The first draft of my HCP contained no multimodality due to my lack of knowledge of the topic. I chose to leave it to my second draft as I felt like I would have a better idea on how to use this element by then. After later reflection, I do not believe this was a good choice because these multimodal elements could have offered guidance on  ways to improve the structure of my argument.

The constructive feedback I received from peer reviews helped me take note of my lack of subheadings. They also pointed out that my draft was missing an aspect of personalization, as I did a horrible job of emotionally influencing the audience to care about my topic. Lastly, they provided me with the idea of creating a timeline for events to make them easier for the audience to keep up with.

Ukwa Akkum

Professor Ramirez

Writing 39C

July 17, 2018

The Effects of the Family Separation Crisis

            Once upon a time, the United States was known as the land of opportunity; a place that allowed anyone to live out any dream they desired so long as they put their mind to it. Whether fleeing religious persecution or seeking a new chance at life, the country welcomed people of all races and backgrounds, leading it to become known as a “melting pot” for its large mix of cultural diversity.[1]Up until the twentieth century, migration between Mexico and the United States was unrestricted due to industries always looking to hire them for cheap labor. Even when the Immigration Act of 1924 was passed, which placed new immigration quotas in place, agricultural lobbies fought Congress to exclude Mexicans from being included in the quotas. The booming opportunities for labor continued until the Great Depression, when demand for labor heavily decreased and there was high competition for whatever jobs remained. Out of desperation, Americans placed the blame on Mexican immigrants for their problems out of fear that the group was stealing jobs from ‘real Americans’ and bringing disease and crime along with them[2]. As a result, hundreds of thousands of people of Mexican descent were sent across the border to Mexico, making it the largest deportation in American history[3]. To make matters worse, a majority of the people sent back were valid US citizens, but the scapegoat against Mexicans made them victims of deportation as well.

            Recently, the Mexican ethnicity has once again become a scapegoat for the problems of the United States. Mirroring the past, Mexican immigrants have been blamed for bringing crime and stealing jobs, except instead of subjecting them to only deportation they have added on a new ‘punishment’: family separation. This form of prosecution is meant to act as a deterrent for future immigrants, but its effects on the family are devastating and have the potential to greatly hinder the family structure even after reunification. The women of the family suffer the largest consequences from separation, lacking the proper resources to take over as the provider of the household when separated from their husbands and being more susceptible to emotional difficulties under stress when separated from children. (Source) The positive outcomes, such as the child having the chance to grow up in better conditions than they would have back home, are completely outweighed by its consequences, which is why the practice should be quickly abolished by the US government.

            Migrating to the US to improve one’s quality of life should not be met by more drastic decrease in quality of life. By not speaking up against the mistreatment of immigrant families, Americans are indirectly supporting the governments’ abuse of power, as well as the separation of families. These migrants are mostly fleeing out of fear of persecution back home and higher paying wages and, despite the belief of ‘stealing jobs’, mainly go to where jobs are available and have not been occupied by the population living in that area due to their undesirable working conditions. By separating families and increasing the difficulty of legal citizenship, Americans may end up slowing down immigration numbers which will have negative effects on the country’s economic growth. Ignoring the issue of separation, even the amount of money spent on finding and deporting immigrants could be better placed to find solutions for the immigration crisis and satisfy everyone.

            Mexico and the U.S have had a long history regarding the chase of opportunity at the cost of family separation. Mexicans, like people from several other nations, have been migrating to the US for decades in hopes of improved living conditions and a fair-paying job despite the risks involved with immigration; often imprisonment and deportation. Despite public knowledge, there was once a time the US encouraged Mexican immigration, albite temporary, during World War II when most workers had enlisted in war and there were many vacant job positions in the country. Ana Elizabeth Rosas discusses this “silenced” program that provided Mexicans the opportunity to temporarily work in the US in “Breaking the Silence: Mexican Children and Women’s Confrontation of Bracero Family Separation.” This opportunity was a collaboration between the Mexican and U.S. government known as the Bracero Program which launched on August 6, 1992, with the intent of recruiting Mexican men to fill in for the labor shortage in agriculture and railroad maintenance. In search of stable pay, these men rushed to join, leaving behind their children and transitioning their wives into single motherhood. Over the course of the program, hundreds of thousands of men were separated from their families, leaving their households without a financial source for months at a time and forcing mothers to become the new ‘head of the household’. In order to make up for the lost wages, mothers were forced to seek jobs and face “the anguish and shame of carrying the weight of marriage, parenthood and family separation alone and in silence.”[4]These women lost their husbands for as much as five years at a time, being burdened under caretaking duties for their children and long hours at their workplaces. The low wages also forced the hands of children to labor for long hours in a struggle to make up for basic needs that could not be met, a horrible fate brought by the selfishness of the US and Mexican governments.

