April 6, 2009
About four months ago I worked on story for a reporting class that dealt with immigration reform, and this weekend I found myself thrown back into the complexities of the immigration issue.
Saturday afternoon I had the opportunity to attend an informal speech by Rosa Clemente, who is a grassroots advocate and the director for Amnesty International’s Immigrants’ Human Rights Campaign.
Clemente, who was a vice presidential candidate for the Green Party in 2008, came to OU as part of Amnesty’s statewide conference and spoke to the attendees about how the current immigration system is failing our country.
As I listened to Clemente speak about the human rights violations being committed against undocumented immigrants, I couldn’t help but think of a little girl named Jamie, who I met a few months prior and is the daughter of Guatemalan immigrants.
Her parents have lived in the United States for over 17 years and have had six children, all of which are fluent in Spanish and English.
Although the children are all legal citizens, entitled to the same constitutional rights as every other citizen, the parents were not.
Maritza, Jamie’s mother became a naturalized citizen almost a year ago, but her father was not as fortunate.
Jamie’s father, who was undocumented, was picked up by officials and deported last January and taken back to Guatemala, leaving his wife to fend for her six children both financially and emotionally.
Maritza refuses to go on welfare and supports her family by working two jobs to make life as normal as possible for her kids while their father is gone for an undetermined time.
But for Jamie, a 14-year-old soccer enthusiast and basketball lover, her mother’s efforts to sustain normalcy, although well-intentioned, do not dismiss her father’s absence.
Jamie told me she often cannot sleep at night because she is either worried about her father who is thousands of miles away, or she is worrying about her mother, who is constantly trying make ends meet.
Maritza said it could be years before her children see their father again because of current policies not allowing deportees to apply for re-entrance into the country.
While Clemente spoke this weekend about how immigrants are affected by the current immigration policy, I could not help but picture Jamie’s face and the sorrow she expressed when she shared with me how much she missed her father.
Jamie found herself a victim of a system that tears apart U.S. citizens from their families, thus breaking the foundation that the United States government claims to be the backbone of the nation, the family.
But tearing apart the family unit is not the only potential effect of the current immigration policy.
According to a report released by Amnesty International last month, illegal immigrants can be detained for extended periods of time without effective judicial review. The report, entitled “Jailed Without Justice,” highlights several instances of undocumented immigrants being physically and verbally abused while being detained for prolonged periods of time.
This occurs despite Article 9 of the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which states, “Everyone has the right to liberty and security of person. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest or detention.”
Clemente referred to several instances in the report creating her case for immigration reform, but for Jamie, her father’s absence is reason enough for a change in current policy.
To view a slideshow of Jamie and her mother click on the link here.
— Cadie Thompson/The Daily
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