14 DAY TRIAL // The United States are at this point one of the most appealing countries for legal and illegal immigrants alike. Thousands of people flock there every year, and it’s the job of relevant authorities to separate those who should stay from those who arrived illegally. However, in some instances, US authorities abuse their power, a new study from the University of California in Davis (UCD) reveals. More than 88,000 children have been unlawfully deprived of one or both of their parents over the last 10 years alone, due to excesses that the US made in returning immigrants back to their homelands.
“As Congress considers immigration reform, it's time to focus on how the current system tears apart families and threatens the health and education of tens of thousands of children. This report makes a strong case for restoring judicial discretion so immigration judges can weigh the best interests of children when deciding whether to deport a parent,” says director of immigration policy Aarti Kohli, who is based at the Berkeley Law Warren Institute. The new paper, entitled “In the Child's Best Interest?”, deals with how lawful, immigrant residents of the US, or green card holders, are being deported back to their countries after being convicted of relatively minor crimes.
The researchers focused most on how these instances of deportation affect tens of thousands of otherwise-healthy children. Some of the effects they identified include psychological harm, changes in behavior, as well as general health problems, which inflict additional costs on the economy and the health care system. The level of education orphaned children experience also deteriorates significantly after one of their parent has been sent away, the team learned. The conclusions of the report were based heavily on datasets obtained from the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), PhysOrg reports.
For the study, experts at the University of California in Berkeley (UCB) School of Law Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Race, Ethnicity and Diversity collaborated with colleagues from the UCD School of Law and the International Human Rights Law Clinic. The data used cover a time frame stretching between April 1997 and August 2007, the team says. Experts also reveal that most of the nearly 88,000 lawful immigrants had lived in the country for at least 10 years before being sent away.
“Parents who are deported on the basis of criminal convictions are being punished twice for the same mistakes. Even after successfully completing their criminal sentences, they are subject to penalties within the immigration system – and risk losing their families. It's often the children in these families that suffer the most. This nation should take into consideration the impact on families of uprooting individuals with such strong ties to the US,” says UCD Immigration Law Clinic professor Raha Jorjani.