SAALT Spot Blog

Undocumented Immigrants, Children and CCPA

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Check out this piece from Lavanya Sithanan­dam, pedi­a­tri­cian and trav­el doc­tor in Tako­ma Park and SAALT Board mem­ber about undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants, cit­i­zen chil­dren and the Child Cit­i­zen Pro­tec­tion Act:

The non-par­ti­san Pew His­pan­ic Cen­ter released a report yes­ter­day enti­tled ‘A Por­trait of Unau­tho­rized Immi­grants in the Unit­ed States’ .  The report reveals that 4 mil­lion Amer­i­can chil­dren in the Unit­ed States have at least one undoc­u­ment­ed par­ent, which is up dra­mat­i­cal­ly from 2.7 mil­lion chil­dren in 2003.   Chil­dren of unau­tho­rized immi­grants now account for about one in 15 ele­men­tary and sec­ondary school stu­dents nation­wide.  One third of these chil­dren live in pover­ty and close to half (45%) of these chil­dren are with­out health insur­ance.

As a prac­tic­ing pedi­a­tri­cian in Tako­ma Park, MD, these sta­tis­tics are more than num­bers to me.   Some of my patients that I treat in my own office are includ­ed in this data.  What these per­cent­ages and sta­tis­tics do not con­vey is how deeply entrenched these chil­dren and their fam­i­lies have become in this coun­try.  Despite this, I have noticed a dis­turb­ing trend over the past two years, with a grow­ing num­ber of my patients hav­ing to deal with the deten­tion and pos­si­ble depor­ta­tion of a par­ent, friend, or neigh­bor.  This is a night­mare sce­nario for any­one to have to cope with, let alone a young child.

In response to this sit­u­a­tion, I have been work­ing with SAALT and sev­er­al oth­er non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tions such as Fam­i­lies For Free­dom to shed light on the plight of such chil­dren and to help them stay unit­ed with their fam­i­lies.   This week is a ‘Week of Action’ in sup­port of HR 182 or the Child Cit­i­zen Pro­tec­tion Act, which will give immi­gra­tion judges dis­cre­tion in depor­ta­tion cas­es involv­ing the sep­a­ra­tion of fam­i­lies with chil­dren who are U.S. cit­i­zens.    Cur­rent­ly, judges have their hands tied and are forced to deport many par­ents unless they meet an ‘extreme hard­ship’ stan­dard–  a dif­fi­cult stan­dard for most to meet.  I ask that you call your local con­gress­men and ask them to sign on to this bill.  Also please try to doc­u­ment any expe­ri­ences that you may be fac­ing with the deten­tion and/or depor­ta­tion of a loved one.  In my own prac­tice I am ask­ing my patients to draw pic­tures of bro­ken hearts (like the one above) to rep­re­sent the pain and suf­fer­ing these fam­i­lies endure when one or both par­ents are deport­ed.   I hope to show these draw­ings and let­ters that I col­lect to my local rep­re­sen­ta­tives as part of SAALT’s annu­al advo­ca­cy day next week.

Tako­ma Park Pedi­atrics Patient, Age 7

Also, check out Dr. Sithanan­dam’s excel­lent Op-Ed pub­lished in the Bal­ti­more Sun.

Daily Buzz 4.9.2009

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1.) Oba­ma Adm­nis­tra­tion: Anju Bhar­ga­va, Eboo Patel join a Pres­i­den­tial Coun­cil

2.) Con­flict Over Space: Kore­ans and Bangladeshis Vie in Los Ange­les Dis­trict

3.) Sikh Coali­tion Reports on US Army Deny­ing Sikh Men the Right To Serve

4.) Vio­lence, and Change, from With­in: Piece on Anti-Domes­tic Vio­lence Mus­lim Group

5.) The Dark Twin of Our Amer­i­can Dream

Another Immigrant Death in Detention–New York Times

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I was sent this arti­cle from the front page of the New York Times about anoth­er death in immi­gra­tion deten­tion, this time in New Jer­sey. The heart­break­ing sto­ry, which high­lights the dif­fi­cul­ties in even find­ing an accu­rate account­ing of the deaths that have tak­en place in immi­gra­tion deten­tion. Ahmed Tan­veer’s death was record­ed in a hand­writ­ten note of a fel­low detainee and it took the per­sis­tent efforts of civ­il rights and civ­il lib­er­ties groups and aci­tivists to get details about the case or to even get con­fir­ma­tion that the man had been impris­oned and died while in cus­tody from the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty. Read the whole sto­ry at <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/03/nyregion/03detain.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&hp>

Daily Buzz 3.27.2009

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1.) Hin­du Caste Sys­tem Plays Role in Some Indi­an Church­es

2.) Aish­warya Rai Bachchan = The New Face of Bar­bie (lit­er­al­ly)

3.) The Third Most Pow­er­ful Woman in the World: Indra Nooyi

4.) New Study: Chica­go Cab Dri­vers Income a Pit­tance

5.) Young Indi­ans Say No Thanks to Amer­i­can Dream

JACL/OCA Leadership Conference: An Intern’s Eye View

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Anoth­er post from our intern, Poon­am Patel, about the JACL/OCA Lead­er­ship Con­fer­ence that took place in Wash­ing­ton, DC two weeks ago:

Ear­li­er this month, I had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to par­tic­i­pate in the Japan­ese Amer­i­can Cit­i­zens League /Orga­ni­za­tion of Chi­nese Amer­i­cans Lead­er­ship Con­fer­ence held in Wash­ing­ton DC. It was a unique oppor­tu­ni­ty to meet with oth­er Asian Amer­i­cans who had a vest­ed inter­est in learn­ing about polit­i­cal and civic issues fac­ing the Asian com­mu­ni­ty as well as devel­op­ing inno­v­a­tive ideas to address them.

Most of our time dur­ing the con­fer­ence was spent lis­ten­ing to a wide vari­ety of speak­ers that includ­ed WWII vet­er­ans, pro­fes­sors, com­mu­ni­ty advo­cates, Con­gres­sion­al mem­bers and staffers, as well as eth­nic and main­stream jour­nal­ists. Although each of the speak­ers came from dif­fer­ent back­grounds and fields of work, their mes­sage was har­mo­nious to some extent. Almost each mem­ber of every pan­el spoke about the impor­tance of our community’s mem­bers rep­re­sent­ing our community’s issues.

Deepa Iyer, SAALT’s Exec­u­tive Direc­tor spoke on the pan­el titled “Biased Based Inci­dents in the Minor­i­ty Com­mu­ni­ties: His­to­ry to Today” dur­ing which she went through a brief his­to­ry of South Asians in the Unit­ed States fol­lowed by a dis­cus­sion relat­ed to bias inci­dents with­in the South Asian pop­u­la­tion, espe­cial­ly fol­low­ing the 9/11 back­lash.

In addi­tion to these pan­els, we were giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to dis­cuss with each oth­er devel­op­ment and out­reach ideas in an attempt to build clos­er ties with local OCA and JACL chap­ters as well as oth­er Asian Amer­i­can orga­ni­za­tions. Each evening we spent vis­it­ing a local land­mark such as the Smith­son­ian Muse­um and Nation­al Japan­ese Amer­i­can Memo­r­i­al to Patri­o­tism Dur­ing World War II after which we had din­ner at a local restau­rant.

The DC Lead­er­ship Con­fer­ence was an ide­al forum to con­tin­ue build­ing coali­tions amongst orga­ni­za­tions work­ing with the Asian Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ty by fos­ter­ing rela­tion­ships between the lead­ers with­in them.