The Mental Health of Undocumented Immigrant Children

A close relative of mine shared with me that she was studying to be a social worker.

I believe that social work has a place in our world, provided that individuals who receive counsel learn that God wants to live and work in them.

"Social" has become a catch-all for all sorts of customs and traditions, for broadening the power of the state at the expense of the individual.

My friend told me that social work is all about empowering people to do what they need to do to be successful in this life. Yet there can be no success without Jesus Christ, the one who grants us life, the life that we can then live with the ease of a sheep trusting in the ever-loving shepherd.

I recall a bright woman, Marty was her name, and she was a Christian and a social worker. Her church colleagues had warned her that there was no way that she could be a Christian and a social worker, but she proved them wrong, and I was glad for her.

So, my friend was earning her social work degree from a prestige University nearby. She shared with me the rigors of training and work that the program required so that she could earn the Masters Degree and the LCSW certificate.

She had worked in diverse communities, and with distinct populations, including incarcerated youth. I shared the similar experience of teaching juvenile youth at Los Padrinos, Central, and even one day at Dorothy Kirby. She visited Kirby and later Sylmar one month, and she was appalled at the conditions that the youth were expected to endure. No recreation, no training, nothing worth doing but to sit around and bang on rival gang members.

And then there was the obligatory visit to the site supervisor's office, where the symbol of graft, waste, and institutional corruption stared at her: a huge computer monitor attached to a state-of-the-art computer, a prize worth the same amount that a consultant would have charged to offer recreation and training activities to the incarcerated youth in the program.

I digress about the widespread experience which she enjoyed training as a social worker.

One of the courses that she took caught my attention. For two quarters, she was reviewing the mental health of undocumented immigrant children.

Right away, I was startled that a university would spend so much time and money and graduate student labor on an issue that has raised so much controversy in this country. Illegal immigration affects almost every segment of the country, from education to health care to law and order. The number of hospitals which have closed in the state of California in the last fourteen years should be enough to raise alarm about the rising costs of illegal immigration, in which hospitals are required to provide care, even though they cannot be reimbursed. Schools are suffering as well, for despite the fact that schools can claim funding for student attendance, the tax revenue does not increase commensurate with the enrollment since the parents do not pay taxes.

The mental health issue never got any attention from me before, though, but the root cause is obvious -- the children are living in this country illegally, and at any time they can be harmed and have no recourse with law enforcement for fear of being deported, or their parents can be taken away. Children who live under the constant threat of being removed from house, home, community, and then sent back to a home country that they do not, I cannot imagine a greater strain on a young person. The long-term abuse which illegal youth are enduring because of parents who choose to break the law and live in the shadows should be enough to discourage lax immigration laws and exceptions. I cannot believe that public universities, which are funded by taxpayer dollars, and instituting graduate students to provide mental health services to individuals who should not be in the country in the first place. These programs enable utter lawlessness, and the anarchy which erupts in home life and in the public sector cannot be turned back easily.

The whole program just offended me. There is not real issue to be investigated. Undocumented youth in this country struggle with many issues primarily because of the unstable status of residency and family. Parents in this country illegally have no redress in the courts. Family law has no jurisdiction over the parents, thus permitting a father or a mother to abuse or abandon their children without any consequences. The growing number of abuse cases caused by unchecked illegal immigration should be enough to alarm anyone that real reform is needed, and now.

Starting with a thorough investigation to curtail the subsidies which permit universities to enable illegal immigrants not only to live in this country, but also to receive social services at taxpayers expense.