One of the top stories on CNN.com this afternoon is about Japanese officials’ deportation of two undocumented Filipino immigrants, forcing them to part with their 13-year-old Japanese-citizen daughter, possibly until she is 18. The daughter was given the choice of staying in her homeland of Japan, the only home she has ever known, or leaving the country with her parents, who have lived in Japan for years.
The author asks readers, “Do you think Japanese officials are doing the right thing?” – which is all well and good – but how about asking, “Did you know this same exact thing is happening to American-citizen children? Do you think American officials are doing the right thing?”
Two years ago, the Child Citizen Protection Act (CCPA, H.R. 182) was introduced in Congress. The bill proposed an amendment to the Immigration and Nationality Act that would give judges discretionary authority in deportation proceedings involving immigrants who are the parents of US-citizen children. Basically, it would allow a judge to decline to order the deportation of immigrant parents if she feels it is in the best interest of the citizen child.
There was/is a good deal of conservative backlash about “anchor babies” and protecting the integrity of this great nation of ours, as you can imagine. The CNN report on Japan’s own xenophobic issues with immigration policy got me thinking I should do my own part to spread the word about this important bill. If I can encourage even one of the wonderful Feministing readers to take action and write a letter to their representatives in Congress, or even just educate themselves about the fucked up anti-family immigration policies as they stand today and the importance of CCPA, then that’d be a pretty good thing.
Check out the Families for Freedom site for more information -- just in case, it's at http://www.familiesforfreedom.org/httpdocs/americankids.html
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We were just talking about this yesterday. The first thing that came to everyone's mind was "deportation with racist intent, just like America!" The article my sensei gave us didn't mention anything about America, either.
Maybe it's because they assume we already know we do this in America, too? Hopefully?
That's weird because just yesterday I read a story on CNN about how this same thing is happening in U.S. The story was about a teenage girl born in the U.S. to Mexican parents that were here illegally. She had to choose whether to go back to Mexico with them or stay in the states. She chose to stay here with the help of some church I think.
But I don't think that this article is saying that it doesn't happen in the U.S. The author just seems to be completely ignorant of the fact that this same exact thing is happening here...even though one of their colleagues wrote about it yesterday. I'm not saying that's acceptable either. Just that the story didn't seem to be saying anything like "Look how messed up this is and it's so much better over here in America." This was obviously just a highly publicized case in Japan that this author was commenting on.
And to be fair with the highlighted red "Sound Off" question that asks "Do you think Japanese officials are doing the right thing?" I don't think that was written by the author. Those are in every CNN article and always seem to be put in randomly probably by whoever edits and posts the articles. They aren't part of the article at all but links to click on.
That is good to hear -- I did not catch the story about the American child, which would make my reading of the article about the Japanese policy quite different. Thanks, llevinso.
Here's the link to a video of that article:http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2009/04/14/gutierrez.citizen.children.cnn?iref=24hours
It was also just a written article but of course I can't find that now. Stupid CNN making things difficult for me :)
Yeah, I assumed when I saw the article that it was rather common knowledge that it happens here. I mean there are A LOT of immigrant children born here but its not as if we give their parents a waiver on expulsion. I think its pretty well known & there have been some big time press about certain cases (usually where the kid was an academic all star, or just about to graduate or something).
There is really no use in reporting a story if there isn't going to be related to something that is happening closer to home. Not everyone is going to make that leap from reading what's happening in one country and realizing that it could be happening here. A couple of weeks ago, some guy on FOX Business Channel was talking to a representative from Code Pink about the escalation of American soldiers in Afghanistan. I have no idea why this debate was happening on FOX Business Channel. Anyway, the FOX guy kept saying that the Code Pink woman would be flogged if she dressed in Afghanistan how she was dressed now. First of all, the state of women's rights in Afghanistan was probably the last reason Bush decided to go to war there (if it made the list at all). But there is no difference between a woman being flogged in Afghanistan if she's wearing certain clothing and a woman in the United States being blamed for being raped because of what she was wearing, which happens all the time in the US and which Bill O'Reilly has done on his show on at least one occasion. So there's always plenty of outrage when bad things happen in other countries, but nobody realizes that the same sorts of things happen in our own country.
Yeah, your comment expresses some of disconnect and hypocrisy that was frustrating me in a lot of the American criticism of other countries and cultures, when we have enough to be criticizing and working on within our own borders. While I don't think that means there is no purpose in reporting on stories unrelated/unrelatable to American issues, I think I know what you are getting at...and that's what didn't sit well with me after I read the story on the Japanese policy.