Laura Enriquez's Life In The Shadows

Deportation can have a psychological effect amongst families with mixed status as far as who is a U.S. citizen and who is an immigrant. In a study between July 2010 and September 2012 out of the 205,000 people who were deported, reported that there was at least one U.S. citizen child resulting in 90,000 parents who were deported (Psychological Impact of Detention & Deportation 2). Statistics like these demonstrate how the system is corrupted and needs to be fixed and mended. Families are constantly getting ripped apart because of an unequal status among family members. Psychologically, the deportations can affect family members, especially children. Children of immigrant parents live in fear because their parents may get deported. This is

Especially the children of the person being deported. Migrants that are greatly affected by this are mainly from Mexico and central America. Once a family member is deported the family faces the question of what they will do. Will they move their whole family, even their U. S born children from the culture and society they have grown up in the country of their origin? Or will the family split up creating a single parent home or leave their child with another caregiver? Or lastly will they live in risk as an undocumented migrant? Undocumented migrant workers are much more likely to face economic struggles, lack of social usage of programs, and social remoteness. Although these directly affect the adult migrant the children suffer from these effects as well. They do get a proper education or amount of healthy foods, which untimely lead to many obstacles and setbacks for the child. There have been studies to prove that children of undocumented parents are more likely to be developmentally delayed. There is a long chain of effects on the children of undocumented parents. In the article it states “Yoshikawa (2011) found that when a parent is undocumented, he/she experiences greater social exclusion, which results in greater economic hardship and job-related stress, lower social support, parental psychological distress, and decreased use of center-based care, which in turn affects children's cognitive development at 24 months of age. Children of undocumented parents are also less likely to have health insurance (Lurie, 2008) and be rated in good health by their parents” (Kalil & Ziol-Guest, 2009). Also, when a child is separated from a parent or parents, they deal with the feeling of trauma, abonnement, isolation, depression, and fear. Not only do the children deal with these emotions, but their entire family also faces many economic problems since once one of the parents leave,

America has, is, and will always be a nation of immigrants: the great melting pot. In the years that have passed since Emma Lazarus' poem was inscribed on the Statue of Liberty "the golden door" Americans have seen times when the door was open wide and times when it was close shut to most immigrants (Sure 4). Many people look at the present immigration problems as a purely modern dilemma. The truth is America has always struggled with the issue of immigration, both legal and illegal. Changing times, however, makes it imperative that our government reexamines and adjusts today's immigration laws to today's standards. Those standards, however, are not easily defined. Too often the issue of

In the United States, many families are currently being affected by the Dream Act’s failure to pass. The Dream Act would have given many undocumented children the ability to have a pathway to citizenship. The Dream Act believed in the importance of social support within the family by supporting family unification. However, due to its failure to pass, millions of undocumented children are now at risk of being deported and having their families divided. Although the U.S. government created a new policy known as the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), it is not providing immigrants with the same opportunity. DACA instead give undocumented people the opportunity to not be deported for a maximum of three years, but will never become a pathway to permanent citizenship. The Dream Act and DACA ultimately affects the physiological, emotional, and mental health of the immigrants who reside within the U.S.

Eleanor Roosevelt said, “the future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” That statement holds strong for immigrants in America. Equal access to opportunities allows immigrants to achieve the American dream. Their success correlates with America’s success because of the contributions immigrants provide to America. Unfortunately, the current immigration policy in America denies many immigrants the American dream. It is crucial to understand the historical context of immigration in America. Initially, most immigrants were from Europe and were not restricted by any immigration laws. Now, most immigrants come from Latin America but are restricted to severe immigration laws. The Latino/a community is one of the most

A common misconception is that legalizing illegal immigrants would just result in “criminals” running around the streets causing disturbances. Who is ignored is the benefit of a very specific population of Americans, the sons and daughters of illegal immigrants. American children are harmed every time one or both of their parents is deported as a result of the lack of an immigration reform. In the article, “Children of Illegal Immigrants Struggle When Parents Are Deported” Valbrun states that “the government deported more than 46,000 parents of children with U.S. citizenship in the first half of 2011, according to the ARC report.” In these conditions, jailed parents cannot fight for their children’s custody and at times lose it to the government who then puts the children out for adoption or in foster care when they already have loving parents. Properly legalizing immigrants would improve the lives of many American children and improve the American social aspects with more

In the United States, US born children also suffer when it comes to immigration and deportation because although they are US born, their parents are not, parents are at major risk of being deported because a large part of them entered the country illegally or with a Visa but remained in the country after it expired. In the past decade, nearly 2 million persons were removed from the country, 81 % of them to Latin America. Of the estimated 11.7 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States, 52 % are from Mexico (Passel et al. 2013), placing them at greatest risk for deportation. Because of the workplace raids that occurred in 2006 and 2007, 900 undocumented

Studies show, within 3 months, 80,000 illegals were deported from just Texas and many more in five other states; 700,000 returned to Mexico voluntarily, 488,000 in two other states (Nagle). A child born in the country from foreign parents are citizens at birth and it should not be taken away from them. “Former representative Nathan Deal of Georgia had a better idea, and he introduced a bill proposing that being born in the U.S. only confers citizenship if one child’s parents is a U.S. citizen” (Nagle). When parents are deported their children don’t have a choice whether they go with their parent or stay, the government chooses it for them. Some parents don’t know they can request return upon deportation or their children could be replaced with their relatives or take them with them to their home (Valbrun). A mother sent a request to visit her child but got no response and her child was taken care by strangers and the mother did not accept this idea. Obama stated that they are focusing on deporting immigrants that have committed crimes. “It’s clearly un-American to take kids away from loving families” (Valbrun). Social workers say children are better off living with middle class Americans than their own “poor” parents who want to try to make a living in a new place. An immigrant parent’s worst fear is to be deported and abandon their child

