Wyzga On Words

Who Will Speak For The (Illegal) Children?

  Imagine that you are 6 years old, do not speak English, are wearing clothes a few sizes too big for you and a sign around your neck that reads "Juan" which is your first name, and you are in a court of law alone - except for the social worker who cannot represent you.

    What is your crime?  You and your parents risked the uncertain dangers of a trip from your home to the United States to escape the certain dangers of the gangs, drug traffickers and other criminals that terrified that life.  You are illegal.  Now you have to answer for that decision.

    Julia Preston writing for the NYTimes, "More Young Illegal Immigrants Face Deportation," pulls back the curtain on a side of life many of us know nothing about: deportation of children without legal representation.  Excerpt.

"Immigration courts in this South Texas border town and across the country are confronting an unexpected surge of children, some of them barely school age, who traveled here without parents and were caught as they tried to cross illegally into the United States.

The young people, mostly from Mexico and Central America, ride to the border on the roofs of freight trains or the backs of buses. They cross the Rio Grande on inner tubes, or hike for days through extremes of heat and chill in Arizona deserts. The smallest children, like Juan, are most often brought by smugglers.

The youths pose troubling difficulties for American immigration courts. Unlike in criminal or family courts, in immigration court there is no right to a lawyer paid by the government for people who cannot afford one. And immigration law contains few protections specifically for minors. So even a child as young as Juan has to go before an immigration judge — confronting a prosecutor and trying to fight deportation — without the help of a lawyer, if one is not privately provided.

So far this year, more than 11,000 unaccompanied minors have been placed in deportation proceedings, nearly double last year’s numbers.

Young migrants say they are fleeing sharply escalating criminal violence in their home countries. Federal agencies have scrambled to muster adequate detention facilities, while legal groups try to find lawyers to represent them. Judges, for their part, have struggled to offer fair hearings to penniless youths who speak little English and often do not even understand why they are in court.

The influx has heightened concerns that young people without legal help may not be able to obtain even the most basic justice.

“It is almost impossible for children to receive relief in immigration court on their own,” said Meredith Linsky, the director of the South Texas Pro Bono Asylum Representation Project, known as ProBAR, a nonprofit organization that defends young migrants in the region. “The reality is they cannot comprehend the system and what is being asked of them.”"

    Say what you will about immigration.  These are children.  What kind of justice is this? 

    Law firms seeking opportunities for pro bono efforts may well look to these cases.  The American Society of Trial Consultants Pro Bono Committee would be a good place to get some assistance. 

    For those asking what's the use of one case among so many, here's one story with one happy ending: a chance to work, to contribute, to serve.  Who are we to say "no" to such determination.?  Excerpt.

"Sometimes, a Victory

When children appear in court without lawyers, it can be distressing for them and for judges. One judge tried to put a boy at ease by asking playfully to share a bit of the child’s lunch. Thinking that he was supposed to have brought food for the judge, the boy burst into tears.

Migrants who have gotten help from lawyers have won immigration cases they could never have attempted alone. Eduín Rodríguez, now 18, was abandoned by both parents in Honduras. He rode the tops of freight trains across Mexico and swam the Rio Grande to Hidalgo, Tex.

Caught and sent to a shelter, Eduín made contact with ProBAR lawyers, who realized he was a strong candidate for a special immigration status for abused or neglected juveniles.

The legal battle wound from immigration court to Texas family court and back to immigration court. By the end, not only Eduín had won a permanent resident’s green card. The lawyers also discovered that his sister, Cintia, who is one year older, had made the same journey before him and was living illegally in Texas. Through Eduín’s case, she also became a legal resident.

The siblings support themselves on their own in Harlingen. They share a small apartment, and Eduín has been working full time, helping his sister while she went to school. Cintia graduated from high school in May with honors and also completed a nurse aide program at a local community college.

“I left Honduras because I didn’t want to be a loser,” said Cintia, who is now working part time at a supermarket while she continues her nursing training. She plans to enlist in the Navy.

“It really was worth it,” Cintia said, “all the pain I went through, the hunger on the trip, the thirst. I’m a successful person now because I graduated and I’m going to college.”

Flashing a smile, she displayed her most vital documents: her Texas nurse aide certificate and her green card.

“Thanks to God I’m here legally,” she said.""

8 Pictures 8 Stories About What a Two Year Deferral Means To 8 Illegal Immigrants.

There is so little over which we as children had control: in many cases our parents determined our religion, our schooling, our neighborhood, our friends, our activities, our gender, our dreams, our aspirations, and so on.

Children whose parents brought them to this country are no different except that their parents' decision created a status of illegal immigrant for many of them.   

Recently I was having dinner with some acquaintances. Over the hours we chatted about this and that.  Toward the end of the evening someone remarked about the various negative changes in California, and that they were looking to relocate.  

