Sophia's choice problems faced by female asylum-seekers and their U.S.-citizen children.(Essay)

THE UNITED STATES IS A BEACON of hope for many who seek refuge from persecution in their home countries. As the plaque on the Statue of Liberty reads, "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 (1)." Despite the high ideals embodied by these words, the politics of immigration and changing values have made immigration difficult, including for those fleeing persecution and seeking asylum in the United States. People from around the world come to the United States-from our neighbors in Latin America to as far away as Africa-to seek refuge from persecution by applying for asylum in the United States, yet the process of applying for asylum is full of pitfalls and challenges (2).

This commentary focuses on the challenges that women seeking asylum endure, particularly when they give birth to children after arriving in the United States. It springs from my experience at the Children and Family Justice Center at Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago. We represent women and children from various countries fleeing different forms of persecution who are seeking asylum in the United States. By no means does this commentary encompass the entire spectrum of problems faced by immigrants or asylum-seekers--only the particular problems that I have witnessed while representing asylum-seekers at the Children and Family Justice Center.

Clients we have represented include women from Guatemala and Tanzania fleeing domestic abuse, a young woman from Central America targeted by drug traffickers, children from Honduras and Guatemala fleeing street gangs, and a young woman from China who owed $60,000 to the smugglers who forcibly brought her to the United States.

Women applying for asylum face an uphill legal battle as they seek to remain in the United States. In contrast, children born in the United States to these women are automatically classified as citizens because of the location of their birth. Thus, if a woman is denied asylum and forced to return to her homeland, this result not only has serious consequences for her but also for her U.S.-citizen child. Having fled persecution, returning poses a difficult, if not impossible choice for asylum-seekers--bringing their children back to the homeland and possibly exposing them to persecution there, or leaving them, in some cases, in the arms of strangers in the United States. In this commentary, I share some of my experiences and thoughts regarding these women, their children, and the difficult choices engendered by U.S. immigration policy.

A toughening of immigration standards has become a focus of debate in the United States. This debate is not new, but rather a resurfacing of a contentious and long-standing issue with real world consequences. The rigid enforcement of tougher immigration policies results in great uncertainty and fear among large groups of individuals living in the United States. Facing deportation, people without legal status deal with the choice of taking their children back to their homeland or leaving them in the United States. The New York Times told the story of the Mancia family who came to the United States from Honduras. The family left Honduras to escape growing gang violence; the mother's sister was killed by gang members while traveling on a public bus. The mother applied for asylum, but her claim was denied. She was eventually deported to Honduras, and the father, still in the United States, is facing his own deportation. He and his wife have two sons, one of whom, because he was horn in the United States, is a citizen. "If forced to depart, he [the father] will weigh whether to leave his sons with friends in New Bedford to get a quality of schooling he believes they will not have in Honduras."- (3) Thus the fear of deportation affects not only those considered "illegal" but also "innocent" U.S. citizens.

According to a recent Pew Hispanic Center study, over three million U.S.-citizen children have undocumented parents. (4) Proponents of tougher immigration reform have referred to the children in this category as "anchor babies," a pejorative term implying that mothers have conceived these children so that the child's U.S.-citizen status can "anchor" the parents by allowing them to remain in the United States. (5) The anchor argument stems from an immigration provision that allows a U.S.-citizen child age 21 or older to petition for her/his undocumented parents to become legal permanent residents.

BRIEF BACKGROUND ASYLUM