Helen’s Place LLC Update: August 01, 2022
The issues of Deferred Action Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and unaccompanied minors, including separated children from parents during the former Trump administration, remains critical, and is taking a toll on America’s national emotional fitness because of the strain and severity of these problems.
A change of administrations to President Biden, brought little relief to the problem of unaccompanied minors arriving at the southern border. According to CBS, the number of unaccompanied migrant children was 122,000 in 2021. This number is expected to increase in 2022.
On the issue of children still separated from their parents during the Trump administration, the number not reunited is still around 2,000.
Regarding the fate of 750,000 DACA recipients – children brought into the U.S. illegally by parents, the matter of how long they can remain in the U.S. is still unresolved and dragging through the federal court system.
It appears that as long as Congress fails to act in a comprehensive way to deal with illegal immigration, children will continue to come to the border unaccompanied, and continue to be separated from parents in some cases, even under the Biden Administration.
Helen’s Place LLC Update February 1, 2019
10,000 children are still being detained in the U.S., and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is suing the Trump administration to get these children released.
On January 23, 2019, Richard Cohen, SPLC president, reported that the Trump administration is using children as bait to get sponsors to come forward with the intent “to force sponsors into the deportation system.” As a result, fewer sponsors are coming forward, and children are remaining in U.S. custody indefinitely.
Helen’s Place LLC June 22, 2018
As Congress debated what to do about stopping illegal immigration, children were separated from their parents, or coming into the U.S. as unaccompanied minors. Some of these children will never be reunited with family members, and may become the new generation of Deferred Action Childhood Arrivals (DACA) orphans, eventually joining the U.S. future workforce.
Some believe that Congress will act to pass immigration reform. However, given the current U.S. political climate, it’s realistic to assume that nothing will be done, and therefore the new DACA orphans will eventually find their way from a cage, a tent, a facility etc., to the foster care system in America.
We are witnessing U.S. history in real time, as family members commit suicide after being separated from their children, or are deported without their children. The Trump administration seems hell bent on maximizing punishment to illegal, non-immigrants, due to extreme intolerance for rule breaking, and cultural discrimination.
What The Trump administration fails to grasp, is that the policy of separating parents and children at the border, or keeping the family together only to deport them later, as a “deterrent” from illegal immigration, may backfire, because desperate people do desperate things.
Many non-immigrants will do anything to get to safety in the U.S. America has always been a beacon of hope, so whatever it takes –
People are coming into the U.S. illegally, and there’s no way to stop them, anymore then it’s possible to end poverty.
This is why the situation must be managed; U.S. immigration judges will have the burden to figure out what to do with the children, as politicians continue to fail us.
The immigration court system will be forced to take action to allow children, taken and lost in the system, to remain in the U.S., go to school and eventually file for DACA and get work permits.
It’s possible that Congress will never pass a law to allow DACA recipients a pathway to citizenship, so the DACA program will likely be allowed to exist indefinitely.
As time passes, it may become more socially acceptable to have non-immigrants with work permits only, due to the shortage of workers caused by economic expansion and people retiring. DACA recipients will be expected to pay taxes, pay into social security without benefits, and fund their own retirements.
They will always have the option to permanently return to the country of their birth, or another country. They will likely never be allowed to travel in and out of the U.S., so once they leave they will not be able to return.
One thing Americans agree on is that children are our future workforce, so we need to spend money to have the smartest, most productive children possible.
We know that educating children, nutrition programs, healthcare including mental health, before and after school programs, and access to college or trade schools is expensive. How much the new DACA orphans will cost the U.S. remains to be seen, but projections are that it will be very expensive.
In fact the cost to separate, and/or detain, and deport people, as well as raise children in the foster care system may prove to be one of the costliest mistakes of the Trump administration.
Inexperience about how the immigration system works and prejudice against immigrants, may have caused the perfect storm of bad decision making by President Trump, Jeff Sessions, John Kelly, Stephen Miller, Kirstjen Nielsen, and whoever else was involved in crafting the Zero Tolerance policy.
According to a former immigration officer, “It’s a shame that they didn’t look for better alternatives before making the immigration system worse, because if they appreciated the value of immigrants to this country, they would know that it was immigrants who made this country great, and future immigrants who will ‘make America great again,’ if given the opportunity.”
However, since fear, hatred and prejudice appear to be blinding the Trump administration, and Congress won’t act, we can expect the current immigration policies to continue, until Americans get fed up and vote them out.
In the meantime, we can expect the DACA debacle to continue, and likely worsen in the near future, as the Zero Tolerance policy unfolds.
Related audio/video interview recording:
Latest CBS update at end of 2021:
CBS News, Camilo Montoya-Galvez, December 23, 2021 U.S. Shelters Received Record 122,000 Unaccompanied Migrant Children
Other related articles you may be interested in:
CBP in depth apprehension statistics:
CBP Releases June 2022 Monthly Operational Update, July 15, 2022
Helen’s Place LLC, September 16, 2018, Solution to Illegal Immigration Right Under America’s Nose
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