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Greene: Asylum

I was stunned to learn that currently, children are representing themselves in front of immigration judges.

This includes children as young as five.

It’s a “due process gap” that The Fair Day in Court for Kids Act of 2016 seeks to address.

The bill was introduced in February by Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid. It would ensure that children have access to legal representation when they’re facing a life-or-death deportation decision.

According to the Organization, Kids In Need of Defense, ninety percent of children without attorneys are ordered to be deported, and many of them come from countries with severe levels of violence.

The US is experiencing a record high of 42 million immigrants in the country as of 2014, of which 71% are naturalized citizens or permanent and legal residents.

Many are concerned that we lack the resources to accommodate them, and that they will swell welfare rolls permanently.

Actually, getting permission to live and work in the United States is fairly hard to do.

The US first looks for immigrants who are highly trained in a skill that’s in short supply here and who are offered a job by a U.S. employer, or who are escaping political persecution, joining close family already here, or winners of the green-card lottery.

In fact, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, many of our immigrant forebears who arrived between 1790 and 1924 would not be allowed in today under the current policy.

What’s more, the U.S. Social Security Administration estimated that in 2013 undocumented immigrants - and their employers - paid $13 billion in payroll taxes alone for benefits they’ll never get.

They can receive schooling and emergency medical care, but not welfare or food stamps.

And the charge that immigrants are criminals doesn’t hold up.

According to the American Immigration Council, studies have repeatedly confirmed that immigrants are less likely to commit serious crimes or be behind bars than the native-born, and high rates of immigration are associated with lower rates of violent crime and property crime.

In any case, it takes astonishing courage, intelligence and tenacity just to get here, often on foot, let alone as an unaccompanied nine year old.

Seems to me, these are just the sorts of citizens we want - our future innovators, entrepreneurs, dreamers and doers.

Since its founding, our country has benefited from the worldwide brain drain that is immigration.

Correction, May 5, 9:20 a.m.: This script was corrected to note that Harry Reid is Senate minority leader.  

Stephanie Greene is a free-lance writer now living with her husband and sons on the family farm in Windham County.
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