The Trump administration is gagging America’s immigration judges

The change comes at a time when the perspective of immigration judges would be particularly valuable to the public.

For more than two years, immigration judges have been subject to a policy that more or less prevents them from performing an essential part of their civic duties: speaking publicly about their work.

Since September 2017, immigration judges and all other employees at the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review have been required to adhere to an onerous pre-approval process whenever they desire or are invited to speak publicly on any issue, immigration-related or not. I learned of the policy through a Freedom of Information Act request my colleagues made to the department, as part of an investigation I’ve been conducting on the intersection of free speech and U.S. border enforcement.

It is not uncommon for government agencies to set rules on employee conduct and outside activities. But the perspective of immigration judges is particularly valuable to the public, especially one grappling with complicated questions about America’s immigration laws. In his 2019 year-end report on the federal judiciary, Chief Justice John Roberts commended American judges who, “without fanfare or acclaim,” take time to reach out to their communities in all sorts of public-education initiatives. As Ashley Tabaddor, the president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, told Congress in 2018, immigration judges “help the community better understand our immigration courts and their function in the community, helping to demystify the system and bring transparency about our operations to the public.”

LOREN ELLIOTT / REUTERS

Although immigration judges are employees of the executive branch, they’re judges in the truest sense of the term, presiding over cases that have enormous consequences for asylum seekers or people facing removal from the U.S. The Trump administration appears determined to remove from the public’s view the very people the chief justice  and Tabaddor believe play an essential role in promoting public confidence in the administration of justice. The Justice Department should heed their call—rescind its misguided policy and let judges speak.

In the 2017 memo, the official overseeing the work of immigration judges, James McHenry III, did acknowledge that “the public has become increasingly interested in hearing about, and understanding, what the agency does and specifically how Immigration Courts operate.” But the policy went on to severely restrict judges’ freedom to speak even in a personal capacity about these matters, requiring them to seek permission through the chain of command. “Supervisors will determine the capacity in which an employee is speaking,” McHenry’s memo stated, thus effectively eliminating a judge’s discretion to speak about immigration in public settings, even with a disclaimer that he or she was doing so in a personal capacity. Supervising judges and other senior employees have it even worse—they are simply forbidden from speaking at public events in a personal capacity at all.

Lawyers at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, where I’ve been conducting my investigation, believe that the policy violates the First Amendment, and in early January issued a letter asking the Justice Department to suspend it. Their reasoning was grounded in well-settled Supreme Court precedent. In the 1968 case Pickering v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court recognized that public employees’ “right to speak on issues of public importance” doesn’t vanish the moment they take a government job. For the government to restrain public employees’ ability to speak, the Supreme Court has said, the Constitution requires officials to show that their interest in restraining speech outweighs employees’ interest in speaking and the public’s interest in hearing what they have to say. “The Government must show,” Justice John Paul Stevens explained in a 1995 case, “that the interests of both potential audiences and a vast group of present and future employees in a broad range of present and future expression are outweighed by that expression’s ‘necessary impact on the actual operation’ of the Government.” That’s a heavy lift.

The Justice Department hasn’t officially responded to the lawyers’ letter. But in mid-January, McHenry’s office did reply in a way: It purported to reissue the 2017 memorandum, calling it “established policy,” and unveiled an online portal through which immigration judges may submit their speaking-engagement requests for approval. According to the department, the new portal was necessary “to provide for more certainty and clarity” for judges, an implicit acknowledgment that the earlier guidance was causing confusion among immigration judges. (The reissued policy hasn’t been made public, but a person familiar with it showed it to me.)

Despite the claim that this was merely a reissuing, the policy did change: It now covers more types of speech. In a footnote, the government says that “speaking engagements” should also be understood to mean “written pieces intended for publication in any print or online media.” In other words, through its pre-approval process, the Justice Department wants to police, and possibly suppress, even more expression by immigration judges.

Under the new guidance, the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) remains the sole arbiter for what counts as official- or personal-capacity speech, with near-total discretion to deny speaking requests through a laborious process that includes layers of review by a judge’s supervisor and three separate offices within the agency. “This process,” the new memo states, “ensures compliance with both the law and agency policy and consistency in EOIR’s communications.” Elsewhere, the policy notes that the red tape for personal speaking engagements is necessary “to determine whether they involve genuinely personal capacity events, whether there are any ethics concerns with the engagement, and whether the engagement will disrupt EOIR operations by requiring the employee to miss work.”

The effect of the restrictions on speaking engagements has been profound, according to representatives for the National Association of Immigration Judges and organizations that in years past have hosted these judges. Before the 2017 policy went into effect, immigration judges routinely spoke at national conferences, law schools, and educational seminars about the intricacies of immigration law and how specific policies played out in their courtrooms. Now organizations such as the Federal Bar Association, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, the Practising Law Institute, and Human Rights First can no longer count on the expertise of immigration judges at their events or trainings. Some of these organizations have turned to relying instead on retired immigration judges, according to Laura Lynch, a senior policy counsel with the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “We have been lucky that retired IJs have been willing to participate,” she told me in an email. Mark Shmueli, an immigration attorney who has organized many immigration conferences, said in an interview that he no longer bothers reaching out to active immigration judges. “We don’t even try any more,” he said. In a later email, he added: “Judges are definitely muzzled.” For their part, a number of law professors from different parts of the country raised alarms in a Slate article about how judges have had to turn down invitations to speak to their students.

Some judges, an NAIJ representative told me, don’t want to go through the trouble of seeking permission from their superiors at the Justice Department—and thus miss out on speaking opportunities altogether. And many of those who do seek permission are denied it, according to records maintained by the union. One judge, for example, was not allowed to speak about the legal standards for asylum at a conference; another wasn’t allowed to speak about the basics of immigration law at an educational conference. Others were denied approval to speak about the duties of judges and the mission of the immigration-court system, and to present at a county-bar meeting about best practices for bringing asylum claims. Pro bono trainings, which aim to teach lawyers how to provide free services to clients who couldn’t otherwise afford an attorney, are also off the table.

Perhaps the most absurd manifestation of the directive is how it prevents immigration judges from officiating at naturalization ceremonies—the pinnacle of the immigration experience for many new Americans. Amiena Khan, the executive vice president of NAIJ and a Manhattan judge, told me that in New York City, immigration judges no longer offer welcoming remarks or administer the oath at these ceremonies. For many judges, she told me, the ceremonies were the highlight of their time on the bench. Reflecting on the years he swore in new citizens, George Chew, a recently retired New York judge, shared with me the message he’d give new citizens: “I remember my standard speech was an exhortation for the new citizens to register to vote. I’d say, Your vote is equal to Donald Trump’s vote,” he told me in an email. As a result of the Justice Department’s policy, these new Americans are now being deprived of these civic reminders from people who have seen firsthand the legal hurdles immigrants face on the path to citizenship.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which conducts administrative swearings-in for new citizens, confirmed with me through a spokesperson that no immigration judges have participated in any such ceremonies “in recent months” in Manhattan, and referred further questions to the Justice Department. When I asked the department about judges’ exclusion from naturalization ceremonies, another spokesperson told me that it “considers requests to administer the oath of citizenship as immigration judges’ schedules permit.” She added that the agency’s “primary mission is to adjudicate immigration cases,” which I took to mean that civic engagement and public education in the immigration realm aren’t priorities.

