Deporting Fathers in the Name of Homeland Security [View All]

[babylonsister]

Deporting Fathers in the Name of Homeland Security

by Joseph Nevins


As families celebrate Father’s Day, consider the case of Roxroy Salmon. The father of four U.S.-born children, Salmon has lived in the United States for more than 30 years. Yet the Department of Homeland Security now threatens to deport him to Jamaica, a country where he has not resided for decades, due to minor drug convictions from more than 19 years ago for which he served no time. This would effectively deny his children their father by permanently exiling him from his family and their common homeland.

Salmon’s story is hardly exceptional. Each year the federal government deports tens of thousands of non-citizens, many of them with U.S. citizen children, to countries to which they often have tenuous ties. By doing this, the federal government seriously injures children and families, and produces large numbers of a particular type of refugee.

With immigration reform on the table once again, we must restore basic human rights protections to would-be deportees and their children. This would help reverse the massive growth in deportations and divided families brought about by increasingly harsh immigration policing.

According to a report published in April by Human Rights Watch, deportations separated more than one million family members in the United States from a parent or spouse between 1997 and 2007. More than 70 percent of them were the result of non-violent criminal offenses, including possession of marijuana or traffic violations. One-fifth involved individuals who were lawfully present in the United States, sometimes for decades.

The vast majority of the deportees have been undocumented immigrants. An estimated five million children of unauthorized immigrants reside in the United States, more than three million of whom are U.S. citizens. By deporting many of their parents, according to a report released in March by the law firm of Dorsey & Whitney for the Urban Institute, the federal government is doing long-term damage—financial, emotional, psychological, behavioral and educational—to American children.

more...

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/06/21-0