living together, living apart: mixed status families and us immigration policy

Living Together,Living Apart

Mixed Status Families and US Immigration PolicyEDITED BY APRIL SCHUETHS AND JODIE LAWSTON

FOREWORD BY MARY ROMERO

Living Together, Living Apart

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University of Washington Press

Living Together, Living ApartMixed-Status Families and US Immigration Policy

Edited by APRIL M . SCHUETHS AND JODIE M . L AWSTON

Foreword by Mary Romero

University of Washington Press • Seattle and London



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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataLiving together, living apart : mixed-status families and US immigration policy / edited by April M. Schueths and Jodie M. Lawston ; foreword by Mary Romero. pages cm Includes index.ISBN-13: 978-0-295-99500-7 (hardback : alk. paper)ISBN-13: 978-0-295-99530-4 (papberback : alk. paper)1. Immigrant families—United States—Social conditions. 2. Immigrant families—Legal status, laws, etc.—United States. 3. Immigrants—Family relationships—United States. 4. United States—Emigration and immi-gration—Government policy. I. Schueths, April M. II. Lawston, Jodie Michelle, 1977– JV6465.L58 2015 325.73—dc23 2015011384

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The Freedom to MoveLisa Speicher Muñoz

Unnoticed isn’t the same as unharmedBeing careful to not set off any alarmsBut walking through a world of not knowingWhere we could or should or would be goingIf they noticed youIf they hurt you

It’s more than I can takeI am trying not to break“Be careful and drive safe” Is the mantra that we createAnd the one time I forgot itIs the one time you almost lost it

The freedom to move isn’t about mobilityIt’s about political captivityOf being caught between a double-deckerOf fear and guilt and angerWill we succumb to this paralysis?Or tell ourselves that we’ve got this?

Fast forward a few years laterWith the help of supporters, in spite of the hatersOne little cardIs so damn hardIt’s finally hereBut the fear . . . doesn’t dissipate

The body now moves in planes, in trainsSometimes early, sometimes lateBut the mind never leaves “be careful and drive safe”Just in case they might retaliate . . .

The freedom to move isn’t about mobilityIt’s about political proximityIt’s about being with familyIt’s about justice, rights, and dignityIt’s about reclaiming our humanityIt’s about us and them, you and me



Contents

Epigraph: The Freedom to Move Lisa Speicher Muñoz v

Foreword Mary Romero xi

Introduction: Living Together, Living Apart: Mixed-Status Families and US Immigration Policy April M. Schueths and Jodie M. Lawston 3

Part I. Living Together, Living Apart: Stories of Separation

1. The Purpose of My Trip to Tijuana Giselle Stern Hernández 19

2. Life and Love outside the Citizenship Binary: The Lived Experiences of Mixed-Status Couples in the United States

April M. Schueths 23

3. Transnational Mixed-Status Families: Critical Challenges in Cross-Border Relationships over Time

Rachel M. Hershberg and M. Brinton Lykes 37

4. Dependents of the State: Navigating the Immigration and Child Welfare Apparatus at the San Diego–Tijuana Border Naomi Glenn-Levin Rodriguez 54



5. “We Thought We Had a Future”: Adversity and Resilience in Mixed-Status Families Martha I. Zapata Roblyer and Joseph G. Grzywacz 70

6. Being Mixed-Status Sheryl Tuliao Silva and Eric O. Silva 85

Part II. Experiences of Inequality:Legal Status and Family Well-Being

7. Voice of an American-Mexican Neida Soto Arrington 95 8. Mixed-Status Families in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas: Health Disparities along the US-Mexico Border Heide Castañeda 106

9. “Someday I’m Going to Have Papers!” (¡Algún Día Yo Voy a Tener Papeles!): Mixed-Status Families in the Rural South Scott Beck and Alma Stevenson 119

10. The Green Card Waiting Game: U Visa Holders, Mixed-Status Famlies, and Marginal Membership Sarah Morando Lakhani 137

11. “El Otro Lado” (The Other Side) Eva Betancourt 152

Part III. The Public Face of Illegal: Confronting Legal Institutions and the Media

12. MIXED-UP Carlos-Manuel 165 13. Constructing Mixed-Status Families in Public Discourse Eric O. Silva 170



14. Qualifying Relatives: US Immigration Policies and Family Reunification or Deunification?

Connie Oxford 186

15. From Driving to Deportation: Experiences of Mixed-Status Immigrant Families under “Secure Communities” Diana M. Guelespe 198