In my conversations with the immigration judges’ union and the would-be listeners who are affected by this policy, I’ve discovered that just about everyone sees it as an attempt by the Trump administration to control the message—to manufacture the appearance of consensus about the fairness and efficiency of the government’s immigration agenda. But anyone who has closely followed how the Justice Department has tried to keep immigration judges in line knows that that appearance does not square with reality: The abridgment of judges’ right to speak publicly quashes dissent and prevents the public from knowing what is happening at the nation’s immigration courts.

Perhaps the Justice Department doesn’t want judges to talk about how case backlogs have ballooned since Trump took office, to more than 1 million in 2019. Or to be frank about how they are now subject to case-completion quotas that may jeopardize their jobs. Or to explain that the attorney general has the power to overrule immigration rulings that he doesn’t like; that now even a political appointee has the authority to interfere with the adjudication process; and that the government is trying to decertify the immigration judges’ union, which in January appeared before a labor board in Washington to fight for its future.

All of this, and then some, is already in the public record, and judges are uniquely positioned to tell others about it. As Tabaddor, the president of the union, told me recently, the policy was “designed to intimidate and to muzzle anyone that would speak publicly.” That runs counter to America’s commitment to freedom of speech. Immigration judges, more than anyone else in America’s bloated immigration bureaucracy, should be able to speak about how immigration law and policy are shaping the adjudication of cases that come before them.

(Source: The Atlantic)

After 16 years in Japan, Sri Lankan woman still classified as an exchange student

Long-time residents struggling to become long-term residents under ministry's strict rules

Dakshini Siriwardena never expected that the failure of her father’s business in Japan would leave her with no choice but to live here as an exchange student — despite having resided in the country for more than 16 years.

“It’s ridiculous that I had the same education as a Japanese and have grown up in Japanese society, but suddenly I’ve become a foreign student,” the 21-year-old Sri Lankan said.

The legal status of the children of immigrants in the nation is highly dependent on the economic stability of their parents. No matter how long they have lived here, if this stability is threatened, their legal status, too, can be in danger.

Sri Lankan national Dakshini Siriwardena, 21, talks on Skype with her younger sister, Pamalya, who left Japan after her father's business failure, on June 6. | CHISATO TANAKA

Dakshini, along with her mother and two sisters, accompanied her father to Japan at the age of 5. They lived here under dependent visas issued to spouses and children of foreign workers who meet certain requirements.

She attended school in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture, and eventually made it into Chiba University, where she is majoring in comparative culture studies.

But her world was turned upside down in 2017 when her father’s trading company went bankrupt and the Justice Ministry revoked his visa after he was caught working part-time illegally.

Her father, mother and sister Pamalya, 10 years old at the time, were all forced to leave for Sri Lanka.

For just the third time, the Japan-born Pamalya would be returning to her family’s ancestral home, this time to live.

“It was heart-wrenching to see my sister crying as she left for Sri Lanka,” said Dakshini. “She told me that nobody cared about her future. I’m still haunted by those words.”

Sri Lankan national Dakshini Siriwardena, 21, talks on Skype with her younger sister, Pamalya, who left Japan after her father’s business failure, on June 6. | CHISATO TANAKA

No longer able to stay in Japan under a dependent visa, Dakshini and her older sister applied for long-term resident visas the same year, hoping to continue living in the country independently. Eventually, they hoped, they would be able to bring their younger sister back to live with them.

In 2015, the Justice Ministry began issuing long-term resident visas to the children of foreign workers who had been living in the country since at least grade four under dependent visas, provided they meet certain requirements. These include the completion of their primary and secondary education in Japan as well as having a place of stable employment.

The ministry refers to people who meet such conditions as “those who have significant ties to Japanese society” in the document released to local immigration bureaus.

The ministry initiated the project to make children of foreign workers eligible for full-time work after graduating high school, as those on dependent visas are only allowed to work up to 28 hours per week.

But both Dakshini’s and her older sister’s applications were rejected for not meeting the requirement of having a job or a formal offer for one.

“In the case of dependent visas, people have parents whom they can depend on financially, but when it comes to long-term resident visas, they have to be financially independent and prove that they would not be a burden on the Japanese taxpayer, so having a job is a requirement,” Justice Ministry official Naoki Yano said.

The system means that even those with jobs but not high school diplomas — no matter how long they’ve been in Japan — face deportation if their parents decide to leave the country for good.

Take Omit S.K.M., a 21-year-old Bangladeshi who has been living in Japan for more than a decade. He was at risk of deportation when his father’s workplace went bankrupt. Because of the difficulty in finding a new job at his age, his father decided to return to Bangladesh in May last year, leaving Omit in a kind of limbo.

Without a high school diploma, Omit was not qualified for a long-term resident visa even though he had a job offer. In the end, Omit was able to stay in the country thanks to a spousal visa. But before this, he expressed his exasperation with the system.

“I know that not finishing high school is a downside, but I work hard and even have a job offer. And I want to continue working hard,” Omit, who is fluent in Japanese, said before his status was resolved.

Ureshi, his 16-year-old sister, is also ineligible for a long-term resident visa as she is still in high school. But she was lucky enough to find a Japanese guarantor to financially support her, enabling her to qualify for a foreign student visa and continue studying.

According to the Justice Ministry, if foreign workers leave Japan and their children are 17 or younger and wish to remain in the country, the children must find a guarantor who can provide a place to live and support them financially in order to apply for the student visa.

Applicants must also be enrolled at a school with a full-time staff member overseeing foreign students, said the ministry’s Yano.

A total of 182,452 foreign nationals had dependent visas as of December last year. Around 83,000 — about 45 percent — are 18 or younger, most of whom are ineligible to change their dependent visas to the long-term resident status since they have not graduated from high school.

Masaki Akiyama, an administrative clerk who has dealt with Dakshini’s case and five others like hers, believes that, rather than requiring applicants for the long-term residence status to have graduated from high school, the ministry should consider the number of years they have been living in the country.

“I think the cases I’ve been dealing with are just the tip of the iceberg,” Akiyama said. “There must have already been many children of foreign workers who’ve had no choice but to leave Japan.”

Some may believe they’re shoo-ins for permanent residency if they’ve been living here for a long time, but many families have their applications rejected due to low socioeconomic status, Akiyama claimed.

“If a foreign worker is single, the applicant usually has to earn at least ¥250,000 monthly and ¥3 million per year,” he said.

“If the applicant has to support their children and partners financially, those figures are higher.”

The ministry says it does not set any specific income level as a threshold when examining applicants for permanent residency. But, according to Yano, a stable income is the most crucial prerequisite for applicants. Family size, and whether the primary breadwinner is able to support them, are also taken into account, he said.

This has left some children of departed foreign workers disillusioned.

“I speak Japanese fluently and all the friends I grew up with are Japanese,” Dakshini said. “I never thought I was doomed to be in this situation because of my parent’s business failure.”

Under the rigid regulations, Dakshini, who switched her visa status from a family dependent visa to foreign student status to be able to keep studying at university, is also no longer eligible to apply for a long-term resident visa — even if she gets a job offer after graduating.

“My entire history of living in Japan has been erased,” she said. “I feel like I was rejected by the country.”

The Siriwardena family’s story also serves as a cautionary tale for mothers and fathers living in a foreign country.

While those who stay in Japan without their parents risk living on legally unstable ground, children forced to leave with their parents also face challenges in starting a completely new life from scratch.

Pamalya, Dakshini’s little sister, for example, returned to Sri Lanka barely able to speak the language and unable to write it at all.

“Learning Sinhalese is really difficult … so many things happened all at once,” Pamalya said in Japanese. She declined to elaborate further, citing painful memories.

