Who Do We Think We Are?

This morning I woke up and read a motivating op-ed in the New York Times by Hirokazu Yoshikawa and Carola Suárez-Orozco on how terrible deportations are on the American-born children left behind.  I highly recommend it, not just if you’re into issues of immigration but also if you are interested in crafting a more benevolent country for you and your children.

Here’s my (first) letter to the editor:

Re: “Deporting Parents Hurts Kids” (Opinion, April 21, 2012):

Since the beginning of humanity, when meeting basic needs has proved difficult, families have migrated.

How our national government responds to this age-old affair symbolizes our sense of hospitality. With little regard for American-initiated engagements in foreign countries that spark migration, our system of authorizing entry creates the very categories of people that are unauthorized.

Then the same politicians that praise “family values” do little to protect the lawful American-born children. Only Somalia and the US have refused to ratify the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child. Like the authors’ work, my research with undocumented youth in Paris and New York shows how crippling status is for kids that have grown up dreaming of giving back to their families and community.

Obama must forcefully restructure the agencies under his aegis to respond in a humane way to the millions of American families with at least one undocumented member.

Stephen Ruszczyk

And my second, I got carried away:

Re: “Deporting Parents Hurts Kids” (Opinion, April 21, 2012):

The authors write how deportation of parents needlessly places American children in danger. Why we have come to such desperation in the US as to need to tear apart families, leaving children without mothers and teenagers without fathers?

Obama’s immigration policy relies on the legitimacy of massive deportations. While this may respond to a perceived political need, being tough on the border, what it really does is pacify interest groups with nativist convictions. These groups are aligned with the Republican Party, whose support he needs to find a legislative compromise.  

But there is no compromise! And the coarse culture of meeting deportation quotas sweeps asunder the apparent good news of Obama’s new discretionary policy for deportation, supposedly based on immigrants’ security risk. The security risk seems to come from separating families, not from them living together.

We need to re-think solutions.  

Stephen Ruszczyk