For years immigration has been the hot topic and the one topic that cannot be draw down to a conclusion. The United States government thinks that by deporting immigrants all problems will be solved. In Reality nothing can be resolved by deporting, instead is creating even more issues to the country. What needs to be realize is that deportation is just separating families, children are left without a parents or without any of their parents. Children from immigrants are sent to foster care and that is nothing that child that has parents has to go through, just for the simple reason of having undocumented parents. It is estimated that eleven million immigrants have children who are U.S. citizens, this children’s have lived their entire lives in the U.S., have attended public schools, have advanced to college and some even have jobs that support the U.S. economy (Ceceña). Some may think “well why they don’t just go with their parents?” That may sounds like a good idea, but why not think about the challenges and situations that this children will have to go through after creating a lifestyle in the U.S. Now it

To say that immigrants in America have experienced discrimination would be an understatement. Ever since the country formed, they have been seen as inferior, such as African-Americans that were unwillingly brought to the 13 colonies in the 17th century with the intention to be used as slaves. However, post-1965, immigrants, mainly from Central and South America, came here by choice. Many came with their families, fleeing from their native land’s poverty; these immigrants were in search of new opportunities, and more importantly, a new life. They faced abuse and Cesar Chavez fought to help bring equality to minorities.

Today in the United States, illegal immigrants has become a subject that has left many people upset and angry of the view on deportation. Unfortunately at the cost of personal relationships and attachments with friends and family. Yet in 1947,Helbert Leyman hit the topic of immigration right on the head by saying,“ We are a nation of immigrants. It is immigrants who brought to this land the skills of their hands and brains to make of it a beacon of opportunity and hope for all men (Messener,et al, 127).” Immigrants hands built this country of ours, what it is today. Fast Forward sixty-six years to the present, and these words by Herbert Lehman still ring true today. Our government should closely regulate the flow of immigrants into the

Imagine yourself being a child of an undocumented immigrant, how would you feel if you watch the Television every day, and all you see is people been deported to their countries of origin because of their illegal status? Immigration has become one of the hottest topics that everyone is talking about, to specify, undocumented immigrants has suddenly become the target towards improving the nation’s economy. However, the damage that are resulting as we impound the fear of deportation on these undocumented immigrants are been neglected. Over 11 million undocumented immigrants resides in the US, formed families and have U.S born children (Suro and Suarez-Orozco). Today, among 15 children, there is one U.S born citizen with an undocumented parent (Suro and Suarez-Orozco). These children are nurtured by illegal parents who goes through emotional distress everyday due to the difficulties they face as they watch politicians calling out on

Over the last quarter of a decade, illegal immigration and enforcement have dominated mainstream policy making (Meisnner, Kerwin, Chishti & Bergeron, 2013). There has been a lot of public debate too, on whether or not the successive governments of the US have been able to effectively address illegal immigration and its enforcement thereof. However, as Meisnner et al. (2013) state, in the wake of the terror attacks of 2001, a paradigm shift appears to have been established, with the enforcement of illegal immigration taking a de facto stance. As such, as Dreby (2012) intimates, the number of immigrants who have been deported or removed from the US since 2001 has risen from 190, 000 to close to 400, 000. Considering the fact that there are more than 11 million illegal immigrants living in America, deportation on such a large scale without a doubt will result in a continuous chain reaction. One such consequence, as The New York University School of Law (2012) states, is that families are inherently broken apart by the removal of a family member. Additionally, there are other psychological and psychosocial impacts on families that are far-reaching. Because of these and many other compelling factors, this paper argues that the US should work to prevent deportations, rather than enforce them.

Having children as citizen, and or being the primary provider in the household is little help in removal proceedings. Deportation rip families apart, some children of parents that have been deported go into foster care, being too young to care for themselves kids need the help of other adults to care for them. The deportation may also cause a lot of single parents to support and raise children all by themselves. Having one of the parents deported can be a large burden on the other parent that was left behind. Having a parent deported children tend to unassociated themselves with the community with the fear of a parent getting deported. With the fear of getting deported children associate the police with border patrol and begin to fear them. If children fear the police and or border patrol who will they got o when they are in need of help or danger? Deportation affects everyone even the community. More than 7 million children live with parents from Mexico, you can’t say that when these parents get deported there is no affect to their children. (Last Name,

The United States of America has always been a refuge where poor and oppressed people from the far corners of the world can come to begin a new life. Much of the nation’s allure to prospective immigrants is in its promise of equal opportunity for all, regardless of race, creed, or color. But the pressures of rising unemployment rates, congested cities, a crippled healthcare system, and national debt skyrocketing out of control have caused America to defend her borders against the influx of immigrants that threaten her already ailing economy. Still, despite all the heightened security measures incorporated in recent decades, a steady stream of immigrants continue to enter the country illegally. The Washington Times reports that there are