Sri Lankan national Dakshini Siriwardena, 21, talks on Skype with her younger sister, Pamalya, who left Japan after her father’s business failure, on June 6. | CHISATO TANAKA

Hideyuki Taura, a professor at Ritsumeikan University’s Graduate School of Language Education and Information Science in Kyoto, warns that those who are suddenly forced to switch from their first language at an early stage of their lives might end up being “double-limited,” or lacking a high level of fluency in both their native tongue and a second language.

“Those who are double-limited usually can speak both languages fluently at the conversational level, but can hardly comprehend difficult essays and can only write childlike sentences,” Taura said.

Children need to study in their first language until at least grade four to avoid such situations and acquire cognitive academic language proficiency — the essential skills that allow people to communicate using academic language, according to Taura.

Double-limited people have little chance of overcoming their condition unless they are able to re-examine the mistakes made at lower education levels, Taura said. Often, they just try to hide their difficulties and tend to find jobs or schools that fit their cognitive levels.

“I’ve had students who were like that,” he said. “It’s a heavy cross for them to bear forever.”

Dakshini said her little sister is still recovering from the shock two years after leaving Japan.

“She grew up eating Japanese rice, but can barely finish a bowl of local rice in Sri Lanka,” Dakshini said. “Whenever we Skype, she asks me what I ate today and she gets jealous of me eating teishoku (set meals with a bowl of rice).”

Pamalya, now living with her mother, said that she wants to live with her sisters again in the future, if possible.

But that dream appears as far off as ever.

“I’m sad that I can’t live with them anymore,” she said, avoiding Dakshini’s gaze.

“I miss my sisters.”

(Source: JT)

One word: Avareh

I have lived outside Iran, my home country, for almost a decade, and I am yet to know what to call myself.

Australia and the U.S. have been my hosts, so the labels I have at my disposal belong to the English vocabulary: immigrant, exilé, refugee, expatriate. The term “immigrant” derives from the Latin root migrare, which means “to change residence or condition.” In its contemporary usage it refers to someone who has left one nation or territory in order to take residence in another. Exilé, from exul, or “banished person,” is a term for those banished from their native country or community. Refugee, a compound of re and fugere, to flee, describes a person, often violently displaced, seeking shelter outside of their country of origin. Expatriate, literally out (ex-) of the native land (patria), suggests a willing abandonment of one’s homeland.

All these terms have one thing in common: an intrinsic connection to the state. You have immigrant or refugee status only when a state grants it, as though proffering a token of its magnanimity. They also imply that change of status is synonymous with change of nation-state, and takes place only when an established geopolitical border is crossed. So every time one is called an immigrant, a refugee, an exilé, one is thrown into a nexus of power at the center of which the state looms large.

No wonder that, if you are not qualified for any of those labels, in English you are called “stateless.” Also, it is no coincidence that, unlike most English words that have French and Danish and Old English roots, these terms all come from Latin, the language of the Roman empire, probably the first powerful state that excelled at the cruel art of systematic, state-sponsored xenophobia.

In English, the most technically correct description for me is immigrant. I got a visa stamped into my passport, boarded a gigantic Boeing 707, and crossed the ocean to New York City, where I now live and work. But the word doesn’t fit right. It is not capacious enough for what I see as the scope of my experience. I feel the same way about these other terms for people whose movement from one place to another is a central feature of who they are.

For a long time I thought it was my obsessive, sometimes pointlessly defiant mind at work, rejecting the characterizations most people accept without a fuss. But it has dawned on me recently that maybe my obstinacy has a point. Maybe something is wrong with this available vocabulary. Maybe English, the ultimate language of colonial settlers, can’t conceive of a word that could capture what people like me experience. So I went back to Persian, the other language I know, to see if that old tongue of fallen empires and sublime poets had a better name for me.

*

In Persian there is a word, avareh (آواره), which doesn’t have an accurate equivalent in English. According to the Dehkhoda Dictionary, avareh originally meant an iron splinter created as a blacksmith hammers out a horseshoe.

Picture that shard. The mallet hits a small fissure, in the place where the iron is no longer one contiguous piece. The strike forces the shard to fly. It hurtles through the air, lands on a new surface, and cools down into a new reality. This image conveys the initial shock, the jolt, the abruptness of dislocation. Whether you get a visa and sit nervously on a plane bound for a new home, or cross borders on bruised feet, fearing wolves, the gray clouds on the horizon, and the border patrol, it feels like sailing through the air, unmoored, sometimes in frightening free fall.

*

Over time, the medieval Persian Sufis embraced the concept of avareh. At the core of Sufi doctrine lies the notion of the longing soul. The human soul, the Sufis held, lost its unity with the divine and fell upon the earth after the original sin. While the human body may seem contented by earthly possessions, the human soul has never felt comfortable. It has never ceased to mourn the separation and yearn for reunion. The soul is light, predisposed to elevation. It wants to fly in the opposite direction of the Fall and reunite with God.

For the Sufis, an avareh was one who abandoned the comfort of one’s home in a quest to reunite his soul with the divine. In Fariduddin Attar’s Tazkirat al-Awliya, a biography of seventy-two sufis composed in the twelfth century, a pattern can be detected: in the beginning, the Sufi is often an everyman, leading an ordinary life. Then he (and in rare instances, she) experiences a life-changing shock. This can be a brief encounter with a man of God, reading a verse from the Quran, or hearing a saying by Mohammad.

After this transformative encounter, the Sufi leaves home and becomes an avareh in the world. He walks around on foot, often wearing an uncomfortable woolen robe (suf in Arabic means wool, possibly the origin of Sufi), stripped of worldly possessions. In doing so, he attains spiritual strength and sacred knowledge and accumulates disciples and acolytes along the way. That first move, that breaking away from the bodily comfort of home so as to equip the soul with wings that enable it to fly back to an unadulterated, pre-Fall world, was frequently referred to as making oneself an avareh.

As Persian mysticism evolved, the balance tipped from the religiosity of the Sufis of ninth and tenth centuries, like Sahl Tustari and Mohammad Ghazali, to the poetical, symbolic language of Attar and Rumi in twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In this context, the word avareh was used in a different fashion. In the perennial conflict of love and reason in Persian mysticism, avareh, among other things, refers to the shifting state of reason upon the event of love. Reason, confidently exploring the world, loses its bearing when love happens. It is confused and stifled by the intensity of love. Rumi’s ghazals are pervaded with this conflict: “Love arrived and rendered the reason avareh”, “Reason knocked on my door last night/I said push the door open and enter/ it said how can I come in when the house is set aflame [by love].”

*

While the equivalents of words like “immigrant” and “exilé” are now well-established in Persian, the term avareh maintains an all-encompassing function. It experienced a resurgence in the aftermath of the 1979 revolution in Iran, when people fled the brutality of the new regime in droves and formed large communities abroad. In 1983 the great Iranian writer Gholam-Hossein Sa’edi published a short essay titled “Transformation and Emancipation of the Avarehs,” which soon became a classic of Iranian diaspora literature. In his typically vital and dynamic prose, Sa’edi draws a distinction between an avareh and a mohajer (immigrant):

“Avareh doesn’t have a choice. He has to accept any shelter. He is in a jail with great weather and tasty food and nice clothes. He is a stranger, dead inside, lost, tired, perplexed, alien, weak, angry, nervous, quivering. His feet are at the edge of a well and he is constantly wondering why he hasn’t jumped yet […] Immigrant, by contrast, is hopeful. He thinks he has gotten over the shock. He smiles. He jokes. He develops his palate, his knowledge of colors. He takes vitamins to enhance the balance of his body, visits museums, goes to the movies, takes walks, wears ties, whiles away in the parks. He thinks he has put down new roots, not knowing that even the sturdiest trees, once uprooted, are doomed to wither to death.” (Author’s translation)

For Sa’edi, immigrant and avareh don’t constitute a dichotomy. They sit at two ends of a road, albeit one that flows unidirectionally. For him, “One can always travel from immigrant to avareh, but an avareh will always remain an avareh.”

