An article by Nina Bernstein in the New York Times, Judge Keeps His Word to Immigrant Who Kept His, highlights the clash that develops at the intersection of juvenile justice with its rehabilitative emphasis and other areas of the law - in this case immigration.
The teenager, a gifted student, was pleading guilty to a string of muggings committed at 15 with an eclectic crew in Manhattan’s Chinatown. The judge, who remembered the pitfalls of Little Italy in the 1950s, urged him to use his sentence — three to nine years in a reformatory — as a chance to turn his life around.
“If you do that, I am here to stand behind you,” the judge, Michael A. Corriero, promised. The youth, Qing Hong Wu, vowed to change.
Mr. Wu kept his word. He was a model inmate, earning release after three years. He became the main support of his immigrant mother, studying and working his way up from data entry clerk to vice president for Internet technology at a national company.
But almost 15 years after his crimes, by applying for citizenship, Mr. Wu, 29, came to the attention of immigration authorities in a parallel law enforcement system that makes no allowances for rehabilitation. He was abruptly locked up in November as a “criminal alien,” subject to mandatory deportation to China — the nation he left at 5, when his family immigrated legally to the United States.
Mr. Wu’s story highlights both a remarkable success in the juvenile justice system and the utter inflexibility of our immigration system, where changes over the past decade have removed the discretion once held by the executive branch to make exceptions where warranted.
Belarus: Children - Children Banned from Travel Abroad
On December 16, 2008, President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus issued a decree prohibiting organized travel of groups of Belarusian children to the United States and member countries of the European Union. Individual travel with the parents or legal guardians is still allowed, if it is not associated with medical treatment. This decision was made immediately after a Belarusian minor, Tatiana Kozyro, refused to return to Belarus from the United States, which she was visiting under the “Children of Chernobyl” program. The program helps children suffering from illnesses associated with the 1986 nuclear incident at the Chernobyl power station to recuperate. The President stated in his decree that after coming under the influence of the Western world, Belarusian youths are induced to lead a depraved life. According to the decree, this ban will improve the country’s image abroad and break the longstanding association of Belarus with the Chernobyl catastrophe that exists in the opinion of the Western public. (Lukashenko Prohibited Children to Travel to Europe, NEWSRU.COM INFORMATION AGENCY, Dec. 16, 2008, available at http://www.rus.newsru.ua/world/16dec2008/noway_print.html.)
An excerpt from a recent post from the University of Houston Law Prof Blog, What should we learn from disasters affecting children?
Together with the ABA, the UHLC’s Center for Children, Law & Policy has published a book on the effect of the hurricanes of 2005 on children. It is filled with interdisciplinary insights about what happened to children in families, foster care, and the juvenile justice and educational systems. Our contributing scholars have a lot to say about how legal deficiencies inhibited the best short and long term responses and about how to achieve better outcomes the next time disaster strikes.
Read the post in its entirety at the University of Houston Law Prof Blog, What should we learn from disasters affecting children?
David B. Thronson, William S. Boyd School of Law, UNLV, You Can’t Get Here from Here: Toward a More Child-Centered Immigration Law, Virginia Journal of Social Policy and the Law, Vol. 14, p. 58, 2006
This article analyzes a serious conceptual flaw in immigration law related to its treatment of children. The extensive integration of immigrants into the broader population of families in the United States contrasts with several characteristics of the legal framework of immigration that create significant barriers to legal immigration for immigrant families. The article reveals how immigration law systemically devalues children and gives rise to a narrow, parent-centered conception of family. The article also uncovers the manner in which the excruciating complexity of immigration law can mask the ways in which seemingly innocuous immigration provisions work together to severely curtail immigration options for families in the United States. It examines the serious social consequences that result when families are unable to regularize the immigration status of all family members. Not only are immigrants and immigrant families marginalized, but citizen children in mixed status families are denied the full social benefits of citizenship as a variety of formal and informal barriers assimilate them to the status of noncitizen. Finally, the article discusses the underlying motivations for the current family immigration system and envisions a more child-centered approach.
The article Children of the State discusses the difficulties faced by Texas’ Child Protective Services when it comes to taking care of undocumented children. While child welfare is handled by the states, immigration is handled by the federal government, leading to conflict when these two spheres overlap. Indeed, new federal rules that are designed to deter illegal immigration have resulted in putting many state caseworkers at risk of fines and/or jail time for removing children who are here illegally from abusive homes. Although these children have often been declared wards of the state by the courts, the caseworkers can still be charged with “aiding an undocumented alien.”
Differences in opinion between the federal government and the state exist with regards to the federal government’s rule that undocumented children must pass a “mental health stability assessment” in order to obtain residency in the United States. Unfortunately, many children taken by CPS fail these assessments since they often suffer from emotional trauma due to abuse. Texas and the federal government also argue over the placement of undocumented immigrants in federal detention centers where the state lacks authority. The T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Texas became the focus of litigation last year regarding the poor living conditions there; children are treated like prisoners and forced to wear prison clothing.
If CPS decides that a juvenile should not be reunified with his or her family and should remain in the United States, CPS must apply to the federal government to designate the child as a Special Immigrant Juvenile. Unfortunately, states have little incentive to do this since they must cover all the costs of foster care for the child and for filing the paper work with the federal government.
“Children of the State: The feds and Texas quarrel over custody of undocumented kids” (May 16, 2008). Texas Observer. Available at: http://www.texasobserver.org/article.php?aid=2759
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