16 Dynamics and Ramifications of US Immigration and Visa Policies: Nepali Transnational Workers, Families, and Children in the United States Shobha Hamal Gurung 214

17. Bringing Pedro Home Emily Guzman 229

18. My Path to Happiness Luis A. HernÁndez 242

Contributors 245

Index 253



xi

Foreword

M a r y R o m e r o

On September 25, 2012, Irma Esperanza Lemus, and her husband, Wilmer Castro Romero, were at home with their three children and preparing to leave for a fishing trip. Four US Immigration and Cus-toms Enforcement (ICE) agents in bulletproof vests came to their home and questioned the family about their legal status. Wilmer was handcuffed by the agents when he did not immediately respond to their inquiries. A mobile fingerprinting unit was called to their home. Wilmer was eventually released. However, Irma was fingerprinted and found to have a deportation order. She was handcuffed and taken away in front of her children (Soni et al. 2013, 14; ICE 2013).

An estimated 5.5 million children of undocumented parents across the United States live in fear that their mother and father will never return from work or the grocery store or that they could even be taken from their home. More than one hundred thousand children have already faced the harsh realities of losing parents stopped by ICE agents or the police, locked in indefinite detention far away, and then deported. Fifty years ago, family rela-tionships were a basis for legal immigration status—but no longer, as today’s policy does not support family reunification; children are separated from their parents and families are torn apart on the basis of citizenship status.

Immigration policy ignores family members’ shifting statuses: renewing visas, overstaying visas, with permanent residency, alongside those who are undocumented or US citizens. Different statuses place some family members in harm’s way; others are unable to pursue careers or higher education; others are burdened with fulfilling dreams that their brothers and sisters cannot.

I am indebted to Jodie Lawston for continuing the project when other commitments made my involvement unmanageable. I appreciate the opportunity to write the foreword and contribute a small part to this publication. I am grateful to April Schueths for agreeing to be coeditor and for being both a fine coeditor and a scholar in the field. Their collabora-tion has given voice to the many living between the shadows of citizenship.



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In this era of a “broken immigration system” that includes the government’s efforts to deport four hundred thousand immigrants a year, children and families are collateral damage as mixed-status families face long-term or per-manent separation from family members and loved ones (Thronson 2006).

Militarization of the border and draconian immigration laws have halted the previous circular migration and eliminated opportunities to regularize immigration status for persons with family ties in the United States. Unable to obtain legal status, parents remain in the country with their US-born children, multiplying the number of mixed-status families. Fifteen years ago, an estimated one out of every ten families in the United States was of mixed status (Fix and Zimmermann 1999). In 2006, the Urban Institute reported that over 5 million children were living with undocumented parents.

Although there are nineteen categories for ICE officials to consider in detaining noncitizens, they consistently disregard categories relating to family relations. When extended family members in the United States are undocumented, the state seldom views them as acceptable guardians since deportation remains a possibility. ICE officials are notorious for not using their discretion to allow parents to make arrangements for their children’s care or taking parenting into account when deciding to incarcerate or release detainees.

Parents detained or deported face obstacles in complying with Child Protective Services requirements and thereby are in jeopardy of terminat-ing their parental rights. Based on the assumption that children should not live with parents who are deported, that the state is better for the children’s welfare, “parental deportation too often marks the end of any prospects for family unity when children are in the child welfare system” (Wessler 2011, 44). Consequently, detained parents may conceal the fact that they have children because they fear that their sons and daughters will be placed in foster care (Capps et al. 2007). ICE fails to collaborate with the child welfare system in keeping families together by helping “an undocumented child to gain authorized immigration status and terminate parental rights, or reunify children with their parents in another country” (Wessler 2011, 26). Conse-quently, deportation destroys family bonds.

