Impacts of Immigration Family Separated At the Border

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Impacts of Immigration Family Separated At the Border

Student’s Name

Institution Affiliation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Outline

 

1. Introduction
2. Case Study: US immigration plan.
3. Impacts of Immigration family separated at the border.
4. Mental Trauma.
5. Challenges of reunion.
6. High risk of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorders and impaired brain development in children.
7. Increased level of drug abuse.
8. Vulnerability and power relations.
9. High risk of deportation.
10. Conclusion

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Introduction

Immigration has become one of the global phenomena which require immediate attention to curb effectively. Immigration is defined as the movement of people from their home or native country to another foreign country based on various factors. There are economic factors that might trigger a high level of immigration. Such factors include the need to gain an education, better job opportunity, improved standard of living, and higher wage rate, among others. Additionally, other non-economic factors might lead to the immigration process (Enchautegui & Menjívar, 2015). These include political factors, a natural disaster like floods, tornadoes. Others may consist of war, genocide, ethnic cleansing, and persecution, among others. Immigrants tend to become permanent citizens of foreign countries. The present essay will offer an analysis of the impacts of the immigration family separated at the borders.

Immigration Family border separation: Case Study of the USA

In the present essay, a case study of the US immigration plan and separation at the border by Donald Trump administration will be examined. In 2010, an estimation that was done revealed that more than 11.2 million individuals were living in the USA without proper documentation. Additionally, there were 4.5 million children born in the USA, but their parents lacked appropriate documents. They were living in a mixed family status that had different legal grades (Slack et al., 2015). In a further expansion of the case study, the state that was mostly affected by this situation of undocumented immigrants was New York. It had more than 293,000 immigrants belonging to the mix-status. Besides, states like Texas and California were also affected by the fraction of the undocumented population.

After the election of President Donald Trump into the office in 2016, its administration came up with a family separation policy, which aimed at eliminating the massive undocumented immigrants who were living in the United States illegally. In this light, the policy aimed at creating a zero-tolerance for illegal immigrants who were residing in the US (Slack et al., 2015). It even encouraged more stringent regulations that were aimed at eliminating immigration, especially at the Mexico borders. In October 2019, Trump officially began the family separation strategy of stopping illegal immigration.

Under this kind of strategy, the federal authority was separating the children who legally born in the US at the border from their parents or guardians who were illegally living the US. The adults who were found living illegally were prosecuted or held under federal jail. On the other hand, the children were taken away and placed the solemn supervision of the US Department of Health Services (Enchautegui & Menjívar, 2015). This kind of separation was conducted at the border and had great impacts, both on the children and in the adult since there were no specific measures set in place to reunite the family after separation.

Impacts of Immigration Family Separated At the Border

As earlier on stated, family separation at the border caused a lot of effects on the young children and the parents as well. Due to parental love, it usually is excruciating to be separated from your children. The impact includes:

Mental Trauma

This is the greatest impact of family separation that occurred at the border. In this light, the traumatic events and the sad memory at the experience of separation affected the children. They usually suffer from anxiety and other behavioral issues. Besides, their brain development and different cognitive responses may get adversely affected (Slack et al., 2015). After separation, the children are put in place where they can rarely communicate with their parents. Such kind of effects is quite detrimental for their survival since nobody is there to offer them emotional support.

This may trigger a high level of abnormal physiological changes. On the other hand, parents who are separated from their children and taken to jail stand high chances of suffering from the depression and psychotic disorders due to high level of stress, and the lack of assuarity for reuniting. This may make them undergo prolonged stress that may affect their health status.

Challenges of reuniting

This is another impact of such separation done the border. Regrettably, President Donald’s administration has not set in place specific guidelines that can be followed for the parents and their children to get reunited. This kind of situation has posed a lot of mental effects on the parties involved. Besides, when the reunion occurs, family integration may become quite complicated, since some children may tend to forget their parents (Enchautegui & Menjívar, 2015). Besides, some children may fail to recognize their parents after a long period of separation.

