Our Fathers Can’t Wait Any Longer
Father’s Day is one of reverence and celebration for the men in our lives who helped raise and care for us all. Sadly, however, there are too many children and families being separated because of a heartless and broken immigration system that doesn’t work for anyone.
It’s been almost one year since the Senate passed its immigration reform bill, but the House of Representatives has yet to act. We have written here exhaustively about the need for the House to act in order to provide a permanent solution to fix our immigration laws. So, on this Father’s Day weekend (and in honor of Dads everywhere who prefer getting to the point quickly), instead of more words and stories about the need for reform, we’re letting the stark numbers make the case for immigration reform.
Who gets deported?
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–Parents of U.S. citizen children. Between 2010 and 2012, nearly 205,000 parents of U.S. citizen children were deported. This represents nearly a quarter of the people deported during that time.
–The deportation of Latino males, who are often the breadwinners of the household, negatively affects the economic standing of Latino families For example, Manuel, who has lived in Ohio with his wife and children for a decade providing for them, was deported despite the fact that he was clearly not a priority for deportation because he does not pose any harm.
We’re literally leaving kids without parents in the United States
–The Applied Research Center found that 5,100 children whose parents are detained or deported are in foster care in the United States.
—46,486 parents of U.S.-citizen children deported during the first six months of 2011 represented 22 percent of the overall 211,167 people ICE deported during that time period.
Millions of families are affected.
–Almost 5.5 million children in the United States, including 4.5 million U.S.-born citizens, live in mixed-legal status families with at least one parent who is an unauthorized immigrant. These children are at risk of being separated from a parent at any time
–The DHS Office of the Inspector General estimated that over 108,000 parents of U.S.-citizen children were removed from the U.S. between 1997 and 2007.
These numbers say it all. The time for immigration reform is now.
Our families can’t wait another year, another month, or another day.