As immigration raids expand beyond the workplace into apartment complexes, grocery stores, laundromats, shopping malls, and city parks, children witness their parents being pushed, thrown up against police cars, yelled at, and treated as violent criminals. Frequent childhood nightmares are immigration raids without warrants carried out at residential homes in the middle of the night, with armed agents wearing bulletproof vests wak-



F o r e wo r d xii i

ing family members from sleep and intimidating everyone in the home. These types of raids create and maintain a climate of fear that children wit-ness (Hendricks 2007). Large immigration raids, on neighborhoods, trailer parks, and apartment buildings create a care crisis when parents are removed from their children. The National Council of La Raza (Capps et al. 2007, 34) found that after these raids, the “situation deteriorates further toward out-right panic,” and in some cases families have hidden “in their basements or closets for days.” Research has identified trauma-related reactions that result from state violence, arresting and detaining parents, separating children from their siblings and adult relatives, and sending children to foster care (Yoshikawa 2011). The trauma of realizing that mothers or fathers are not returning home is compounded by losing the wages of the breadwinner. The magnitude of the problem has been documented by numerous researchers (Hendricks 2007; Yoshikawa 2011) who note that this type of family disrup-tion “is one of the most devastating and traumatic experiences in human development” (Yoshikawa and Suárez-Orozco 2012). The most common symptoms are anger, anxiety, crying, inability to eat or sleep, and withdrawal (Capps et al. 2007).

In May 2011, President Barack Obama pledged not to target undocu-mented immigrants with strong family ties because they did not pose a threat to public safety. An immigrant living in a mixed-status family would seem to represent someone with strong family and community ties. However, undoc-umented immigrants with US-born children—or partners—continue to be detained and deported as “serious criminals” under Operation Streamline, the Secure Communities program, and the Criminal Alien Removal Initia-tive (CARI). Still, in 2011, the federal government deported 397,000 and detained an equal number (Wessler 2011). In April 2012, Obama addressed the issue of deportations while visiting El Paso, Texas, assuring the audience that the focus was on “violent offenders and people convicted of crimes; not families, not folks who are just looking to scrape together an income” (quoted in Yoshikawa and Suárez-Orozco 2012). This statement was made two weeks after the US Department of Homeland Security reported that between January and June 2011, ICE had deported 46,486 parents with at least one US-born child (Yoshikawa and Suárez-Orozco 2012). The New York Times reported that 45 percent of deportees in 2011 were not apprehended for any criminal offense (Yoshikawa and Suárez-Orozco 2012). “Adminis-tration officials said removal numbers were determined by a requirement, included by Congress in the immigration agency’s appropriations, to fill a daily average of about 34,000 beds in detention facilities. The mandate, which



xiv M a ry ro M ero

is closely monitored by oversight committees, amounts to about 400,000 removals a year” (Preston 2013). ICE (2013) reported that 368,644 persons were deported in 2013. Obama has presided over nearly 2 million deporta-tions, more than any other US president (Soni et al. 2013). Under his watch, children have been separated from their parents, and siblings and partners mourn the loss of their loved ones.

As this volume goes to press, immigrant advocates are assessing Obama’s comments on immigration reform in his 2014 State of the Union address. Thomas A. Saenz, president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), and the National Associa-tion of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) released statements expressing encouragement that Obama appears to be committed to com-prehensive immigration reform and referenced immigration reform to eco-nomic opportunity, not tied to “accident of birth.” The big stumbling block, of course, remains a divided Congress; the House of Representatives has been stalemated by an anti-immigration bloc of Republicans. The National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON) (http://www.ndlon.org/es/) had far less confidence in the president’s commitment, voicing disappointment that deportations were not even mentioned. Using social media, NDLON identified actions that the president could take without Congress to reduce deportations:

1. Expand the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program to include adults.

2. Rescind all 287(g) agreements that allow local law enforcement to act as agents of immigration.

3. Revise the Morton Memos, which classify people as “high priority” or “criminal aliens” based on immigration violations and minor criminal offenses.

4. Stop collaborating with rogue sheriffs who engage in massive civil rights violations.

5. End Operation Streamline, which includes mass trials that criminal-ize migrants and allow private immigration detention centers to make massive profits.

Many Latino/a communities and organizations have struggled against the government’s draconian immigration practices. “Dreamers” are undocu-



F o r e wo r d xv

mented students living in the United States, many who arrived as babies or young children; they hope to complete their education and achieve the “American dream” (Immigration Direct, n.d.).

While Dreamers have received national attention for staging protests, holding rallies, and campaigning for a path to citizenship, numerous other groups have engaged in lobbying efforts and acts of civil disobedience. In December 2013, We Belong Together: Women for a Common Sense Immigration Reform recruited children to participate in “A Wish for the Holidays” campaign by writing letters to Congress and the president (http://www.webelongtogether.org/). Bringing immigrant women’s groups together, including the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum (http://napawf.org/) and the National Domestic Workers Alliance (http://www.domesticworkers.org/), the campaign collected 6,896 letters, mostly from young children addressing the importance of keeping their family together.

