So this happened. (h/t Right Wing Watch)
While speaking with VCY America’s Crosstalk yesterday, the Center for Immigration Studies’ Mark Krikorian insisted that:
No child is ever taken away from a person who is deported, because children can always go with their parents, which is what they should do.
No family is ever split by immigration law. It’s the decisions of the immigrants themselves either to come here and split their families.
Wow. Krikorian — heretofore best known for his comment that Haiti is “so screwed up because it wasn’t colonized long enough,” and representing an organization where a fellow recently expressed a desire to take a baseball bat to religious leaders — is apparently completely out of touch with the living conditions in many origin countries, where there is so little opportunity and so much violence that it has driven a record number of children to try and cross the border alone. Why on earth would a parent want to raise a child in such a place, even when the alternative is separation?
Krikorian needs to watch this video from Seleste, whose son suffers from severe cerebral palsy and whose husband — the main caregiver for her son and the only one who can lift him — was nearly deported last year. “I can’t pack up and go to Mexico,” she pleaded earlier this year when she came to Washington, DC to tell her story. “I can barely pack up and take my son to Wal-Mart.”
There’s also the story of Felipe Montes, who was deported in 2010 and left his three children behind in North Carolina with their mother. When she became unable to care for them, the three were placed into foster care, forcing Felipe to wage a protracted custody battle to win his own children back. And there’s the current story of Maria Esmeralda Cornejo, who is facing deportation and would be forced to take her three children back to Mexico with her. The children are excellent students are pleading with President Obama not to uproot their entire family, take them out of school, and remove them from everything they’ve ever known.
Obviously, Mark Krikorian and his anti-immigrant colleagues will say anything to push their agenda. But, what else can we expect from the mastermind who gave us the failure that is self-deportation?