Another person commented about the browning of California.  And yet another supported Arizona's efforts to profile the people in its state.  Talk got a little snarkier: how "they" were taking over our Land of Milk and Honey, depleting the limited resources, not paying taxes, and sending what money they earned back home to families.

I asked if anyone had read about the multitudes of young men and women who crowded Chicago's Navy Pier with sheaves of documents in their arms, ready to prove to anyone who asked that they had the credentials necessary to apply for the new two-year deferral so they could go to school earn a living, contribute to the economy, be a real part of their adopted country.   No, they had not; but one person suggested that with so many of them assembled in one place someone should have rounded them up and sent them back to where they came from.

Everyone at that table had grandparents who came from somewhere else.  Our families tell stories about the losses and the gains when you leave home for another home.  I am reminded of my grandmother leaving her village in Poland at the age of 16, arriving in Chicopee, MA speaking only Polish but willing to work at whatever job she could find. 

Some days I cannot imagine moving to another state in these United States - never mind to another country with its language, geography, social structure, customs, rules, requirements, and so one.  It takes a certain courage. 

Click here to watch the slide show and read the stories of some of the first 1,500 people who were able to have their applications reviewed by volunteers.  Ask yourself, "Which story isn't like mine?"

When Japanese-Americans Were Forcibly Removed From Bainbridge Island, WA

My sister, Michele, pointed out the spot where they were completing the memorial on Bainbridge Island, WA when we went hiking with the dogs.  The cedar and stone wall would memorialize yet another chapter in our nation's less-than-stellar history surrounding "The Other" when Bainbridge Island was used as a test center for evacuations of the Japanese-Americans up and down the West Coast.

I took note of it.  I had been to the desolate Manzanar relocation camp in California.  Yet, the site and what it stood for seemed strangely removed from present history.

What made it strikingly personal to me was Katherine Q. Seelye's recent article in the NYTimes, "A Wall to Remember an Era's First Exiles."  Why?  Something about the universal story Seelye told coupled with phtos of Americans tredding over a bridge to a ferry, tags dangling from buttonholes on their coats like items for shipment.  Even the babies were tagged.

They were given a few days to pack up what they could carry before being marched away from their homes by American soldiers carrying bayoneted rifles.  But for the pine trees framing the island the photos could have been taken anywhere in Europe as the Holocaust was ferrying Jews, Poles, Gypsies and homosexuals to camps.

One photo in particular tugs at my heart.  I can't read the mother's (Fumiko Hayashida) expression.  Is it resoluteness, dignity, fear?  Excerpt.

"A famous photograph of her by The Seattle Post-Intelligencer was one that has come to symbolize the internment. The camera caught her on March 30, 1942, clutching her daughter, Natalie, then 13 months old. A stylish hat was perched, incongruously, on her head, and identification tags hung from their coats. They were labeled as if they were baggage, ready for shipment."

How is it possible that we allowed hysteria to become the justification for forcibly removing our own people...

"...., when American citizens were exiled from their homes and incarcerated, without due process, by the United States government because of their ethnicity."

Yes, the United States apologized.  Yes, the United States sent letters and money to those where were exiled.   Yes, we have another memorial wall.  But these tokens were offered because at a time when we as a nation were not behaving as our best selves, we learned that we can be no better than anyone else out there.

“Nidoto Nai Yoni — Let It Not Happen Again.”

 More photos.

Then As Now: Many Are Still Unequal In the Courtroom

 

My question is: "If she was really looking what would she see?"

Wendy Parker's Law Review article for Wake Forest School of Law, "Juries, Race and Gender - A Story of Today's Inequality," helps answer the question.   If you're the wrong color your chances are less at trial success if you are claiming employment discrimination.   Abstract.

Abstract:     
The Civil Rights Act of 1991 was supposed to be a victory for employment discrimination plaintiffs – a dramatic expansion of their rights. Twenty years later, however, we are told that the news for employment discrimination plaintiffs has gone “from bad to worse.” This essay, a reflection on the twenty-year history of the 1991 Act, explores how just how bad it is. In doing so, this essay discovers some optimistic news (but not much): Plaintiffs today are more likely to win at trial than before the 1991 Act. This is likely because of the 1991 Act’s expanded right to a jury trial. Yet, this is not a story of optimism – or equality – for all plaintiffs. The essay’s original study of 102 jury trials reveals that some plaintiffs do much worse than other plaintiffs. African Americans and Latinos claiming race discrimination, for example, have the lowest jury win rates. Many who study jury behavior would have predicted this outcome. From this, the essay argues that the evidence is strong that the status quo is not race neutral, and neither are juries."

You can download the article here:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1851465

You can examine the data here:
http://users.wfu.edu/parkerwm/juries/

Lawyers, Lovers, Generals: Genocide & Immigration

I believe the longest I have ever walked in one day was 30 miles for a fundraiser when I was in college.  At the end of the day I had a warm dry bed to sleep in and my boyfriend brought us roast beef subs for supper from Nadeau's down the road.

