Thread: Children of the Deported Wonder, "Who Gets A Family?&qu

Over the 10 years up to 2007, the U.S. deported 108,434 adults whose children were U.S. citizens, according to a Department of Homeland Security report. The exact number of citizen children left behind in these deportations is unknown, because no one in the government cared to count them. The homeland security of these citizen children does not seem to have been the paramount concern of the U.S. government. Well, maybe excepting 13 of the removed adults, who were deported for "national security and related grounds." (Altogether, about half were undocumented immigrants and half were deported for criminal violations.)

Either keeping your parents from being dumped over the border isn't a right Americans enjoy, or someone in power doesn't really think these kids are American. Or both.

The New York Times quoted an anti-immigration spokesman as saying, "Should those parents get off the hook just because their kids are put in a difficult position? . . . Children often suffer because of the mistakes of their parents." As if this is unavoidable.

It is true that children suffer for the mistakes of their parents. They also suffer for the policies of their neighbors' parents, and for the poverty and discrimination their parents experience. Most children lose out to those whose parents have one advantage or another, but the extent of this intergenerational transfer is something we can affect.

One measure of a society's meritocracy is the level of advantage - and disadvantage - passed from parents to children. Whatever your own ability and effort, equal opportunity only exists to the extent that your parents' problems are not your own.

If children get burned by their origins, adults also face unequal opportunities to originate the families they want. Just as deported immigrant workers are denied the right to parent their children, poor parents can't get Medicaid to cover their infertility treatments - though it might pay for some Viagra. (Even without fertility coverage, economists worry that just providing prenatal care and other services to poor women might increase their tendency to have children. Now that would be a shame.)

Having a family - your family - is not a right of American citizenship, for parents or children. And in a society where intergenerational privilege and disadvantage are deeply entrenched, the denial of that right is a cornerstone of our system of inequality.

Poverty

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/philip-n- ... 67082.html

Who gets a family? Those who can AFFORD to raise one! Would illegal aliens have 4-8 anchor babies if there were NO social services handouts for them? Of course not! Take Mexico as an example, birth rates are DOWN, hmmmm.

Squatting on American soil does not give them any "rights" to keep popping them out like candy.

Let's not get started on "Octomom" - she's just mentally unstable and should have the kids taken from her.

Citizens' children often suffer for the mistakes of their parents. Why should this be any different?

There would be no starving, neglected or abused children in the world, if it were not for the parents that had them.

Put the blame and guilt where it is due, the parents.

Dixie

Either keeping your parents from being dumped over the border isn't a right Americans enjoy, or someone in power doesn't really think these kids are American. Or both.

Yes, Yes and YES!

What kind of parent would leave their child in another country because of any reason?

Originally Posted by 93camaro

What kind of parent would leave their child in another country because of any reason?

Someone who only had the child for use as a human shield in the first place.

Originally Posted by PatrioticMe

Originally Posted by 93camaro

What kind of parent would leave their child in another country because of any reason?

Someone who only had the child for use as a human shield in the first place.

Someone who wants the welfare money to keep coming.