Kuacou

The New York Times
November 24, 2004
A Mother Deported, and a Child Left Behind
By NINA BERNSTEIN


Photo 1:
http://tinyurl.com/44zn5
Caption:
Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times
Carlos Feliz has struggled to support his daughter, Virginia, since
his wife was deported last year.


In April of last year, when her mother dropped by federal immigration
headquarters in Manhattan to complete some paperwork, 8-year-old
Virginia Feliz became part of a growing tribe of American children who
have lost a parent to deportation.

Her mother, Berly, 47, who migrated to the United States illegally a
decade ago, went to the immigration office on a routine visit to renew
her work authorization. But because an old deportation order had
resurfaced, she was quickly clapped into handcuffs, and within hours
placed on a plane to her native Honduras, unable to say goodbye to her
husband and little girl.

"I'm not happy; I'm sad," said Virginia, who lives in a small Bronx
apartment. "Because it's not fair that everybody else has their mom
except me." She dropped onto a couch next to her disabled father,
Carlos Feliz, an American citizen who was born in the Dominican
Republic, declaring that she hates her last name, which means happy in
Spanish.

No one keeps track of exactly how many American children were left
behind by the record 186,000 noncitizens expelled from the United
States last year, or the 887,000 others required to make a "voluntary
departure." But immigration experts say there are tens of thousands of
children every year who lose a parent to deportation. As the debate
over immigration policy heats up, such broken families are troubling
people on all sides, and challenging schools and mental health clinics
in immigrant neighborhoods.


Photo 2:
http://tinyurl.com/6gwez
Caption:
Carlos, Berly and Virginia Feliz when Virginia was about 2 years old.
Virginia, now 8, has been told that Mrs. Feliz is caring for a sick
relative.


Officials at the Department of Homeland Security say they are simply
enforcing laws adopted in 1996, which all but eliminated the
discretion of immigration officers to consider family ties before
enforcing an old order of removal.

"There are millions of people who are illegally in the United States,
and it's unfortunate, when they're caught, seeing a family split up,"
said William Strassberger, a spokesman for federal immigration
services. "But the person has to be answerable for their actions."

Federal officials said they leave time for parents to make
arrangements for their children, and refer them to a social service
agency if necessary. Many parents arrange to leave American-born
children with relatives or friends; others, especially those who have
no one to assume responsibility for a child, take the children along
when they are expelled.

"People refer to that as a Sophie's choice situation," he said. "Where
the child is going to be is left up to the parent."

As a practical matter, arrangements for a child left behind may be
hasty at best, said Janet Sabel, who directs the immigration law unit
of the Legal Aid Society. One mother about to be deported to Nicaragua
last year was told to leave her four children with her husband, Ms.
Sabel said. But the husband was an abusive drug user, and finally the
mother persuaded the immigration officer to give her a few days to
make other arrangements. A priest referred her to Legal Aid, which
reopened the case, stopping the deportation.

"There's a happy ending to this story," Ms. Sabel said, "but the fact
is, there was total luck in her finding her way to us."

By all reports Virginia Feliz had been a happy 6-year-old before her
mother's expulsion. Two months later, doctors at the Child and
Adolescent Mental Health Program of Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center
found that she had a major depressive disorder marked by
hyperactivity, nightmares, bed-wetting, frequent crying and fights at
school. Now, medical records show, she takes antidepressant drugs and
sees a therapist, but the problems persist.

In a letter to the Department of Homeland Security last year, Dr.
Victor Sierra, the clinic's director, made no bones about the
underlying problem: "Absent mother, secondary to deportation." Another
six to eight months may pass before the American Embassy in Honduras
even processes her mother's application to return, officials say.

In Brooklyn, similar cases cause concern for Birdette
Gardiner-Parkinson, the clinical director at the Caribbean Community
Mental Health program at Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center. In one, she
said, an outgoing, academically gifted 12-year-old began failing
classes, mutilating herself and having suicidal thoughts after her
Colombian father disappeared into removal proceedings. In another
case, nightmares and school failure plague the youngest of six
children whose father, a cabdriver with 20 years' residence in the
United States, was deported to Nigeria six hours after he reported for
a green card interview, seemingly for unpaid traffic fines, Ms.
Gardiner-Parkinson said.

"The impact is very devastating," Ms. Gardiner-Parkinson said. "When
children lose a family member this way, even though they may have a
phone conversation with them, the physical separation feels like
death."

The distress of children left behind in the United States echoes that
of children left on the southern side of the border, say scholars of
transnational migration like Leah Schmalzbauer, a social
anthropologist who recently conducted a two-year research project on
families split between Honduras and the United States.

The numbers are expected to swell, added Ms. Schmalzbauer, now an
assistant professor of sociology and anthropology at Montana State
University. Families in poor countries like Honduras can no longer
manage without remittances from the United States, and women are
beginning to replace men as the primary migrants, filling growing
demands here for low-cost elder care, domestic work and other service
jobs.

