Deportation Separates Families
The number is astounding, but not impossible to fathom, given the degree most aliens want documentation to stay in America. Around 1.6 million children and spouses, according to Human Rights Watch, have been separated from their family. Why?
The 1996 immigration laws are to blame. Not many outside consider the loss of homes, businesses, and finances when deportation occurs. Alison Parker, a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch says it has been devastating to American families.
Congress toughened the law back then making "aggravated felonies" part of the list of reason for deportation. Why this is a bad thing? Because families should stay together. But instead, only the offender is deported.
The law in 1996 was made retroactive, meaning even those who had served their time in jail were caught for deportation. They did not consider hearings in which judges could consider an immigrant's family. Nor did they think of their community standing, military service or what might happen once they got back to their native country.
And since then, 672,593 immigrants have been deported for crimes - this according to the Citizenship and Immigration Services, now part of the Homeland Security Department. What the Human Rights Watch did was combine numbers from CIS and Census data from foreign households here and came up with their statistics on how many have been left behind.
ICE - Immigration and Customs Enforcement tells us that 64.4 percent of immigrants that were sent back in 2005 were convicts - of non-violent crimes. Around 20.9 percent were sent home for crimes that were violent.
Parker submits that it is hard to tell a child that his father has been sent thousands of miles away because he was caught forging a check. The answer might be to deport the whole family.
Texas Representative Lamar Smith, the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, has said that immigrants who break the law forfeit their right to be in the U.S. And Steve Camorata may have the solution - a research director at the Center for Immigration Studies - Steve says the family CAN leave with the deported person. He claims that children constantly bear the consequences of their parents' poor decisions.
But some have tried to leave to no avail.
Wayne Smith and Hugo Armendariz, immigrants, have filed a complaint against the U.S. government because they were ordered deported. The filing, through the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights, has a hearing this Friday.
The Human Rights Watch report can be found at http://hrw.org/reports/2007/us0707/
The 1996 immigration laws are to blame. Not many outside consider the loss of homes, businesses, and finances when deportation occurs. Alison Parker, a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch says it has been devastating to American families.
Congress toughened the law back then making "aggravated felonies" part of the list of reason for deportation. Why this is a bad thing? Because families should stay together. But instead, only the offender is deported.
The law in 1996 was made retroactive, meaning even those who had served their time in jail were caught for deportation. They did not consider hearings in which judges could consider an immigrant's family. Nor did they think of their community standing, military service or what might happen once they got back to their native country.
And since then, 672,593 immigrants have been deported for crimes - this according to the Citizenship and Immigration Services, now part of the Homeland Security Department. What the Human Rights Watch did was combine numbers from CIS and Census data from foreign households here and came up with their statistics on how many have been left behind.
ICE - Immigration and Customs Enforcement tells us that 64.4 percent of immigrants that were sent back in 2005 were convicts - of non-violent crimes. Around 20.9 percent were sent home for crimes that were violent.
Parker submits that it is hard to tell a child that his father has been sent thousands of miles away because he was caught forging a check. The answer might be to deport the whole family.
Texas Representative Lamar Smith, the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, has said that immigrants who break the law forfeit their right to be in the U.S. And Steve Camorata may have the solution - a research director at the Center for Immigration Studies - Steve says the family CAN leave with the deported person. He claims that children constantly bear the consequences of their parents' poor decisions.
But some have tried to leave to no avail.
Wayne Smith and Hugo Armendariz, immigrants, have filed a complaint against the U.S. government because they were ordered deported. The filing, through the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights, has a hearing this Friday.
The Human Rights Watch report can be found at http://hrw.org/reports/2007/us0707/
Labels: deportation proceedings, deported, illegal aliens, immigration, US Citizenship and Immigration Service
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