This scenario makes the parents experience a hard time while trying to explain to their children what went wrong and how they can overcome that state. Establishing the daily routine and the needs of the reunited family may still become a greater problem (Menjívar & Abrego, 2019). It worth recognizing the fact that court-ordered Trump’s government to reunite most families, but statistics have it that more than 500 children still stay separated from their parents.

Risk of Post Traumatic Stress Disorders and Poor (PTSD) brain development

Family separation has led to children and the parents experiencing PTSD. This because the separation causes a lot of stress, stimulating the part of the brain that arranges things into dangerous and safe not to work correctly. This may trigger things that seem horrible to be more awful, leading to stress conditions. The problem of impaired brain development may be predominant in young children due to adverse psychological impacts and development milestones (Menjívar & Abrego, 2019).

This may affect their intellectual capabilities as they grow from one stage to another. The children may as well feel increased aggression and withdrawal, and this may affect their level of development. Most parents may also experience a lot of anxiety and depression, and this may much attribute to PTSD.

Increased level of Drug Abuse

Out of life frustration and mental trauma caused by family separation, most parents have found themselves under the influence of alcohol and other forms of the drug to mitigate their stress. This has negatively impacted their health status as they cannot adequately contain the situation (Enchautegui & Menjívar, 2015). The alcoholism has created a negative impact on such parents. For instance, continuous consumption of alcohol within such parents had led to their death, and thus they never live to reunites with their children again.

Besides, alcohol-related death has been on the rise in most in the USA due to family separation. This is because some of the parents who are addicted to alcohol may be suffering from chronic related diseases. This increases the chance of their death with a greater margin (Menjívar & Abrego, 2019). The end of influential parents, such as fathers or mothers, may create negative impacts on family since the number of orphan children will increase.

Vulnerability and power relations.

The strict laws on immigration have created power inequalities among various families in the US. In this light, the separated families who are often immigrants have been looked down upon by other stable families in the US. This has made them quite vulnerable to segregation and discrimination from other US Citizens (Menjívar & Abrego, 2019). More often, the immigrant family has often been discriminated due to their inability to speak a common language and lack of a specific community of belonging. This situation has fueled a lot of aggression as well as unhealthy power dynamics, especially from a sponsor – immigrant relations, which is common in the USA.

High risk of deportation

Most of the parents whose children were legally born in the US to face a high risk of deportation after family separation. Sad to note, the illegal immigrants who had their children lawfully born in the US may have their children subjected to a lot of racial segregation and discrimination. For instance, the US children are given a full range of opportunities, whereas the illegal migrants’ children are denied. However, the illegal migrants who survive the wrath of deportation may be forced to go college and learns some skills that will enable them to get some semi-skilled jobs (Suarez‐Orozco, Todorova & Louie, 2018). In other instances, the family separation has led to the violation of their rights, where open discrimination has often been observed, even in the way they are treated in jails where some of them are held as they wait for the court decision.

Conclusion

Just earlier been mentioned, immigration is described as the movement of people from their home or native country to another foreign country based on various factors. Examples of such factors include gaining better education, better job opportunity, improved standard of living, higher wage rates, among others. There are multiple impacts of the immigration family separated at the border. They include heightened risk of deportation, vulnerability and power relations, increased drug abuse, the threat of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorders, and impaired brain development, among others as well described above.

 

References

Enchautegui, M. E., & Menjívar, C. (2015). Paradoxes of family immigration policy: Separation, reorganization, and reunification of families under current immigration laws. Law & Policy, 37(1-2), 32-60.

Menjívar, C., & Abrego, D. (2019). Parents and children across borders. Across generations: Immigrant families in America, 160.

Slack, J., Martínez, D. E., Whiteford, S., & Peiffer, E. (2015). In harm’s way: Family separation, immigration enforcement programs, and security on the US-Mexico border. Journal on Migration and Human Security, 3(2), 109-128.

Suarez‐Orozco, C., Todorova, I. L., & Louie, J. (2018). Making up for a lost time: The experience of separation and reunification among immigrant families. Family Process, 41(4), 625-643.