Immigration has been occurring since the beginning of time. Everyone residing in the United States, besides Native Americans, all have immigrated. In today’s world immigration is seen as this horrendous act, and this perception honestly upsets me. There have been immigration detention camps where authorities separated children from their families. Literally, breaking families apart. Before this anti-immigrant viewpoint was dominant, families were able to stick together. It degrades America’s reputation when so many in our society perceive immigration as such an awful and dangerous thing.
Separating families is really sickening, and that’s what America is constantly doing. Why do supporters of this policy think these people deserve such treatment? Yes, they came to America illegally, but that does not mean that our border guards should make the children suffer and be afraid because they don’t know when or if they’ll ever reconnect with their families. American authorities could at least provide them with some essential care. We are in a pandemic and we are not doing much to protect those detained children. According to ice.gov, ICE focuses on smart immigration enforcement, preventing terrorism and combating the illegal movement of people and trade. If that’s the case, they should not have to separate these families. If their jobs are to prevent immigration, then they should keep the families together.
According to the ICE website, “ICE is committed to ensuring that those in our custody reside in safe, secure, and human environments and under appropriate conditions of confinement.” Just a couple of weeks ago, news broke out that those detained in these detention camps were undergoing unnecessary gynecological surgeries including full hysterectomies. That should show people, and the world, that the persons running these detention facilities are taking cruel advantage of the detainees. They have no right to perform such surgeries with the detainees unless the detainees themselves have agreed to do so, but even that brings problems, because someone may be lying to the detainees and telling them that something else will be done, when in result this is what is occurring.
The Netflix documentary called Immigration Nation, came out this year, and it gives us a better insight on how ICE approaches immigrants. That documentary brought tears to my eyes because I witnessed men crying due to the fact that they were separated from their children and they were not reconnected with them until days, months later, not knowing where they were at and with who. These detainees were lied to, being told they were going somewhere to reconnect, but in reality, they were going to a prison. I recommend that Netflix documentary, because it shows these peoples’ true colors. It upset me when one of the ICE officers took a picture of one of the detainees, sent the picture to his “buddies” and laughed at him. That was so inappropriate and disturbing to watch. The Trump Administration feel like they are doing something, but they are really affecting these children, young children.
Overall, I understand on the issues that The USA tries to do to prevent people from immigrating, but there needs to be a better solution. No family should be separated. I feel for these people because they are my people and it could happen to my family to anyone. Immigration has been here since the start of time and if back then they were able to work things out, I am positively sure something good could also come back out of this, but separating families should not be a punishment for people who want a better life. Being treated poorly and being performed surgeries at these detention camps should not be occurring. Trying to better and be there for these people should matter.
This is a strongly-felt reaction essay to a real problem. Social workers have core values related to social justice and the dignity and worth of the individual, and we also are committed to promoting good human relationships. There is one issue where reasonable persons disagree: how many immigrants should be allowed to come to the United States, and what criteria should be considered when deciding whom to allow here? The issue addressed here is a separate one, asking how we treat persons who come here without appropriate documentation, or fail to leave here when their allowed time here has expired. The basic assumption most people would make is that such persons ought to be returned to their home countries, or to the countries from which they have arrived. But, the principles of human rights compel us to provide protection and security to persons who are fleeing persecution or threats to their lives (according to Articles 3 and 14 in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights), so there should be exception to the general rule of expelling such persons.
There might also be good reason to allow some non-citizens who have long resided in the United States as undocumented residents to remain her and perhaps become citizens; if they have been productive members of society, never committed serious crimes, and have lived her so long that culturally they have become Americanized, it would have in fact, if not in law, become Americans (in the cultural, not the legal sense), and depriving them of living here as Americans would be a sort of deprivation of their adopted nationality (a violation of Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights). I'm starting with a premise that shared life experiences and real human relationships create reality, and the state and its laws and those who enforce its laws are a sort of secondary and artificial social construct that has a purpose of protecting our rights and facilitating conditions in which we can flourish and depend on enforcement of justice. If laws create situations of unfairness and injustice, and thwart human flourishing and inflict misery, then rather than simply break those laws, it would be better to amend or replace them. Leaving bad laws in place and breaking them can create lawless situations, and it is better to make good or better laws to replace those that seem to produce evil conditions.
The issue of family separation is one of these evil conditions. Children should remain with their parents (Articles 12, 16, 25, and 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights all imply this, I think). It is also a bad thing to imprison minors with adults. So, while it make sense that adults and minors should not be detained or imprisoned together, there clearly must be an exception for parents with children. And in fact, if people have a reasonable expectation that they will suffer in their country of origin, I think they ought to be allowed to roam freely in America, and not detained. We need a system that can quickly determine whether persons have realistic fears, and if they do, they should be offered asylum or assistance in setting up a new life somewhere safe (e.g., Queretaro, Guanajuato, Hidalgo, Tlaxcala, Tabasco, Oaxaca, Belize, Costa Rica, Panama)
Americans who want to block those immigrants from living here could probably make a case that they should seek refuge in the first safe country they arrive in, and not wait until they cross to the USA to seek refuge. For example, if Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador are all so violent and chaotic that a person is not save in any of those countries, persons fleeing from those lands should be encouraged to seek refuge in Nicaragua, Belize, Mexico, Costa Rica, or Panama before coming to the USA.
Some people have suggested that when children were apprehended by ICE agents, their parents were not with them, and persons who claimed to be their parents were in fact kidnappers or child human traffickers who only pretended to be parents. If there are any cases where this was so, those would be cases where children would end up I detention apart from their parents, but we could not blame ICE for such a situation. Also, the accusations against the gynecologist in Georgia who allegedly performed unwanted and unnecessary surgeries has not been settled, and the doctor and prison, as you point out, claims the accusations are unfair. I certainly am inclined to believe the 17 women (or is it more?) who have made the accusations, but until the situation is thoroughly investigated, I cannot really know what happened. What I do know is that the conditions in which the detained persons are being held are violating their human rights. As those persons are in the custody of the United States, we all are responsible for the conditions in which they are held. They are clearly not being shown respect for the dignity of their person, or their worth. They are not receiving adequate medical care, and since they are in our care, we have a duty to provide such care to them. Further, our immigration processes are unfair and unjust, and people live here (in detention or not in detention) in a state of uncertainty and doubt while they wait for immigration authorities to make determinations on their claims or their appeals. The waiting time is very longer and during the wait these people are in a precarious state. As you say, there are many outrageous and disgusting aspects of how we (our government) is treating these people, and we must push our government to improve the immigration process and the detention conditions.
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