Other organizations have responded with protests and marches. Alto Arizona (n.d.) arose in response to Arizona’s Senate Bill 1070 and has joined other human right groups in the fight “to restore constitutional protections to the state.” NDLON’s Not One More Deportation project aims to end the indiscriminate deportation, incarceration, and criminalization of immigrant communities; racial profiling of Latinos/as; and civil rights abuses resulting from immigration law enforcement. “Not One More” has become the ral-lying cry for marches and protests across the country and sometimes for direct nonviolent civil disobedience. Linking arms and using sections of PVC pipes, protesters have attempted to stop buses carrying detainees to and from detention centers. Demonstrations have included blocking buses carrying Operation Streamline detainees in Tucson, Arizona; closing the entrance to the Elizabeth Detention Center in New Jersey; and temporarily stopping a deportation bus at the Broadview Detention Center in Chicago. Not surprisingly, many US-born children (i.e., citizens) living in mixed-status families are activists involved in “Not One More” activities and other campaigns struggling to transform immigration policy to include a pathway to citizenship for all their family members.

Living Together, Living Apart brings mixed-status family members into the framework of immigration research and policy. Central to the inclusion of mixed-status families is the recognition that immigration policy and law enforcement targets and harms citizens as well as noncitizens. In past eras of US history, mixed-status families had more opportunity to establish a strong transnational family by crossing borders and living without fear of separa-tion. Even recently, it was possible for undocumented workers to return to



xvi M a ry ro M ero

their countries of origin for birthdays and celebrations, and come back here to work, without much fear. Today the lack of opportunities to legalize status and Homeland Security’s emphasis on deportation increase the burdens that mixed-status families face. Today the risks that undocumented parents face crossing back after deportation are far more dangerous, and often the only option is to cross sections of the Sonoran Desert, where many die. Con-sequently, deportations result in the harsh reality that they may never see family members again. Families remaining intact in the United States live in fear of separation; freedom of movement is constrained in order to avoid arrest. This is particularly the case as racial profiling becomes routine both in immigration law enforcement practices and as local police act as immigra-tion agents: detaining people when “driving as Latino/a” or indiscriminately “stopping and frisking” people in Latino/a communities.

The current anti-immigrant sentiment and high deportation numbers have created a “chilling effect” in accessing social services and exercising citi-zenship rights that might place noncitizen family members at risk. Parents are hesitant to use benefits their children are eligible for, like school lunch programs, for fear of jeopardizing future chances for citizenship because they might be perceived as a “public charge.” Because immigrant family members who are citizens are likely to be children and tend to be living in poverty, they may not receive the same opportunities as other children in order not to expose other family members. Access to equal opportunities and benefits are restricted not only between families but within families, as one sibling may qualify for in-state tuition, obtain a driver’s license, apply for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, board a plane to fly across state or international borders, and claim other citizenship rights, while a brother or sister may not. While the DACA program offers opportunities previously closed to some family members, restrictions on eligibility place another division between resources and life chances available to young as opposed to older family members. Inequalities resulting from differing access to resources create additional burdens facing family members.

The contributors to this volume capture the lived experiences of mixed-status families through both data-driven scholarly writings and by reflect-ing on their own personal narratives of living in the shadows. The authors contribute knowledge valuable to understanding the wide range of strate-gies used to maintain family in an era of mass detention and deportation. We come to understand how institutions in the United States have to be reframed when faced with a draconian culture of deportation and incarcera-tion. Accessing child welfare and health care systems, enrolling in school, or



F o r e wo r d xvii

calling the police in case of an accident, domestic violence, or an emergency have become acts that can forever change the life chances of family members and households.

The narratives capture the personal experience of state violence that goes hand in glove with immigration policy and law enforcement. Readers will discover the private dreams, reflections, fears, and compromises that family members and partners make to maintain bonds. Among the stories shared are those of families who not only survived brutal immigration practices but also have demonstrated resistance and resiliency. Well-crafted ethnogra-phies describe the complications of navigating immigration policy to avoid pitfalls and gain family reunification and demonstrate avenues to negotiate immigration status. These ethnographies along with narratives and poetry illustrate and explain the ways some of the most vulnerable in our society are caught in the web of mass deportations.

