(im)migration

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Torn Apart: Immigration and the American Family

 

We are a compassionate nation. We look back with sadness and horror at parents and children separated in centuries past, and then turn our heads when it happens in our day. The separation of parents and children is not confined to history.

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American history is replete with stories of parents and children forever separated. Slaves were sold as individuals and families were wrenched apart to suit their owner’s needs. The tide of 19th century European immigration brought children to America on their own or parents without their kids hoping that family members would one day follow.

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Immigration is surely a political issue, but it is also a parenting and family issue. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, approximately 17 million people live in families with an undocumented family member. About 4.5 million children who were born in the US have at least one undocumented parent.

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Academics from Harvard and NYU wrote in the New York Times, “The extraordinary acceleration in the dismantling of these families, part of the government’s efforts to meet an annual quota of about 400,000 deportations, has had devastating results. Having a parent ripped away permanently, without warning, is one of the most devastating and traumatic experiences in human development.”

 

Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

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Powerful Cartoon Asks Americans To Consider The Potential Of The Children At The Border

Invoking well-known undocumented immigrant and Pulitzer Prize winner Jose Antonio Vargas who came to the U.S. as a child, the cartoon wonders about what could be.

Source: www.buzzfeed.com

 

I will start asking people, “What kind of refugee was your family?”

 

  • War refugee
  • Economic refugee
  • Political refugee
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Rush to Deport Could Trample Asylum Claims – The Boston Globe

HARLINGEN, Texas — The first time her aunt in Mexico took her out at night, the young teenager was told they were headed to a party. It was no party. “It was trafficking people, drug dealers,” she recalled. “I just saw a lot of guys. They had guns. I was in shock. I was shaking. The more I was saying no, the more they treated me badly.”

Source: www.bostonglobe.com

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The Daily Show With Jon Stewart: America’s Immigration Crisis: Kid Edition

 

Republicans always claim America is the best nation on Earth; to their chagrin, child refugees fleeing violence and poverty in Latin America are listening.

Source: www.hulu.com

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57,000 Possible Cases of Asylum

 

Mr. Obama called the surge in children from Central America an “actual humanitarian crisis on the border,” and said it “only underscores the need to drop the politics and fix our immigration system once and for all.”

 

Source: www.nytimes.com

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The U.S. Roots of the Central American Immigrant Influx

Before dying of pneumonia at a Guatemala hospital in late May, the recently deported 21-year-old Gustavo Antonio Vásquez Chaj told his family that the U.S. Border Patrol had kept him, at some point, wet, stripped of a layer of clothing, and in a cold cell during several days in detention.
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The tragic journey of Vásquez Chaj and Tucux Chiché is one story among many of how harmful U.S. political and economic policies in Latin America violently intersect with a hardening and brutal system of U.S. immigration control. In their case, the young men’s voyage was first and foremost one of necessity rather than of choice. Vásquez Chaj and Tucux Chiché were economic migrants fleeing a country of wreck and ruin that decades of harmful U.S. foreign and economic policies have helped to bring about.

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It is indisputable that the United States shares significant responsibility for the genocide of tens of thousands of Guatemalans—mainly indigenous Mayans, including members of Gustavo and Maximiliano’s community, who comprised a majority of the (at least) 150,000 killed in the 1980s alone.
Click through for whole article.

Source: nacla.org

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VIDEO – Luis Gutierrez about children at the border

 

Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., says the “border is secure,” and he warns against demonizing the undocumented children arriving at the U.S. from Central America.

 

Source: www.cbsnews.com

 

Does anyone think that Central American has been manipulated in order to provide a new source of low cost labor to the U.S.?

 

How is it that Central American countries used to be livable but now are too dangerous to live in?

 

What international politics have cause this chaos?

 

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Pope Francis: Migrant Children Must Be ‘Welcomed And Protected’

“This humanitarian emergency requires, as a first urgent measure, these children be welcomed and protected,” Pope Francis said.

Source: thinkprogress.org