*

Where am I on this path? This is the question I ask myself every day. Sa’edi, an uncompromising avareh in body and soul, drank himself to death in Paris shortly after the publication of his essay. He was forty-nine years old.

I am not that person. And I am too old to romanticize that person. I am too cowardly or too reasonable (take your pick) to indulge in self-destruction in order to make a statement. As I move through New York City’s concrete ecosystem, I unfailingly behave like a good immigrant. I don’t stare into people’s eyes. I make way for other pedestrians, pause at red lights, give up my seat to the elderly in the subway, show up at work on time, and diligently file my taxes far before mid-April.

But in my mind, on the page, it’s another story. My inner self is a product of  multiple universes, several lived experiences. In my skull there is a centipede, each foot stuck in a different reality, many of which are in conflict with one another. When I come to the page, I refuse to resolve this tension. I long to intensify it. I long to brave the terrain that lies between immigrant and avareh.

*

In the end of the essay Sa’edi calls upon the avarehs to find each other: “Avarehs of the world, unite!” He exhorts the avarehs to “remove padlocks from their mouths and scream. They have to scream. This is the time, the season of the avarehs screaming.” For him the avarehs constitute a potent political force.

Which brings us back to that burning metal splinter again, floating helplessly in the air after the mallet’s strike. When it settles on a new surface, cools off, and looks around, everything is new. The city skyline is new. The landscape outside the city is new. The language is new. So is the way people talk, walk, gesticulate, comb their hair, wear clothes, flag down a taxi. The whisper of the water running in the gutter is new. When the wind blows through the trees, the rustle of the leaves sounds like a music the avareh has never heard. The avarehs find themselves in an Adam-and-Eve state.

Acclimatization to a new land is never complete for avarehs. They always have a foot out. They defy total assimilation. They are brimming with freshness, overflowing with new thoughts, new perspectives. They bring life, with all its intensities, to wherever they are. Blessed are the countries run over by avarehs. Cursed are those who lock them up in border camps or let them drown in the sea.

(Source: The Paris Review)

What we deserve

My mother, Dania, is eleven in this photograph. It was taken in the Dominican Republic in 1965, four years before my father married her and then brought her to New York City, separating her from her family. Her parents were the ones who made her do it, though she was still a child. They did it because it would eventually mean the rest of the family could immigrate, too.

FAMILY PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY ANGIE CRUZ

This photograph is one of the few of my mother at that age. She’s wearing her Sunday dress and knee-high white socks. On her left are her three brothers: Rolando, Johnny, and Andres. On her right is her sister, Isabel, smiling, embraced by their father, who looks off in the same direction as the littlest brother. What are they looking at? Who else is there? They are all dressed up, so it’s either one of those rare planned visits or a festive occasion. Perhaps it was one of the many times my father would stop by with his entourage of brothers to woo my mother. On these visits, they were fed by my grandparents, who looked up to the brothers who traveled to New York City to work at restaurants, factories, and hotels. My grandmother would make my mother dress up and sit pretty for him. In this photograph, my grandmother, Leoncia, turns her body away from the camera, looking sternly toward my mother whose body is stiff, her arms long and straight, by her side. My mother’s dress is a little girl’s dress with its high waist, square neck, and puffed short sleeves. The hemline, midthigh, looks like she’s outgrowing it. My mother’s focused, soulful eyes look straight at the camera. What does she know? More to the point, who is she looking at?

*

I was reminded of this picture, and this moment in my mother’s life, the other week when children were separated from their parents in Mississippi during ICE’s largest statewide scoop in U.S. history. Eleven-year-old Magdalena Gomez Gregorio was captured crying on camera, advocating for the freedom of her father, who was taken away along with 679 other undocumented immigrants, many of whom had already established their lives in the United States. She’s wearing a striped pink-and-white T-shirt, her long dark hair pulled back away from her face. A 12 News microphone is recording her, most likely without parental consent. She says to the world about her father, “He’s not a criminal.” When I look at the video of Magdalena, I see a child who needs her parents.


My mother was eleven, Magdalena’s age, when my father first proposed to her, promising her a better life. What did she know? He was old enough to be her father. It’s possible that Magdalena’s father migrated to protect his daughter. My mother’s family was in such desperate financial circumstances that sending her away was better than keeping her, no matter what awaited her in the United States. In a flash, the innocence of both Magdalena and my mother was stolen. They were pushed into adulthood by forces greater than themselves, to fend for their lives.

People judge immigrant parents for putting their kids in danger when they undertake the journey to cross the border. For many years, I vilified my grandmother for marrying off my mother, for not giving her a choice, for coercing her to sacrifice her body, desire, and liberty. She was just a child. But then I think my grandmother was trying to save her. These parents today, like Magdalena’s, make difficult choices for their children.

In 1965, post-Trujillo Dominican Republic, during the occupation by the United States, my mother and her family lived in the countryside, Los Guayacanes. Trujillo’s thirty-one-year dictatorship systemically and culturally encouraged the notion that women are inferior to men. And the vulnerabilities women faced then are still real today. In the Dominican Republic, according to a 2014 report from Centro de Estudios Sociales y Demográficos (CESDEM), 20 percent of teenage girls are likely to become pregnant, and abortion is illegal. If employed, women get paid a fraction of what men are paid. One in three women, according to the UN stats, experience physical or sexual violence in their lifetime, and the fourth leading cause of death is femicide. In 2017, UNICEF reported that one in ten girls are married or living with a partner before the age of fifteen. And World Bank reports that one-third of girls in Dominican Republic are married before they turn eighteen.

What my grandmother may not have known is that for women in the United States, the statistics aren’t much better when it comes to sexual assault, abuse, and violence: one in four girls are sexually abused; one in six women are victims of attempted raper or rape. Machismo in the United States is just as toxic. So why immigrate when it’s clear that immigrant women are vulnerable and largely unprotected no matter where they go?

Because of my mother, everyone in this family portrait immigrated to the United States. My mother, while working full-time in a factory, put herself through college and received a degree in accounting, which landed her a job at a small company where she worked for twenty-five years. My grandmother Leoncia, my grandfather Andres, and aunt Isabel, all worked in factories with health benefits and a union up until retirement. My uncle Johnny trained as a mechanic and received disability benefits until he passed away. The youngest in the photo, Rolando, earned multiple graduate degrees and currently works as a teacher in New York City.

I have an eleven-year-old child. I can’t imagine what it must feel like to have no choice but to give him away, not knowing if or when I will see him again. I can’t imagine what it’s like not to have the power to protect my child.

*

What you cannot see by looking at the photograph:

You can’t hear the merengue or bolero music that undoubtedly plays from a small battery-operated radio. The sweet and rotten smells of passion fruit and mangoes that overwhelm the yard. The burning wood, the roasting potatoes, the faint scent of cow manure, the gamey goats tied up to the fence. You can’t see the hardwood dining room chairs that were brought out from inside so the visitors could sit. The pesky mosquitoes, the chirpy birds, the harsh sun, the thick humid air that makes everything sticky and salty. The tire swings, the rusted bikes, the loud freight trains carrying cane that rolled by the house. The dress my mother is wearing is yellow, not white. It was her one dress, a hand-me-down from her sister. She wore it for every special occasion.