REFERENCES

Alto Arizona. n.d. “About Alto Arizona.” http://altoarizona.com/about.html.Capps, Randy, Rosa Maria Castañeda, Ajay Chaudry, and Robert Santos. 2007. Paying the

Price: The Impact of Immigration Raids on America’s Children. Washington, DC: National Council of La Raza.

Fix, Michael E., and Wendy Zimmermann. 1999. All under One Roof: Mixed-Status Families in an Era of Reform. Washington, DC: Urban Institute. http://www.urban.org/Upload-edPDF/409100.pdf.

Hendricks, Tyche. 2007. “The Human Face of Immigration Raids in Bay Area: Arrests of Parents Can Deeply Traumatize Children Caught in the Fray, Experts Argue.” San Francisco Chronicle, April 27. http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/The-human-face-of-immigration-raids-in-Bay-Area-2598853.php.

ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement). 2013. “FY 2013: ICE Announces Year-End Removal Numbers.” News release. http://www.ice.gov/news/releases/1312/131219washingtondc.htm.

Immigration Direct. n.d. “Immigration Options for Undocumented Youth Dreamers.” http://www.immigrationdirect.com/immigration-options-undocumented-youth-dreamers.jsp.

Preston, Julia. 2013. “Amid Steady Deportation, Fear and Worry Multiply among Immi-grants.” New York Times, December 22. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/23/us/fears-multiply-amid-a-surge-in-deportation.html.

Soni, Saket, Jacinta Gonzalez, Jennifer J. Rosenbaum, and Fernando Lopez. 2013. The Crimi-nal Alien Removal Initiative in New Orleans: The Obama Administration’s Brutal New Frontier in Immigration Enforcement. New Orleans: New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice. http://nowcrj.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/CARI-report-final.pdf.

Thronson, David B. 2006. “You Can’t Get Here from Here: Toward a More Child-Centered Immigration Law.” Virginia Journal of Social Policy and the Law 14 (1): 58–86.

Wessler, Seth Freed. 2011. Shattered Families: The Perilous Intersection of Immigration Enforce-



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ment and the Child Welfare System. New York: Applied Research Center. http://www.raceforward.org/research/reports/shattered-families.

Yoshikawa, Hirokazu. 2011. Immigrants Raising Citizens: Undocumented Parents and Their Young Children. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

Yoshikawa, Hirokazu, and Carola Suárez-Orozco. 2012. “Deporting Parents Hurts Kids.” New York Times, April 20. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/21/opinion/deporting-parents-ruins-kids.html.



Living Together, Living Apart



3

Introduction

Living Together, Living apart: Mixed-Status Families and US Immigration Policy

A p r i l M . S c h u e t h s a n d J o d i e M . L aw s t o n

I’m an American citizen and my husband is an illegal. We went through two and a half years of paperwork, thousands and thousands of dollars, and he got denied. How do you expect people who are in Mexico . . . I mean if it’s that hard for someone who’s married to an American, how are people who aren’t married to an American supposed to do it the right way before they come here illegally? Nobody gets what it’s like.

—Abby, US-born citizen, member of a mixed-status family, currently living in Mexico due to her husband’s ten-year ban from the United States

More than 11 million undocumented immigrants are currently living in the United States. Nine million were born in Latin Amer-ica, with the majority originating from Mexico (Baker and Rytina 2013). The remaining 2 million were born in Asia (1.3 million) and South America (0.7 million). The majority of immigrants without legal status have been present in the United States for more than a decade and thus have developed strong family ties (Taylor et al. 2011). Even more recent arrivals often join family members within established social networks. Yet immigrants in the United States, especially Latino/a immigrants and immigrants of color, have increas-ingly experienced harsh anti-immigrant attitudes and treatment (Massey and Sánchez 2010).

It was in response to these harsh anti-immigrant attitudes and treatment that, during the spring of 2006, undocumented immigrants and their allies



4 a Pr I L M . S ch U e T h S a n d J o d I e M . L awS To n

from across the United States came out of the shadows in large numbers to rally in support of immigrant rights (Jones-Correa and de Graauw 2013; Pallares 2010). The protests began as a response to proposed changes in immigration policy, specifically, the proposal of the House of Representa-tives, H.R. 4437, a law that would classify anyone who helped undocu-mented immigrants enter and stay in the United States, and undocumented immigrants themselves, as felons. That spring and into the coming year, the protests focused primarily on opposing H.R. 4437, but they also sought comprehensive immigration reform. These protests laid the groundwork for the Dream Act—a law that would give undocumented youth a path to citizenship—to emerge as a central issue in the immigrant rights movement. The protests, which took place in cities from the east to the west coasts, gar-nered significant media attention and brought immigration to the forefront of American political debate.

