Migrant kids at Holy Family may not be reunited with families for years
“Five experienced Pittsburgh immigration attorneys all said it certainly could be years or even permanent, and this is why:
First, the kids’ parents have to be either deported back to their home countries or allowed to stay in the U.S. before they can apply to get their children back.
If the parents are deported by a federal immigration court judge and then apply to get their children back from the country they were trying to flee, a state court family judge overseeing a kid’s case might rule that it is not in the best interest of the child to return them to their home country because of the problems the family was trying to flee in the first place.”
======================================
My sister and me first lived at Holy Family over 50 years ago. It was not our choice. If we DID have a choice, we would have stayed with a parent, even under the circumstances we were living in at the time. Under the eyes of the law, we were too young to state our case and plead our preference. The same is true of immigrant children. Separating them from their parents, cutting off all communications with them, and sending them even further away from everyone and everything familiar to them is something from which they will never recover. Some of the arguments I’ve heard in favor of this separation and my response include:
- “Their parents knew the consequences when they chose to break into the US illegally.” Maybe so, but does the punishment fit the crime? Is it fair to the children to make them suffer for their parents’ decisions?
- “If liberals care so much why don’t they take them into their homes?” They do. And so do conservatives.They also donate money so that immigrant families can sue the U.S. to get their children back, which is a process that can take years. Under this category also falls these counter arguments:
There’s a good chance that some of the people who are applying to foster these kids are not doing it out of the kindness of their hearts. As a former foster child, I know this from personal painful experience.
You can’t just ask for “one of those illegal immigrant kids” and get one. Most of the time you get what you get. This isn’t a Grade A grass fed butcher counter and they aren’t slabs of meat. - “This whole thing was started by the dems.” Even if the forced separation was started by the dems under whichever democratic president you hate the most, who cares? What kind of argument is that for taking a child from its parents? The system is broken, and pointing fingers and causing more pain to the next generation to have to work through is not going to fix the problem. In fact, this stance is more harmful than doing nothing. If something is broken, it doesn’t usually help to stand around trying to find out who and what’s to blame. What helps is working together towards a workable solution. The solution may not be perfect, but at least it’s a start. This whole back and forth about “its all the liberals fault” and “its all the conservative’s fault” is utter nonsense. Its never the fault of one person or one party. We are ALL at fault. We need to ask ourselves, regardless of whichever side of politics or immigration we fall, “what can be done to fix this NOW.”
- “The US prison system is filled with criminals whose kids are taken away from them.” Its true that prosecuted criminals who are found guilty of a crime and jailed temporarily lose custody of their children, but the other parent doesn’t, and they and their families KNOW WHERE THEY ARE, the children know where at least one of their parents are, and they still get to communicate if they elect to do so.
My experiences while in foster care makes me fear for these children. I don’t delude myself that everything has become rainbows and fluffy clouds in the last 50 years.