Rogerson Oped: Consider the Children

Immprof Sarah Rogerson (Albany) has written an op-ed for the Times Union: Consider children when designing immigration system.

She writes:

Although the leading norm in cases affecting children is the ubiquitous “best interests of the child,” immigrant children at or within our borders are not afforded age-appropriate legal scrutiny. Their suffering is subordinated by the immutable characteristic of their non-citizen birth.

Rogerson notes that child migrants, including asylum claimants, are held in conditions “far below” the minimum standards the U.S. government agreed to in a settlement agreement back in 1997. And the “neglect” of these children “continues, despite a public-private partnership administered through the United States Office of Refugee Resettlement to look after” them.

Children are treated the same as adults in the immigration system, Rogerson points out. They are:

…submitted to the same processes, which involve extended waiting periods (up to three years for refugee processing), extensive background checks and, in many asylum and withholding cases, protracted litigation in immigration courts seeking to remove them despite their claims. In this lengthy, detailed process, children are not provided legal counsel and are in some cases placed on an expedited docket, well below the constitutional floors of due process and fundamental fairness.

Rogerson concludes with a call that: “The law requires and morality dictates that the United States design an immigration system that considers the unique vulnerabilities of immigrant children, who comprise half of the current population of Syrian refugees.”

-KitJ