My mother may not have escaped and I didn’t either—we are both survivors of abuse and assault. When my mother thinks about the sacrifices she has made, she says that at least we all have some financial stability and education. Sometimes she tells me things like, “What you can’t see is that we were dying of hunger,” and, “If it wasn’t for me where would my brothers be today?” Often, around the dinner table, when my father’s name comes up, my family will still praise him for saving them from a life of extreme poverty. I have to remind them that it was my mother who did all the paperwork and who saved money for all the immigration application fees.

More than fifty years after the photo of my mother was taken, I look at the video of Magdalena, pleading for help, from us, from politicians, from anyone. I think of the thousands of children being held in detention waiting to see if they will be deported or reunited with their families. So many girls are still forced to grow up quickly and make sacrifices and impossible choices. When you don’t have to look through the lens of desperation, it’s easy to question and condemn these so-called choices, but so often it’s children, girl children, who bear the burden.

*

When I look at this photo of my mother, I might be looking at her look at my father, the man who will bring her to America. I am looking at the eyes of a child who understands she has no choice in the matter. My mother has said that poverty and the will to survive gives you no choice. If it wasn’t my father, it could have been someone worse.

But also, what if she’s looking into the camera, a portal that can see far into the future, and who she is looking at is me? Can she, at eleven, see that one day she will live a life where she is not beholden to any man, that she will raise two children on her own, that her son will study physics and become an IT engineer and her daughter who will become a tenured professor and a published author?

What I wish to say to that girl, my mother as she was then, in this picture:

I am so sorry for all you will lose to give me what I’ve got. I am forever grateful. And still you deserve more. Our girls deserve more. Our children deserve more.

(Source: The paris Review)

Trump official revises Statue of Liberty poem to defend migrant rule change

A top US immigration official has revised a quote inscribed on the Statue of Liberty in defence of a new policy that denies food aid to legal migrants.

The head of Citizenship and Immigration Services tweaked the passage: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free".

The official added the words "who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge".

He later said the poem had referred to "people coming from Europe".

Ken Cuccinelli, the Trump administration's acting head of Citizenship and Immigration Services, announced on Monday a new "public charge" requirement that limits legal migrants from seeking certain public benefits such as public housing or food aid, or are considered likely to do so in the future.

The New Colossus was written by New York-born poet Emma Lazarus in 1883

The new regulation, known as a "public charge rule", was published in the Federal Register on Monday and will take effect on 15 October.

The rule change is intended to reinforce "ideals of self-sufficiency", officials said. Critics argue that it will prevent low-income US residents from seeking help.

What did the official say?
On Tuesday, Mr Cuccinelli was asked by NPR whether the 1883 poem titled The New Colossus at the Statue of Liberty on New York's Ellis Island still applied.

"Would you also agree that Emma Lazarus's words etched on the Statue of Liberty, 'Give me your tired, give me your poor,' are also a part of the American ethos?" asked NPR's Rachel Martin.

"They certainly are," Mr Cuccinelli responded. "Give me your tired and your poor - who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge."

"That plaque was put on the Statue of Liberty at almost the same time as the first public charge [law] was passed - very interesting timing," he added.

The actual passage reads in part: "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

In the interview, he added that immigrants are welcome "who can stand on their own two feet, be self-sufficient, pull themselves up by their bootstraps, again, as in the American tradition".

After the host asked if the policy "appears to change the definition of the American dream," he said: "We invite people to come here and join us as a privilege.

"No one has a right to become an American who isn't born here as an American."

Mr Cuccinelli was pressed later on CNN about his comments, and pushed back on claims he was trying to re-write the poem. He insisted he was answering a question and accused people on the left of "twisting" his comments.

Then asked by anchor Erin Burnett about what America stands for, he said: "Of course that poem was referring back to people coming from Europe - where they had class-based societies where people were considering wretched if they weren't in the right class."

The two then discussed their own immigrant ancestry, with Ms Burnett pointing out his rule would have "excluded" her family.

"I'm here because they were allowed in, and I'm an anchor on CNN," she said.

Beto O'Rouke, a Democratic presidential hopeful from Texas, shared a clip from the interview and said the comments show his Trump administration "think the Statue of Liberty only applies to white people".

This administration finally admitted what we’ve known all along: They think the Statue of Liberty only applies to white people. https://t.co/kTLl50yCmw

— Beto O'Rourke (@BetoORourke) 14 August 2019

Who will be affected by the new rule?
Immigrants who are already permanent residents in the US are unlikely to be affected by the rule change.

It also does not apply to refugees and asylum applicants.

But applicants for visa extensions, green cards or US citizenship will be subject to the change.

Those who do not meet income standards or who are deemed likely to rely on benefits such as Medicaid (government-run healthcare) or housing vouchers in future may be blocked from entering the country.

 Those already in the US could also have their applications rejected.

An estimated 22 million legal residents in the US are without citizenship, and many of these are likely to be affected.

President Trump has made immigration a central theme of his administration. This latest move is part of his government's efforts to curb legal immigration.

What has reaction been?
The Democratic led House Homeland Security Committee condemned Mr Cuccinelli's revision in a tweet, calling the words "vile and un-American".

"It's clear the Trump Administration just wants to keep certain people out," the committee wrote, calling Mr Cuccinelli "a xenophobic, anti-immigrant fringe figure who has no business being in government".

Others pointed to his background as the attorney general of Virginia, in which he led a conservative campaign against immigration and homosexuality.

Asked about Mr Cuccinelli's remarks on Tuesday, President Trump did not directly respond to the Statue of Liberty quote, but said: "I don't think it's fair to have the American taxpayer pay for people to come into the United States."

"I'm tired of seeing our taxpayer paying for people to come into the country and immediately go onto welfare and various other things.

"So I think we're doing it right."

(Source: BBC)

Five immigrant family stories that will change your idea of what it means to be American

How does living in this country and soaking up the American ethos shape the way you raise your kids? Five immigrants tell us in their own words.

When it comes to parenting advice, we Americans love a good import. Our bookshelves are filled with child-rearing manifestos imploring us to ditch our Yankee ways and adopt foreign customs. Our children, we’re promised, will be more patient, like the French; independent, like the Germans; or disciplined, like the Chinese.

But what are American parents doing right? To answer this question, we asked five immigrants living in the United States to share their view of what it means to parent like an American.

A diverse group, they hail from all over the world and have very different backgrounds. Some came here for love or opportunity; others to escape poverty and war. Naturally, their perspectives are largely colored by their pasts, and what they lost and gained by moving here.

We Americans don’t have it all figured out. No country does. Parenting, thankfully, will never be included in the Olympics because there is no one best way to do it. Still, these mothers and fathers can help us remember that there is a lot to feel good about in the U.S. And that yes, our kids will be all right.

Hanna Simmons
Immigrated from Munich, Germany; now lives in Boulder, Colorado
Mom to three daughters, ages 8, 7, and 2

In everyday life, there are not that many obvious differences between parenting in Germany and in America. Differences depend more on parents’ social class, education, and environment. The biggest one is that in Germany, there are government policies that support families, like subsidized child care and longer maternity leaves. It is easier to be working parents in Germany than in America, and there is way less financial pressure.

But one thing that is different, and that I like, about parenting here is that there is more display of national pride. In Germany, because of our history, it is still often frowned upon to state that we are proud to be German. I think it is healthy for children to know where they come from and to express gratefulness for their country, even as they learn about painful aspects of the past.