Since the massive demonstrations against H.R. 4437, the pro-immigrant movement has continued to strengthen, largely in response to the dramatic increase in enforcement tactics at both the state and federal levels, but also due to inaction by the federal government to pass immigration reform (Voss and Bloemraad 2011). Attempts by Congress to pass comprehensive reform failed during the Bush administration, with the most notable failure being the bipartisan Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007.1 This law would have provided additional border security as well as a path to legaliza-tion for undocumented immigrants. States have since proposed and passed their own immigration legislation, often in favor of creating restrictions for undocumented immigrants. For example, Arizona’s Senate Bill (SB) 1070—the vanguard of draconian immigration policy—required state law enforcement to determine an individual’s immigration status during a lawful stop, detention, or arrest, which opponents argue encourages racial profiling. This provision is also known as the “show me your papers” law and was the only piece of the legislation upheld by the US Supreme Court in 2012 (Liptak 2012). Five other states created similar anti-immigrant legislation that was modeled after the Arizona law: Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, South Carolina, and Utah (National Conference of State Legislatures 2013). For example, Alabama’s House Bill (HB) 56—even stricter than SB 1070—made it a crime to harbor people who are undocumented. However, immigration advocates at the local and federal levels have challenged many of these state laws, and this and other key pieces of HB 56 have since been blocked by federal judges.

Young immigrant rights activists, many who themselves marched at the rallies in 2006 and came to the United States as undocumented children, have



I n T ro d U c T I o n 5

played a central role in the political organization of immigrant rights (Gon-zales 2008). Important for this book, many of the young people involved in immigrant rights activism are from mixed-status families, defined as families that include both citizens and noncitizens. Indeed, with the unprecedented mobilization of immigrant rights advocates (Jones-Correa and de Graauw 2013), immigration stories, many on mixed-status families, have become a noteworthy media staple. Examples include “‘Mixed Status’ Tears Apart Families” (Koch 2006); “A Family Divided by Two Words, Legal and Illegal” (Gonzalez 2009); and “For Mixed-Status Families, U.S. Immigration Reform Would End Anxiety” (Gaynor 2013). On June 25, 2012, the cover of Time magazine featured Jose Antonio Vargas, Pulitzer prize–winning journalist, with a group of undocumented immigrants. The title of the story was “We Are Americans” (Vargas 2012). A member of a mixed-status family who was brought to the United States at age twelve without legal status from the Philippines, Vargas (2011) became a prominent immigration activist when he came out an as “undocumented American” the previous year in a New York Times Magazine article. He also directed a documentary film titled Documented (2013) in which he profiles his experience living in the United States without legal status, growing up with his US citizen grandparents, and separated from his mother in the Philippines for over twenty years.

Despite the facts that immigration stories continue to be featured in US popular media discourse and that an immigrant justice movement has strengthened, little scholarship has focused on the experiences of families who are mixed-status. Our volume is the first of its kind to explore a wide spectrum of experiences of immigrant and mixed-status families in terms of family separation, inequality, and legal institutions and the media.

MIxED-STATUS FAMILIES AND IMMIgRATION STUDIES

Households that are mixed-status include a combination of “legal” immi-grants and undocumented immigrants whose legal statuses may change over time, as well as naturalized citizens and US-born citizens (Fix and Zim-mermann 2001). “Some U.S. citizens are immigrants, and some noncitizens may eventually become citizens” (Golash-Boza 2012, 9). In 2011, the Pew Hispanic Center estimated that over 9 million people in the United States are part of mixed-status families and include at least one undocumented adult and at least one US-born child. It is also estimated that at least 4 mil-lion US-born children have an undocumented parent (Passel and Taylor 2010). The growing number of families that contain individuals with differ-




ing legal statuses is not at all surprising when we consider that 63 percent of undocumented individuals have lived in the United States for over a decade (Taylor et al. 2011). With statistics like these, the number of families that include members with differing legal statuses is likely to rise. The stories of mixed-status families—like that of Abby highlighted at the beginning of this chapter—are complex, nuanced, and important to understand.

