Article: Hagan, Jacqueline, Karl Eschbach, and Nestor Rodriguez. 2008. “U.S. Deportation Policy, Family Separation, and Circular Migration.” International Migration Review 42(1): 64-88.
Summary:
Stringent immigration laws and increasing deportation of non-citizens may have many more social consequences than Americans realize—just ask the deportees.
Over the past two decades the U.S. has passed a series of immigration reforms that make it easier and quicker to deport noncitizens, increasing the number of deportees from 40,000 a year in the early 1990s to 208,000 in 2005. To understand the effect of increasing deportation, Hagan, Eschbach, and Rodriguez (International Migration Review 2008) draw on a random sample of 300 Salvadoran deportees in their home communities. They find current U.S. immigration policy pose dire social costs for deportees and their families.
Other than the obvious psychological costs of leaving long-established family and work ties, many deportees also noted the financial burden placed on their families. On the one hand, deportees are likely to have families and dependents in the U.S. Since 95% of deportees are male, this takes away the main breadwinner from the family and may lead to a greater reliance on the state. On the other hand, 72% of deportees remit to extended family (especially parents) in El Salvador. Remittances in the small isthmus nation surpass national exports as a source of foreign exchange and many families rely on the cash flow for survival. When noncitizens are deported, they put both families in jeopardy.
While contention over immigration will not be solved anytime soon, it would serve us well to remember Emma Lazarus’ words inscribed on the statue of liberty, “Give me your tired, your poor…”