United Nations: U.S. Immigration Policy Harms Children

[Harold Schiffman]

Learning the Language

Mary Ann Zehr is an assistant editor at Education Week. She has
written about the schooling of English-language learners for more than
seven years and understands through her own experience of studying
Spanish that it takes a long time to learn another language well. Her
blog will tackle difficult policy questions, explore learning
innovations, and share stories about different cultural groups on her
beat.

United Nations: U.S. Immigration Policy Harms Children

Children from migrant families are vulnerable in this country to
having their human rights violated, according to a report released
last month by the United Nations. (Click here for the link to download
the 27-page report, which is at the top of the list. Choose "E" for
English.) About a year ago, Jorge Bustamante, the Special Rapporteur
on the human rights of migrants for the United Nations, visited the
United States to investigate the effects of U.S. immigration policy
and procedures on migrants, including children. (See my earlier posts,
"New Yorker Reporter Writes about Hutto, From the Outside," and "U.N.
Expert Will Look Into Rights, Conditions of U.S. Migrants.") Here's an
excerpt from his March 5, 2008, report (which I just learned about):

The Special Rapporteur notes that the United States lacks a clear,
consistent, long-term strategy to improve respect for the human rights
of migrants. Although there are national laws prohibiting
discrimination, there is no national legislative and policy framework
implementing protection for the human rights of migrants against which
the federal and local programmes and strategies can be evaluated to
assess to what extent the authorities are respecting the human rights
of migrants.
Mr. Bustamante makes a recommendation regarding treatment of
unaccompanied minors (I wrote about this group of immigrant children
for Education Week in November 2006). He says they should be removed
from "jail-like detention centres and placed in home-like facilities."

He mentions education issues briefly in the report, saying that in
some cases, migrants have "limited access to health and education." He
notes how in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the presence of
migrant workers in the Gulf Coast region has created tensions over
language barriers and education.

Mr. Bustamante contends that U.S. immigration policies that result in
the separation of family members are bad for children. He says that
raids by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement authorities have
caused "social devastation" by separating children from parents. He
adds that children whose parents are detained can suffer "trauma and
severe loss from the sudden, prolonged, and sometimes permanent
absence of that parent."

The United States delegation to the United Nations called the report
"disappointing," according to a March 8, 2008, article in the Los
Angeles Times. The article says the delegation pointed out the U.S.
has one of the world's most generous immigration policies and that Mr.
Bustamante's report presents "an incomplete and biased picture of the
human rights of migrants" in the United States.

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/learning-the-language/2008/04/united_nations_us_immigration.html

-- 
**************************************
N.b.: Listing on the lgpolicy-list is merely intended as a service to
its members
and implies neither approval, confirmation nor agreement by the owner
or sponsor of
the list as to the veracity of a message's contents. Members who
disagree with a
message are encouraged to post a rebuttal. (H. Schiffman, Moderator)
*******************************************