There is also a heightened sense in America that people can and should make a difference. There are many ways for American children to express their activism and sense of community. It’s not quite as common for kids in Germany to do things like volunteer at a food bank or make their concerns political. On the flip side, here, from the baby years on, kids are bombarded with slogans like “Let her sleep, for when she wakes, she will move mountains,” which I feel puts unrealistic expectations on a child.

Sruthi Chittoory
Immigrated from Bangalore, India; now lives in Atlanta
Mom to one daughter, age 6

Back in India, my husband and I were very social and would mingle with family and friends. I grew up close to my grandparents and cousins, and I have lots of sweet memories from that time. However, everyone was from the same region and followed similar customs.

We moved to the United States in 2013 when my daughter was 4½ months old, and I love how we’ve met all different people. I’ve come to know about so many traditions from all over the world. I’ve tasted some new cuisines, and I now know about different countries. I know growing up here will expand my daughter’s perspective.

But there are positives and negatives to everything. We’re happy my daughter is learning things, but we also tell her, “Don’t forget where you are from; don’t forget who you are. You can adopt new traditions, new religions, but don’t forget our Hindu ones.”

Living in the United States has also affected my daughter’s relationship with her father and my relationship with my husband. In India, we often live with our parents and with our grandparents, sometimes even after marriage. The father is considered the head of the family, so all the important decisions are made by him. Women are responsible for domestic duties and child-care tasks. We depend on our parents for everything until we get our first job, and our parents play a major role in making decisions about our lives, like who we should marry and what we should study in school. This is starting to change in modern Indian culture, but there are still many families like this in rural areas.

But here it is different, and children are more independent and free to make their own decisions from a very young age. In our family, we are now half-modernized and half-traditional. My husband still makes many decisions, but whatever the main decision is, we discuss it together.

Farid Ali-Lancheros
Immigrated from Bogota, Colombia; now lives in South Orange, New Jersey
Dad to 7-year-old boy-girl twins

In Columbia, there is a much bigger focus on discipline. When I was growing up, “Spare the rod and spoil the child” was the credo. My siblings, cousins, and I turned out to be good people, but it came with some trauma.

When I visited Colombia with my family last year, many of my cousins were surprised by my relationship with my kids. They admired how much respect I give my children—how I allow them a long leash to be who they are. I trust my children and they know it.

Because of this, there is a lot more laughter, and a lot less micromanaging. My children know we are the adults, and that they need to respect what we say until they are old enough to make their own, hopefully smart, choices. Still, we are largely a family of equals. They know what they say and what they feel matters—and I believe this is teaching them that they matter. Wherever they go, they should show up without fear and with self-confidence. There is a place and space for them in this world.

Larissa Burnier
Immigrated from Passo Fundo, Brazil; now lives in Beverly Hills
Mom to two sons, ages 8 and 10

What I like most about living here is how well the school systems work. I volunteer in my kids’ classroom and get to see how the teachers are teaching. In Brazil, schools, both public and private, don’t let parents get involved. You just drop your kids off and that’s it.

You also get to know other parents here. And because we live in a place with neighborhood schools, we get to know our neighbors, and the kids play together outside of school too.

Something else I like: American kids get to be kids for a longer time. In Brazil, they mature faster—in the romantic sense. They are more interested in having a girlfriend or a boyfriend than in playing with friends. My son has an 8-year-old friend in Brazil who says he has a girlfriend! Kids there say that word—girlfriend. I like that this doesn’t happen as fast here.

And in Los Angeles, my boys don’t have to be macho. My younger son wanted to play with dolls when he was young, and now he likes to paint his nails blue. I let him do it and go to school. We don’t tell our boys not to cry. We want them to be who they want to be.

Firas Al Rawe
Immigrated from Baghdad, Iraq; now lives in Sterling Heights, Michigan
Dad to two daughters, ages 13 and 10, and one son, age 8

My kids are the main reason I came to America. I wanted to give my daughters a good life. Back home, women are looked at differently from men. Even if a woman has a job, she is not seen as successful. Here, it’s not the same.

I talk to my daughters about this all the time. I tell them to focus in school, get good grades, and graduate. In America, your weapon is your education.

I do worry about them, though. I sometimes find it too open here. Girls have a lot more freedom at age 12 or 13 than they do at home. I always tell my wife to keep close to the girls and never let them grow afraid of her. I want them to be able to talk to us about everything. I want them to choose their way, but I also want to help them choose the right way. I want to make sure they think with the brain more than the heart.

I am a Muslim guy, and in our religion, women are not supposed to go outside, show their hair, or talk to strangers. I am not religious, but I respect my religion and my culture. I also respect other cultures. My eldest daughters love gymnastics, and I take them to class. Back home I would be shamed for this. They would not approve of my daughters’ wearing leotards in public. But I am okay with it. When they do something they love, I feel happy.

(Source: Parents)

‘Children were dirty, they were scared, and they were hungry’

An immigration attorney describes what she witnessed at the border.

Over the past week, reports have emerged of hundreds of migrant children being held in unbelievably harsh conditions at government facilities on and near the southern U.S. border. The stories have shocked many Americans, and led to deep division on the part of House Democrats over how to fund an emergency humanitarian-aid package.

To understand more about this crisis, I called Elora Mukherjee, a professor at Columbia Law School and the director of the school’s Immigrants’ Rights Clinic. She has been working on issues related to the Flores settlement, an agreement that outlines how the U.S. government must care for unaccompanied migrant children, since 2007. Mukherjee has represented and interviewed multiple children and families. She was at the Clint holding facility in Texas last week, along with a group of lawyers and doctors, to interview the children held there. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Lizzie O’Leary: Tell me a little about your involvement and what you saw.

Elora Mukherjee: I have been representing and interviewing immigrant children and their families in detention. Most recently, I was in Brownsville, Texas, interviewing children detained at Casa Padre last July. In March of this year, I was in Homestead, Florida, interviewing children detained there. Both of those facilities were very controversial and have received a lot of coverage. Last week I was in Clint, and the conditions we found were appalling. In 12 years representing immigrant children in detention, I have never seen such degradation and inhumanity. Children were dirty, they were scared, and they were hungry.

An overwhelming number of children who I interviewed had not had an opportunity for a stable shower or bath since crossing the border [days or weeks earlier]. They were wearing the same clothing that they had crossed the border in. Their clothing was covered in bodily fluids, including urine and breast milk for the teenage moms who are breastfeeding.

Nearly every child I spoke with said that they were hungry because they’re being given insufficient food. The food at Clint is rationed on trays. Everyone gets an identical tray regardless of if you’re a 1-year-old, or you’re a 17-year-old, or a breastfeeding teenage mother who has higher caloric needs. The same food is served every single day, and none of the children receive any fruit and vegetables or any milk.

O’Leary: The AP is reporting that the kids in Clint, or at least the majority of them, may have been moved since your visit. Do you have any sense of where they went? Customs and Border Protection (CBP) hasn’t answered my question. [Editor’s note: CBP spokespeople gave varying answers to The Atlantic as to where the children were. Initially, a spokesman said over the phone that they had been moved. Another responded to a second question over email that there were “no updates at this point.” CBP did not respond to a subsequent email asking about reporting that the children had been moved back to Clint.]

Mukherjee: CBP hasn’t answered our questions either. We have learned that same information through the AP’s coverage. We are trying to figure out where CBP is moving the children.

All the children I spoke with had been detained in other CBP facilities prior to living in Clint. So Clint was their second or third stop in CBP custody. And we need to know where these children are going.