Indeed, Abby’s quotation points out that for many immigrants, there is indeed no “right way” to gain legal status in the United States, even when there is a familial tie between citizens and noncitizens. Undocumented fam-ily members, and to some extent legal residents, are not afforded the rights and benefits their citizen family members enjoy. At the same time, citizen family members, and in some cases legal residents, have their rights compro-mised by punitive immigration policies that are created across a false “citi-zen/noncitizen” dichotomy. Navigating ambiguous immigration policies that “crack down on illegal immigration” has become increasingly more difficult.

Beginning in 1996, immigration laws and practices became ever more punitive with a growing focus on national security. Laws such as the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA), Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), and the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) were passed, which reduced social service eligibility for many immigrant families and made it easier to detain and deport noncitizens (Androff et al. 2011; Hagan, Eschbach, and Rodriguez 2008). The US Department of Homeland Security was created in 2003, largely as a reaction to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 (Hing 2006), and its website reports that its goal is “a safer, more secure America, which is resilient against terrorism and other potential threats” (US Department of Homeland Security 2012). Since the end of the Bush administration and into the Obama administration, non-citizens, and in particular undocumented immigrants, have increasingly become conceptualized as “potential threats” to US citizens.

However, it is a misnomer to believe that our policies can target non-citizens without harming citizens, when their lives are unquestionably intertwined. In 2012 alone, an all-time high of 643,474 immigrants were apprehended, with 36 percent of those returned to their origin countries without a removal order, also known as “voluntary departure.” That year US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detained 477,523 immi-grants, a record number (Simanski and Sapp 2013). Removals dropped slightly during fiscal year 2013, with 368,644 (ICE 2013). On average, removals tend to be Mexican men under age thirty-five. Strict immigration




enforcement has been presented as a way to keep dangerous criminals out of the country; however, the majority of immigrants removed are not serious criminals (Kohli, Markowitz, and Chavez 2011). Instead, about 67 percent of the 2 million undocumented immigrants deported since 2008 were picked up on traffic infractions and for entering or returning to the United States to join their family (Thompson and Cohen 2014).

Mixed-status families are stuck in a paradox of the US immigration system. With the dramatic rise in detentions, deportations, and voluntary departures, legal permanent residents and citizens are increasingly at risk of being left behind. When a family member is forcibly removed from the United States, spouses and children with legal status are either “voluntarily” exiled from the United States in order to sustain their family or must live in separate countries from their loved ones. In some extreme cases, children of detained or deported undocumented parents are placed in foster care (Wessler 2011). These policies also contribute to the creation of transnational families with mixed status; because of strict border enforcement policies, such families are often divided for years on end. Even when families have not been directly affected by harsh policies, the threat of impending separation is quietly lurking in the background, which causes continual fear and distress.

Tanya Maria Golash-Boza argues that current immigration enforce-ment approaches violate the human rights of both immigrants and citizens. According to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), signed by the US government, “the right to marry and form a family is a fundamental aspect of human rights doctrine” and “includes the right to live together” (Golash-Boza 2012, 160). She points out that legal permanent residents charged with aggravated felonies are not provided judi-cial review in deportation hearings and that this violates the ICCPR (161). Additionally, the ICCPR is violated when we arbitrarily arrest or detain people and use cruel or unusual punishment. Finally, she argues that using physical appearance as an assumption of legal status “violates people’s rights to freedom from discrimination” and is a direct violation of the Interna-tional Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), which the US government has also ratified (163).

Even with growing evidence of the inhumane impact of contemporary immigration policies on individuals and families, immigration reform is still one of the most contentious and hotly debated issues on the national political landscape. One recent policy change has provided momentary reprieve for some people who are undocumented. On June 15, 2012, President Barack Obama signed a memorandum creating the Deferred Action for Childhood




Arrivals (DACA) program. This program provides a form of temporary relief for some undocumented people who came to the United States as children and who are pursuing an education or military service (US Citizenship and Immigration Services 2013). However, comprehensive immigration reform is desperately needed. During the summer of 2013, the Senate was able to pass SB 744, a bipartisan bill, which would have provided a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants living in the United States, while at the same time increasing border security. HB 744 would improve mecha-nisms to keep mixed-status families together. For instance, immigration judges would have been allowed to discontinue deportation proceedings if hardships were created for a citizen family member. The Homeland Security secretary would have also been given discretion to reunite families with strong ties to the United States (Human Rights Watch 2013). But similar to the challenges faced in 2007, the House did not come to an agreement on this issue.

