead of helping them find a way to the pursuit of happiness—is a misplaced point of view and a harsh judgement that demands a review of their personal and spiritual morals.
7. An argument that has been heard too many times, yet which still rings true, is that the manual labor carried out by immigrants (legal, illegally imported by legal citizens, or chained in ships and delivered here) have made this country what it is. Without them we would not be where we are today. Will you work the fields? Will you clean the sewers? Will you clean up after yourself? If even you’re currently unemployed, do you really think an immigrant might take your job away from you?
8. Basically, punishing an illegal immigrant does nothing to address the real issue: people want to live here; people want to share in what the United States can offer…but we won’t let them participate, because of the bureaucracy of red tape developed by a country that is becoming ever more increasingly an “imperial”, rather than democratic, power. Further, that we have a bias, here, that anyone who crosses our border simply wants to sit back and collect welfare checks.
9. What we need to do as a people and as a leading nation in the world is to construct a meaningful, civilized, and compassionate immigration policy, that allows easier access to citizenship, but places a serious responsibility on the immigrant of making their way in our society. Yes, of course, it would have to include some sort of consequence if the individual did not pull their weight. But here we are in a lousy economy with far too many accomplished people unable to pull their weight…what’s to do?
10. Which leads me to my final thought…maybe it isn’t immigration reform we need, but cultural and economic reform. We are a rich nation that can feed the world. We spend billions on warfare and charity to other nations, but barely any amount of money to look after our own citizens. If our—your—government could do this, then allowing foreign nationals into our backyard, to share our lives and the benefits of living here, would not be such a volatile issue and then, perhaps, life as we know it might not be so awful.
Repeated amnesties are a joke that the U.S. taxpayer must pay for. We’ve already seen what amnesty can do/does to our Society. The amnesty granted in the 1980′s brought another, and larger FLOOD of illegals, hoping that, when they had been here long enough, they, too, would simply be handed Citizenship.
The Fourteenth Amendment was written as it was to prevent Jim Crow from keeping the children of slaves from being Citizens. I do not believe it was ever intended as a blanket guarantee of Citizenship from our Government for the children of those here illegally. Ours is, I believe, the only country on this planet that simply GIVES AWAY it’s heritage to illegals. That has got to stop.
As for the children of illegals. I’m afraid I must agree that they have only their’ parents to blame for their situation. If they are under sixteen, send ‘em back, unless they have family/friends here who are Citizens and willing to take/sponsor them. Yes, it is a very painful thing, but the adults in the family have brought it upon themselves and imposed it on their children.
We have to stop giving away our birth-right.
I think that we need to respect that outside of Native Americans, we are all immigrants to this country – it doesn’t matter if your family got here in 1810, 1910 or 2010. I’ve head many stories about women who sailed to America in the last century, pregnant in the hopes that their child would be born here. If it was good enough for our great-grandmothers, why is it so wrong for current immigrants? Of course these people would prefer to come here legally, but that’s not all that easy to do. So they come here illegally, do the work that most Americans won’t do – cleaning offices and homes, working on farms, nannying for children – all in hopes of eventually getting citizenship.
When illegal immigrants come here, I don’t think their first thought is “how can I con the United States into giving me free food and medical care, and not work at all for it!” The people want to work, want to help the country and want to raise their families legally. I believe that their immediate thoughts aren’t how can I get welfare and do nothing in return.
As a mother, the concept of having children here in the US and then being forced to leave them if I was deported is heart-wrenching. I am in favor of giving citizenship to children who go to college or serve in the military. I hope that we can reform immigration but not destroy what the intentions were of the writers of the fourteenth amendment. Our country is wonderful and it only got that way because of all that immigrants have brought to it.
Great piece Cristina.
Even if I were not a parent myself I’d definitely towards keeping the families together.
However i must acknowledge that this is not a black and white situation and that there is more to the issue of illegal immigration than maintaining families together.
I think it is great that you gave a chance to both sides of the issue to explain their position.
A.
About 45% of the “Illegal immigrants” come here legally. They come here on a work visa or tourist visa and overstay their stay. The biggest violators that overstay their 90-day stay are France, Italy, and Sweden.
Illegal immigrants make up 13% of the population and only 1% of the US population.
Most Mexicans come to the US legally..
I do not think many of the illegal immigrants utilize our welfare programs. I think many are scared that if they use the program, they will get found and get deported. They are not trusting of the government.
Those who come to live in the United States and those who are born in this country share in the dream of America as the land of opportunity. All anyone wants is a chance to better themselves and, hopefully, provide a better life for their children.
In a country where all but the Native Americans are descendants of those who immigrated here, should we not be embracing the idea that the United States is a place of “liberty and justice for all”?
Obama wants Congress to have a busy December – USA Today…
We have added a Trackback to your article on the Visa Informer….
send their kids back with them their kids will have to get mexican citizenship papers before they are considered legal same thing that illegals are supposed to do here ,which they don’t the parents are the ones that create the problems not us .let them worry about.it it’ not our problem.like the bible says, if you get in an argument that’s none of your business it’s like going out on the street and getting a wild dog from the ears [question solved] very simple ,why worry about it.,
There is an organization called Future Grads that helps the children of deportees: http://www.futuregradss.webs.com, or Fgrads@yahoo.com. These children are not foreigners, they are Citizens of the United States of America. Regardless of whether or not their great, great, great……grand parents came here and took over the land from the Indians, or they were brought here to by acts of slavery, the simple fact is that everyone except the Native Indians share these two words in common “CAME HERE”. So let me break this down for you. If you trace your history, you will discover that your great, great, great……grand parents, or your grand parents or your parents CAME HERE! Maybe they came during the era where people were not being invited here, but the fact is they “CAME HERE”. If you cannot see yourself as being illegal simply because you were later born on US soil, and if you are intelligent enough you will apply the same concept to others who are born on US soil, such as these children in our discussion.