The entrance of a Border Patrol station in Clint, Texas, where immigration attorneys interviewed children being held in reportedly harsh conditionsCEDAR ATTANASIO / AP

O’Leary: How was Clint compared with Homestead or some of the other facilities you’ve visited? Was it noticeably worse?

Mukherjee: Yes, it was noticeably worse. When I interview children in detention, I try to sit near them so that we can have a better conversation about very traumatic, sensitive, difficult topics. Usually that leaves the children crying. At Clint, I found that hard to do because there was a stench emanating from some of the children. It was filthy and disgusting and there was, as of last week, a flu epidemic at Clint and a lice infestation. And children do not have the ability to wash their hands with soap at Clint.

We repeatedly begged for access to the medical-quarantine area. We wanted to see the children who were the most vulnerable there. All of our efforts to seek access to the quarantine were denied. We were only permitted to make phone calls to the children there and there was a guard hovering, listening to what the children were saying on the other end of the line when they spoke to us by phone. Obviously it is nearly impossible to conduct an interview with a very young child who is very sick by phone.

The previous week my colleagues from the Flores team were in Ursula [a detention center in McAllen, Texas] interviewing children, and the lawyers and doctor on that team identified multiple infants who were extremely sick and who needed to be hospitalized. Those infants were admitted to the hospital, and some to the intensive-care unit.

It’s worth noting that over the last year, seven children have died in federal immigration custody. When you look at the data for nearly the previous decade, there was not a single death. There was not a single reported death of a child in federal immigration custody.

O’Leary: You’ve been doing this work for a while, and I know that you’ve been asked this question before, but how do these conditions compare to what you saw under previous administrations?

Mukherjee: I have never seen such degrading treatment of children.

I’m a mother myself. I have children who are 3, 6, and 9. I met with children my own kids’ age at the detention center who had no sibling or parent to take care of them. The guards are bringing in children who are 2 years old, 3 years old, and asking children who are just slightly older to take care of them. Actually, they’re not asking; they’re ordering that 7-, 8-, or 9-year-old children take care of 2-year-olds and 3-year-olds.

Obviously, these young children do not know how to take care of toddlers. When an 8-year-old was being interviewed about a 2-year-old whom she was unrelated to and had very little information about, one of the questions that my colleague Warren Binford asked is, “Does this toddler need a diaper?” The 8-year-old responded, “No.” Almost immediately the 2-year-old wet their pants.

O’Leary: You describe talking to kids the same age as your children. What is their comprehension of where they are and what’s happening to them?

Mukherjee: The children are terrified. Many of the children I spoke with have not been permitted to make a single phone call to any of their family members or loved ones since crossing the border. Many of them are being held incommunicado. Everyone who we interviewed, and I anticipate nearly every child who was detained at Clint, has family members in the United States who are desperate to be reunited with their beloved children. Parents who are desperate to get their children back and parents who have no idea how to get their children out of there and the children have no comprehension, no understanding of how they might be able to get out. They don’t understand the process to get out.

O’Leary: What should the process be? Shouldn’t they be under the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) at this point?

Mukherjee: Yes. The Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act requires that children be transferred out of CBP custody within 72 hours. The children are then transferred to ORR custody.

During this entire time, while children are in federal immigration custody, the 1997 Flores settlement agreement applies. It requires the prompt release of all children as quickly as possible. The agreement sets out in very explicit, clear detail that these children need to be released expeditiously, and that is not happening. This should not happen in the United States of America.

O’Leary: Where do you see this going from here? Obviously there was tremendous outcry a year ago, after a lot of the initial reports of family separation, and yet here we are again.

Mukherjee: Yes, here we are again. Family separation—parent-child unit separations—were supposed to have stopped between last June and this May. The government just reported in the class-action lawsuit challenging the family separation policy that more than 700 families have been torn apart. In Clint last week, every child who we interviewed had crossed the border with an adult family member, whether it was a parent or an older sibling or an aunt or a grandmother. Every one of those family units was torn apart by the government.

In terms of what should happen next, we’re calling for immediate congressional hearings on the appalling conditions at the border. We ask everyone, regardless of your political background, to reach out to Congress …  and demand that there be an investigation about the appalling conditions in which children and adults are detained in CBP and ORR custody. This is not how we should be treating people—and especially children—in America.

(Source: The Atlantic)

US says it could take 2 years to identify up to thousands of separated immigrant families

It may take federal officials two years to identify what could be thousands of immigrant children who were separated from their families at the southern United States border, the government said in court documents filed on Friday.

A federal judge had asked for a plan to identify these children and their families after a report from government inspectors in January revealed that the Trump administration most likely separated thousands more children from their parents than was previously believed.

These families were separated before the administration unveiled its “zero-tolerance” immigration policy in the spring of 2018, when nearly all adults entering the country illegally were prosecuted and any children accompanying them were put into shelters or foster care.

Migrants reunited with their children after four months apart waited for
buses in July. A federal judge has said up to thousands more families may
need to be located so they can be reunified.
CreditVictor J. Blue for The New York Times

To identify these families, the government said it would apply a statistical analysis to about 47,000 children who were referred to the Office of Refugee Resettlement and subsequently discharged, according to the court filing. From there, the government said it would manually review the case records of the children who appeared to have the highest probability of being part of the separated families.

Officials estimated that the process would take at least one year and potentially two. In explaining the reason for such an arduous process, the government said United States Customs and Border Protection did not collect specific data on migrant family separations before April 2018.

Lawyers representing the Office of Refugee Resettlement did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Saturday.

In a court filing for the government, Jonathan White, a commander with the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, wrote that identifying this group of children presented new challenges because they were already discharged from the Office of Refugee Resettlement, meaning the government “lacks access” to them.

The statistical analysis was required because manually reviewing the cases of nearly 50,000 children would “overwhelm” the office’s resources, he wrote.

The government’s proposed plan arose from a class-action lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Southern District of California. In June, Judge Dana M. Sabraw ordered the reunification of children and parents who had been separated under the Trump administration policy. President Trump rescinded the policy that same month.

Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, Democrat of Texas, speaking on
Capitol Hill in February about the Trump administration’s separation
policy involving migrant families.CreditJose Luis Magana/Associated Press

About 2,800 children have been reunified with their families or situated according to their parents’ wishes, said Lee Gelernt, who challenged the policy in court on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union.

The January report, by the Office of Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services, revealed that a group of separated families was unaccounted for because the government lacked an effective tracking system. In March, Judge Sabraw ruled that those families should be included in the litigation.

Mr. Gelernt said this identification process should take months, not years. “If the government believed finding these children was a priority, they could do it quicker than two years,” Mr. Gelernt said.

The families the government may now be tasked with locating are those who entered the United States on or after July 1, 2017, the earliest known date that families were separated; were detained by immigration officials; and have a child who was detained and then released to a sponsor, such as a relative, before the judge’s reunification order on June 26, 2018.

When the government previously identified children for reunification, it included only the children who were detained at the time of the reunification order.

Judge Sabraw wrote in his March 8 order that because all of these families had been subjected to the same policies and had been separated under “questionable circumstances,” they should have the same opportunity for relief. Although identifying the families may be burdensome, as the government argued, “it clearly can be done,” the judge wrote.

According to the government’s proposed plan, officials would update the A.C.L.U. about the families’ information after completing the analysis and reviewing the children’s cases. The organization would then use that information to help reunify parents and children.

Mr. Gelernt said a two-year wait to reunite families would be devastating. The longer these children remained separated from their families, he said, the more psychological trauma they would endure. He said the A.C.L.U. planned to argue against the proposed plan in court.

The family separations were a central part of the Trump administration’s effort to deter migrant families from trying to enter the United States through its southern border with Mexico.