            Despite the US’s hostile history towards Mexican immigrant families, there still existed a chance for families to remain unified prior to Trump’s zero-tolerance policy according to a court settlement made in 1997. In a case known as Flores v. Reno, the case ended in the government being required to release children from immigration detention as quickly as possible to either parents, adult relatives, or licensed programs that would accept custody. In the case that they could not be released, they were required to be held in the ‘least restrictive’ area available. These rules remain unchanged until 2015, when a California federal judge ruled to extend the Flores v. Reno requirements from only unaccompanied children to children caught with their parents as well, ordering that parents must be released with their children. In 2016, an appeals court reversed the decision that parents must be released, only allowing for the exception to occur when detention centers were overfilled. It is only recently under Trump’s zero tolerance policy that these rules made even more strict, as the policy ordered that all ‘illegal’ border crossers be tried in a court of law and forcing them to turn over custody of their children to the Department of Human Health and Services.   

            There are varying opinions on what the US’s next step should be, one being “Enforce Immigration Law or Change It,” in which Kevin Williamson, a writer for the conservative newspaper The National Review, argues that the Trump administration has made the right choice to separate children and likens it to removing the child of any American citizen that goes to prison, as a crime has still been committed. Believing that the children have been unfairly placed in the position they are in by their parents, he calls out the hypocrisy of popular denouncers such as Time Magazine and Bill Clinton, who have called out Trump’s policies but turned a blind eye on past actions by other presidents. In Williamson’s opinion, Congress should stop pushing the blame on Trump and take the initiative to change the laws they do not agree with.

            On the complete opposite side of the spectrum, “Trump Immigration Policy Veers from Abhorrent to Evil,” written by Nicholas Kristof, a Human Rights writer and opinion columnist for the New York Times, discusses the dark side of Trump’s zero-toleration policy and focuses on personal accounts of those affected by Trump’s policies to support his argument. He includes the story of a Salvadorian woman in his article, who followed the established procedure for requesting asylum by showing up at the border point with no intent of illegal crossing yet to her surprise had her children taken away from her and placed in the foster home system. Kristof understands the impossibility of accepting everyone and the consequences that come along with open borders, but points this out to say there is still no excuse for the separation of children from their parents.

            Even when families willingly separated in hopes of better lives, the outcomes on the family were quite unhealthy. Research conducted between 2003 and 2007 on Mexican serial migrants studied the effects of purposeful family separation on the stress levels and function levels of their family. The study was performed on an urban low-income community sample of Mexican immigrant parents residing in the US with children back home in Mexico. In every case, the hope was for enough money and financial stability to be established for the children to move to the US and live a better life, yet this reunification could take several years, and in some cases never happened due to increasingly difficult immigration laws. From the data collected, the study showed that children, more often girls, reported higher depression rates with parents gone, and an association between depression levels and family functioning levels was found[5]. As mothers also reported higher rates of depression, family functioning fell to unhealthy levels and families were nearly torn apart as children resented their parents for leaving them behind. Even at reunification, if the reunification experience was negative then the effects of the split continued to reside in the family. If purposeful separation could have these levels of drastic effects, the effects of forced separation must be severe for the victims at hand.

            Although the government will not allow a clinical trial on children to test the effects of separation, child psychologists have likened it to the effects of childhood trauma. In order for children to remain physically and emotionally healthy, they must maintain supportive relationships with their ‘primary caregivers’, who are usually parents. When separated from their caregivers, the child has a high chance of being damaged psychologically after they pass the detachment phase, which takes about a month of space from their caregiver. This emotional trauma usually leads to high levels of anxiety and depression, which tends to remain with them for an extremely long period of time.

            The separation of families is an inhumane and irrational choice of punishment for families who seek to redeem their chance at an American Dream. The Trump administration believes this action is an acceptable punishment for immigrants that attempt to cross the border “illegally”, but the US government is better than to resort to such low tactics. Instead, the focus should be placed on modernizing the legal-entrance process to be much more swift and realistic to accommodate needy immigrants. I do understand that it is not the US’s fault that these immigrants are fleeing to the US though, which is why more blame should be redirected to Mexico for allowing its country to progress to the condition it is in now. Given that Mexico is on the US border, I believe the US government should direct more efforts to cleaning up the country and making it a safer place so that the US and Mexico both benefit. The two governments have a history of lending each other a helping hand, so there should be no reason it cannot be done again.

[1]Adams, James Truslow., and M.J Gallagher. The Epic of America. Little, Brown, 1941.

[2]Navarro, Sharon Ann; Mejia, Armando Xavier (2004-01-01). Latino Americans and Political Participation: A Reference Handbook. ABC-CLIO. p. 23. ISBN 9781851095230.

[3]Blakemore, Erin. “The Largest Mass Deportation in American History.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 23 Mar. 2018, www.history.com/news/operation-wetback-eisenhower-1954-deportation.

[4]Elena Medina [pseud.], interview with author, Los Angeles, 27 June 2006.

[5]Rusch, Dana and Karina Reyes. "Examining the Effects of Mexican Serial Migration and Family Separations on Acculturative Stress, Depression, and Family Functioning." Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, vol. 35, no. 2, May 2013, pp. 139-158. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1177/0739986312467292.