Illegal Immigration and Immigrant Illegitimacy -- Focus on the Family

Further Comments on "The Border Between Them", from "SoCal Connected"

Aside from the political and economic implications of illegal immigration unchecked, there are the societal consequences, which create instability within families and jeopardize the well-needed cohesion of communities.

Parents who have entered this nation illegally do not enjoy the rights found in the Constitution, which is drafted for citizens -- see United States vs. Verdugo-Irquidez, see dicta. At any time, if they are arrested, they are automatically at risk for deportation.

Children of such parents also exploit this precarious problem. If parents attempt to discipline their children, for example, many times they threaten to call immigration and report on their own parents! In other cases, when certain families engage in corporal punishment, the children call the police, knowing the rules of this country better, knowing full well how to manipulate the system, oftentimes simply because they speak English and their parents do not.

This instability within the family engenders a host of problems, from gang affiliations to delinquency among minors--unintended pregnancies, venereal disease, physical abuse. In many cases, the local schools are greatly afflicted, having to deal with minors who show no respect for authority because they easily manipulate their parents to their own benefit, discrediting school teachers and administrators who rely on parental support. Teachers cannot be the parents for a massive number of students year after year, for children who become more unruly and defiant on the face of any authority.

Juvenile facilities are stressed by the growing number of youth from illegal immigrant parents who are unable or unwilling to raise their children, either for fear of inciting their children's ire or for lack of any proper parental training.

The fallout from illegal immigration is the immigrant illegitimacy which rears itself in the gang activities which afflicted poorer, ethnic neighborhoods. The lack of a stable home with proper parenting for children contributes to the criminal instability in local communities, resulting not just in higher crime rates, but a growing underclass of youth who are inadvertently raised within the confines of the state--juvenile halls, half-way houses, foster homes, where they received very little upbringing, if any.

Illegal immigration creates familial illegitimacy, which harms the children, whatever their status may be. It create undue harm for the illegal immigrants themselves, and strains the resources of intervention and social control which cannot serve as adequate parents for children brought into this nation illegally and raised by illegals who out of fear or lack of knowledge cannot be proper parents.