Artifact Four: "Shattered Families"

In The Distance Between Us Reyna Grande, the author of the novel, was abandoned in Mexico while her parents went to El Otro Lado (the United States) in search of work. She spent several years living with her crazy grandmother and two siblings in the poorest part of Mexico, before her father eventually came to collect her. The article Deportation's Forgotten Children describes a similar situation, with one major caveat: instead of the children being left in a foreign country by themselves, it's their parents that are shipped off to live who-knows-where. 

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A recent study found that 5,000 children of deported immigrants are in the foster care system. If the current trend continues that number will triple to 15,000 in the coming years. Sadly, many of these children's parents weren't even allowed to make decisions regarding their children's caretakers before being shipped of to who-knows-where. If the statistic that it costs around 25,000 USD to keep a child in the foster care system for a year is true, that means we could be unnecessarily spending over one-hundred and twenty-five million USD a year keeping these children in the foster care system.  

Last year, a new act introduced in Congress tried to change all that. The Help Separated Families Act seeks to make it harder to terminate the parental rights of illegal immigrants who've been deported and also seeks to place children with the best guardian for them, no matter what that person's immigration status it. Personally, I fully agree with this act. It seem silly to me that we're wasting so much money putting children in the foster system when there's a good home out there for them. Also, I would like point out that many children in the foster care system end up troubled adults, something I doubt most people want this country to be full of. 

In the end, separating families is always a bad idea. Children need a constant figure of love and guidance in their lives, or else they're never able to get rid of the feeling of abandonment. Take my own grandfather for example. Since his mother and father were working full time running a successful business they had to hire a nanny to take care of him. However, the nannies always quit early on, or, if they stayed, never showed any love or affection to my granddad. Throughout his entire life he was never over to get over the feeling of being abandoned, which let to alcohol abuse later in life. Because he drank so much, all of his children grew up hating him. Today he spends all his time alone and sick in an empty house, with nobody to love him.

I wouldn't wish my grandfather's fate upon anyone; and I hope you wouldn't either. For the sake of our country, let's try keep families united and children out of the system. It's good for everyone. 

If you're interested, here is the article I read: LA Time Deportation Article