I believe the longest I have ever trekked overall was two weeks, on two separate Outward Bound excursions.  One trip I climbed with a 50 pound backpack into the Rocky Mountains.  On the other I paddled a fully loaded kayak along the coast of Mexico.  Both trips were physically difficult and challenging.  But they were taken by choice - my choice.  During the day I had decent food to eat, clean water to drink, and liberty.  At night I slept on the ground, either on sandy beaches in Mexico or in meadows and on cliff outcroppings in Canada; but I was not afraid.

In my wildest dreams (or nightmares) I cannot imagine walking 1,000 miles across the sub-Sahara to escape a bounty placed on my head simply because of my gender or my beliefs, and joining me a column of children stretching out a full mile.  Here's what Wikipedia says about the Lost Boys of Sudan.

The National Geographic documentary about the Lost Boys takes its title, "God Grew Tired of Us," from a comment made by one of these young men.  The idea is that even God turned away from the man-made mayhem of war, genocide, rape, burning villages, and the death pronouncement on the heads of boys.  In a strange way, the story is reminiscent of King Herrod's Massacre of the Innocents.  

"In 1987, Sudan's Muslim government pronounced death to all males in the Christian south: 27,000 boys fled to Ethiopia on foot. In 1991, they were forced to flee to Kenya; 12,000 survived to live in a U.N. camp in Kakuma. Archival footage documents the 1,000 mile flight; we see life in the camp. We follow three young men who repatriate to the U.S. John Bul Dau goes to Syracuse, and by the film's end, becomes a spokesperson for the Lost Boys and Lost Girls of Sudan; Daniel Abol Pach and Panther Bior go to Pittsburgh. All work several jobs, send money back to the camp, search for relatives lost in the civil war, acclimatize to the U.S., seek an education, and miss their homeland."

You can watch the 2 minute trailer or you can watch the film.  Either way, I hope this documentary provokes some thought about how very much we have, and what people will go through for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  Most importantly, maybe it will give us some greater appreciation of how those who come here enhance this country of ours. 

 

Sudanese Expatriates in U.S. Vote for Life After Death

    Imagine this: it's an unusually frigid morning in Nashville, Tennessee.  A man stands in a long line.  He has driven 10 hours from Florida to stand in that line.  Nashville, TN is the closest place to his home in Jacksonville, Florida where he could vote on a referendum whether southern Sudan should be separate and free.

                

    Imagine this: that man joins in Nashville with 915 others from places as far away as Mississippi and Georgia to vote on the referendum. He does it for the millions who died in the bloodshed that swept their country when troops from the north invaded.  Always the same story: someone wants what someone else has.  And yet, for all of that there may be a heartfelt ending.  Read more.

                               
    

    I don't know about this country.  Or how we will fair in the coming months, never mind decades.  But I can tell you that when all else seems hopeless along comes a story to encourage us - to say: when we are our best selves this is what we still stand for.

                                               

    It boggles the mind that some 8,789 Sudanese expatriates who fled their war-torn country for the safety on our shores traveled untold more miles, proved they were from Sudan, received the necessary documents, locked them away for safe-keeping before returning again to one of eight polling places to vote.  

    There is hope that death is not in vain and that this country has one more heck of a good story that it can call its own. God Bless America.

                                   

    

On Immigration

Here's what I know about my paternal grandparents:

Helen left a small village in Poland in the late 1800's.  She sailed alone to the US when she was just a girl of 15 or 16 years of age.  She came looking for a job because there were none in her village.

We believe Helen landed in Chicopee, MA and made her way to Trenton, NJ, where she met and married Stanley, a mill worker.  Together they raised 11 children and took in orphans from the 1918 Influenza Pandemic. All six sons served in WWII - in the Navy - and all six returned home. They went on to raise their own families. My father, Gabe, is the one remaining sibling.  My own years serving as an officer in the USNavy Nurse Corps can be traced back to their service in our country's military.

Here's another story of a woman who came to this country looking for a job. The NYTimes reported yesterday that Arizona is leading a coalition to create 2 classes of birth certificates.  Excerpt.

Of the 50 or so women bused to this border town on a recent morning to be deported back to Mexico, Inez Vasquez stood out. Eight months pregnant, she had tried to trudge north in her fragile state, even carrying scissors with her in case she gave birth in the desert and had to cut the umbilical cord.

“All I want is a better life,” she said after the Border Patrol found her hiding in bushes on the Arizona side of the border with her husband, her young son and her very pronounced abdomen."

Yesterday, state lawmakers from a handful of states stood up at the National Press Club and declared their intention to change the interpretation of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution so that children born in the United States would no longer be automatically granted citizenship.

I know it's risky to take a stand on many things. Especially in a public forum. But if you asked me here's what I would say: the minute you build a ten-foot fence, someone is going to sell an eleven foot ladder. Last time I checked I have one in the garage, and I'll give it to you. I think Helen and Stanley would have wanted me to.