Racist U.S. immigration policy breaks up families

As of July, the U.S. government had already deported roughly 90,000 Mexican children and 300,000 adults in 2008, according to a study released by the Task Force on Immigration Matters of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in Mexico’s Chamber of Deputies. Backed by its racist anti-immigration policy, the U.S. government has broken up thousands of families and disregarded the well-being of nearly 100,000 Mexican children.

U.S. immigration policy tears apart families with no concern for the well-being of children.

The report also identifies an alarming three-to-one ratio for adults deported to children left behind in the United States Of the 90,000 children deported from the this country to Mexico in the first half of 2008, 15 percent, or 13,500, live in limbo near the border. Minors with no family in Mexico are left to scrape by on their own. Some are fortunate enough to land on the radars of social service and religious organizations that provide them with some assistance; the rest are left to struggle on their own, ending up begging at best, and often at worst, the victims of traffickers and sexual exploitation.

According to the International Convention on the Rights of Children, repatriation instead of deportation is required when dealing with children. While the U.S. government signed the Convention in 1989, it was never submitted to the Senate for ratification. A policy of repatriation would require the government to return minors to the communities from which they came.

To repatriate minors, though, would cost the government time and money, both resources it would prefer to reserve for various oppressive campaigns, such as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a consequence, children are dumped on the Mexican side of the border. The U.S. government feigns concern for the rights of children when it suits its aims of demonizing governments identified for regime change. In reality, the government ignores the rights of immigrant children as a matter of everyday practice.

In a meeting between Mexican border governors and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, the governors expressed dire concerns over the failure of the DHS to communicate deportation dates and numbers to them, making it virtually impossible for their cities and towns to prepare for the arrival each year of upwards of 35,000 people. The governors expressed additional concern over their receipt of deported “Mexicans” who are actually from South and Central American countries, a fact that serves to highlight the truly racist nature of this U.S. governmental practice.

Socialists call for an end to racist deportation practices! End the U.S. government’s callous disregard for immigrant children!