Data released last month suggested that the administration’s immigration measures — including the separation policy and attempts to beef up border security and limit who qualified for asylum — failed to deter tens of thousands of migrants traveling to the United States, most of whom were escaping violence and poverty in Central America.

(Source: NYT)

Being Chinese in Pakistan: Between heritage and home

It is early evening and Sally’s* beauty parlour in Rawalpindi is teeming with women undergoing their weekly or monthly beauty regimen.

Switching between Hakka and Urdu, with occasional interjections in Pothwari, the owner of the salon refers to herself as 'local Chinese' or Pakistani-Chinese.

These terms point to the profound ambivalence of Chinese ethnic identity shaped by the political, economic and historical contexts of South Asia.

Being Chinese is understood on multiple levels in Pakistan. Since the advent of projects introduced by the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) in 2013, the visibility of the Chinese in public spaces has not gone unnoticed in the main cities of the country.

Migrants, engineers and entrepreneurs arriving from diverse provinces in China are often thought of as a monolithic group related to CPEC and have come to dominate – numerically as well as in perception – other endogamous ethnic Chinese communities already present in Pakistan.

What is often missing is a more nuanced understanding of the long established community grouped under the term 'Chinese' or 'chini', as well as their unique trajectories that have accompanied Pakistan’s formation.

As a Taiwanese anthropologist who has spent a significant portion of her life outside of the Sinosphere, I am interested in comparative cultural issues related to migration and identity, particularly that of the most extensive and complex one of our modern world: the Chinese diaspora.

Thus began a research project that took me across various cities in Pakistan, where a declining minority of ethnic Chinese families shared with me their lives and experiences that were intimately linked to the development of modern Pakistan.

It is not popularly known that some of the earliest Chinese in South Asia emigrated to Kolkata (then Calcutta) during the British era; in fact, as early as the 18th century.

While successive waves of migration from the provinces of Guangdong, Hubei and Shandong have been traced by contemporary historians, the subsequent trajectories of these migrants in Pakistani territories are rarely examined.

In the wake of the partitioning of India in 1947, the India-China War in 1962 and later the independence of Bangladesh in 1971, ethnic Chinese families found themselves dispersed in different parts of South Asia, gaining recognition and contributing to the economies of each of their localities through restaurants, dentist clinics and beauty parlours.

Moving with Pakistan
The events that unfolded after Partition were a constant home-making project for the ethnic Chinese of Pakistan. While doing field research, I befriend a small Pakistani-Chinese family that has grown up in Rawalpindi and specialises in manufacturing and selling leather shoes.

Much like the majority of Chinese migrant communities in India and Pakistan, they are Hakka – also known as Kejia in Mandarin Chinese – a distinct ethnic and linguistic group dispersed throughout southeastern China, and through their diasporas to Southeast Asia, South Asia and other parts of the world.

Considered to be members of the majority Han Chinese rather than members of an ethnic minority, they speak a Hakka dialect rather than Mandarin Chinese, the lingua franca of the Sinosphere.

For many other Chinese born in India-Pakistan, 'home' has several meanings within this family. Jason’s grandfather, for example, lived in Kolkata in the 1940s, moving to Lahore at the time of Partition.

After opening his first shoe store in Rawalpindi, the indomitable Indian-Chinese entrepreneur proceeded to opening another shop in Murree in 1949. More shops soon branched out through the growing family.

His grandson, whom I’ll call Jason, is part of a generation of young Pakistani-Chinese with a heterogeneous sense of belonging and distant ties to the Indian-Chinese in Kolkata.

Their family members are geographically mobile, sometimes to the extent of traversing across Indo-Pakistani borders in pursuit of marriage with Indian-Chinese, or joining the second and third generation of Pakistani-Chinese in Canada.

When I ask about 'home', individuals within the same family refer to different cities, but always within South Asia.

In Karachi, a dentist of Hubeinese descent narrates leaving his birthplace of Kolkata shortly after the India-China War in 1963. “Like many others [Chinese] who came after, we moved from India out of fear”, he says.

It was a time when persecutions of ethnic Chinese by the Indian state were authorised and many were deported or sent to internment camps.

After graduating in dentistry from Liaquat College of Medicine and Dentistry, he opened his own dental practice in Saddar, where his clinic stands alongside other formerly Chinese-owned clinics.

“Despite how others outside might view Pakistan as a result of instability and bombings, we are very happily settled here. This is our home”, he tells me.

In Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi, a similar migration story and business acumen is echoed amongst restaurant owners of a distinct type of Chinese (Hakka) cuisine best typified by the term 'desi chini khana' that caters largely to South Asian tastes.

Several other of my interlocutors were born in East Pakistan to families that commonly ran tanneries and restaurants in both Dhaka (then Dacca) and Chittagong.

Many were witness to the armed conflict in the former Pakistani province. Stories of brutal repression are recounted solemnly to me by those seemingly at the fringes of South Asian history.

One individual born in Dhaka recalls the bombing of his restaurant by 'freedom fighters' and the fleeing of family members and friends en masse from East to West Pakistan.

The major events that led to the contemporary formation of Pakistan as lived by Pakistani-Chinese involve leaving their home and losing their businesses, properties and communities, to begin their lives anew in West Pakistan.

A Pakistani-Chinese born in Abbottabad, however, has a more optimistic take on the conflict. “It took us [Pakistan] to lose East Pakistan for me to find my wife”, he says to me.

As a result of the mass migration of Chinese from East Pakistan, he met his wife, also a Pakistani-Hakka, of 45 years, in Rawalpindi.

For a long period of time, a mixture of Urdu, English and Hakka was spoken in their Pakistani-Chinese household.

Preserving the Hakka language is not only useful for daily interactions between majority of the local Chinese, it also reflects their intimacy and identity with a particular place: Meixian, the ancestral village of their parents or grandparents in Guangdong province in China.

The influx of Chinese migrants after CPEC, however, has meant that the local Chinese have had to address what many see as a handicap — the inability to speak Mandarin Chinese.

The grandchildren of my Abbottabad-born interlocutor are now learning Mandarin Chinese in an effort to salvage what is deemed an important part of their identity other than being Pakistani.

This phenomenon, taking place among the Chinese diaspora in other parts of the world as well, is also related to the rise of China as a leading economic power.

Older Pakistani-Chinese families are now but a dwindling fraction of the larger Chinese population that has been ushered in by the increasing economic cooperation between Pakistan and China.

When I ask whether the Pakistani-Chinese feel Chinese, the answer is often conflicting. On one hand, some say that they called themselves Chinese as that was what Pakistanis explicitly refer to them as. On the other, a more Pakistani identity is embraced amid the younger generations.

In one incident, my interlocutor in Rawalpindi was driving his scooter back home one afternoon when confronted by two Pakistanis asking, “yeh Chinese idhar kyun goom raha hai?” (“Why is this Chinese roaming around here?”), to which his jocular response was, “kahan hai Chinese? Yahan par toh sab Pakistani hain” (“Where’s the Chinese? There are only Pakistanis here”).

These interactions, in fact, express the paradox of being ethnic Chinese in Pakistan, against the backdrop of CPEC and the rise in expatriates, migrants and labourers from China.

Reflecting on practices, heritage and understandings of 'home' amongst minorities opens to redefining what counts as 'Chinese' but also 'Pakistani' today.

And even if it doesn’t, knowing these communities broadens an understanding of China-Pakistan relations, as one not only subsumed under CPEC and its developments, but revealing a much more connected history.

All interlocutors have been given pseudonyms to protect their identity

(Source: Dawn)