"There's no protection for that undocumented labor, and even though we
speak of family values, there's also no protection for the children,"
she said. "The research shows the emotional impacts are huge, whether
they're separated from parents on this side or on the other side of
the border."

To advocates of greater restriction on immigration, such families
illustrate the painful consequences of poor enforcement in the past,
and point to the perils of guest worker programs like one proposed by
President Bush.

"Once you let the person stay in the United States, it becomes
extremely difficult in our society to make them go," said Steven
Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies
in Washington. "How are you going to keep them from falling in love,
getting married and having U.S.-born children?"

To critics of the sterner laws adopted in 1996, such cases show that
more systematic enforcement since Sept. 11, 2001, is compounding the
laws' contradictions and loss of discretion.

"The cornerstone, the bedrock of immigration law is family unity,"
said Jeffrey A. Feinbloom, an immigration lawyer who has been working
for Mrs. Feliz's return since her deportation and has been frustrated
by delays in processing. "The interest of the government in removing
this woman pales in comparison with her suffering and her family's.
And this child is a citizen, this husband is a citizen. What about
their rights?"

In a telephone interview from Honduras, Mrs. Feliz acknowledged
entering the United States illegally in 1994. She said she made the
dangerous journey through Mexico because she could no longer afford to
buy clothes, food and school supplies for her son, then 13.

Caught within hours of crossing the border, she was soon released on
bond and fled to New York. When she failed to show up in a Texas
immigration court, she was ordered deported in absentia. But like the
great majority of such orders, it was not pursued for years, and Mrs.
Feliz went to work, first as a live-in housekeeper, then in low-wage
factory jobs.

After her 1996 marriage, when she applied for a green card, federal
immigration officials not only issued her an official work
authorization several times, but also allowed her husband, as an
American citizen and new stepfather, to sponsor the teenage son she
had left in Honduras.

Now that son, Cesar, is 24 and a lawful permanent resident with his
own American child, while his mother is back where she began, without
a job or her children.

"I don't have peace because I'm not with my little girl," she said in
Spanish, breaking down. "I don't eat. I don't sleep. I can't be
without her - I have no life."

The hardest part, she said, is that in telephone calls her daughter
sometimes tells her, "You didn't take me with you; you're a bad
person."

"I can't handle that," she said.

In the Bronx, Mr. Feliz, 48, who was disabled by a back injury in a
workplace accident four years ago, said he was struggling to support
Virginia without his wife's earnings and was also being treated for
depression. He did not have the heart to tell Virginia her mother had
been deported, he added. Instead, he initially told Virginia that her
mother was caring for a sick relative in Honduras, a story her mother
has repeated in telephone calls.

Such lies are commonplace as shaken parents try to shield young
children from the reality of deportation, counselors said. But the
deception may only increase feelings of abandonment, anger and
insecurity as the children hunt for reasons they were left behind.

When the visitor remarked that she was pretty, Virginia, a doe-eyed
child with a caramel complexion, loudly disagreed. "I'm ugly!" she
insisted. "I want to be white, white, white."

Asked about her mother's departure, she said: "I was really mad. How
come she didn't take me?"


http://nytimes.com/2004/11/24/nyregion/24deport.html

Newbie

Aside from all racist propaganda, it is a good start.

All illegal people living in America should be deported to the country of
their origin. They should be banned for at least 10 years from entering USA
again, for their crime of violating USA immigration laws.

I am a LEGAL immigrant.

Madeira

"newbie" <> wrote in message news:<k72pd.49104$>...
    > Aside from all racist propaganda, it is a good start.
    >
    > All illegal people living in America should be deported to the country of
    > their origin. They should be banned for at least 10 years from entering USA
    > again, for their crime of violating USA immigration laws.
    >
    > I am a LEGAL immigrant.



I agree with you wholeheartedly. Legal immigrants must be especially
PO'd about illegals getting away with what they do.

Being a legal immigrant, I hope you're involved in some of the
anti-illegal groups. Even just being a member. They need legal
immigrant voices to help their cause.

CaliforniaBride

    > "newbie" <> wrote in message
    > news:<k72pd.49104$>...
    > > Aside from all racist propaganda, it is a good start.
    > >
    > > All illegal people living in America should be deported to the
    > > country of
    > > their origin. They should be banned for at least 10 years from
    > > entering USA
    > > again, for their crime of violating USA immigration laws.
    > >
    > > I am a LEGAL immigrant.
    > I agree with you wholeheartedly. Legal immigrants must be especially
    > PO'd about illegals getting away with what they do.
    > Being a legal immigrant, I hope you're involved in some of the
    > anti-illegal groups. Even just being a member. They need legal
    > immigrant voices to help their cause.

Nope not really.