In November 2014, President Obama announced several immigration executive actions that may provide some relief for eligible undocumented immigrants (US Citizenship and Immigration Services 2015). DACA, mentioned above, will be expanded to adults over the age of thirty-one, and Deferred Action for Parental Accountability (DAPA) will allow immi-grants who are parents of US citizens or legal permanent residents relief from deportation and work authorization for three years. Immigrants eligible for DAPA must have been present in the United States for a minimum of five years and pass a background check. Although the executive actions may help some families, other families may be hesitant to come forward for fear of legal repercussions, especially with strong opposition from the Republican Party. Additionally, many mixed-status families—such as families without children, families that have already been deported or separated, or families that include an immigrant who has been convicted of a felony or serious misdemeanor such as partner violence, drug distribution and trafficking, or driving under the influence—continue to be excluded altogether from immigration reprieve.2

OvERvIEW OF Living TogeTher, Living ApArT:

Mixed-STATuS FAMiLieS And uS iMMigrATion poLicy

This book is divided into three sections that highlight the important reali-ties of mixed-status families’ lives. In order to prioritize the voices of mixed-




status families, each part includes scholarly chapters bookended with the personal narratives of immigrants and members of mixed-status families.

A poem titled “The Freedom to Move” by Lisa Speicher Muñoz, an immigrant rights activist, scholar, and member of a mixed-status family, precedes the three sections of the book. As she describes, the freedom to travel has a tremendous impact on mixed-status families. Indeed, Stephen Castles (2005) argues that within a globalized world mobility has become the most powerful and coveted stratifying factor.

Part I, “Living Together, Living Apart: Stories of Separation,” demon-strates how family relationships, both in the United States and abroad, are disrupted by US immigration policies. Individuals in mixed-status families experience significant emotional and financial turmoil across the life course, in particular the threat or reality of being separated from one another. In the worst of cases, divided families must utilize creative strate-gies in order to preserve intimate bonds.

In chapter 1, Giselle Stern Hernández, a Mexican–North American writer, performer, and questioner, writes about sex and long-distance love in her piece “The Purpose of My Trip to Tijuana.” This topic is one that many people with deported spouses and partners have to face but is rarely discussed.

Chapter 2, “Life and Love outside the Citizenship Binary: The Lived Experiences of Mixed-Status Couples in the United States,” is written by April M. Schueths. Contrary to widespread beliefs, marriage to a US citizen does not provide the automatic benefits of legalization for undocumented spouses. In the context of punitive immigration policies, couples discuss the threat of impending separation as well as the struggle to survive living apart from their loved ones. Couples also reveal stories of extended family members divided by international borders.

Chapter 3, “Transnational Mixed-Status Families: Critical Challenges in Cross-Border Relationships over Time,” is written by Rachel M. Hershberg and M. Brinton Lykes. The chapter uses analysis of in-depth interviews with at least one US-based undocumented migrant parent and one Guatemala-based child and caregiver. Respondents are from nine intergenerational Maya K'iche' transnational and mixed-status families who live in the east-ern United States and Guatemala. The two-year study explores relationships within these families and how families sustain themselves in contexts of extended separations, constrained, at least in part, by US immigration and deportation systems. The mini-theory reported here, “being present




when forced to be absent,” characterizes the most salient strategies that family members in Guatemala and the United States utilize to maintain relationships over time and across space.

In chapter 4, “Dependents of the State: Navigating the Immigration and Child Welfare Apparatus at the San Diego–Tijuana Border,” Naomi Glenn-Levin Rodriguez examines how two overlapping systems—immigration law and child welfare policy—come together to give shape to state interventions into the lives of mixed-status families in the San Diego–Tijuana area. Rodri-guez argues that the gaps and overlaps between the immigration and child welfare systems produce a unique set of restrictions and possibilities for the separation and reunification of mixed-status families. Further, she suggests that an examination of this terrain presents a particular view of how “the state” is made manifest in the everyday lives of particular families in the name of child protection.

In chapter 5, “‘We Thought We Had a Future’: Adversity and Resilience in Mixed-Status Families,” Martha I. Zapata Roblyer and Joseph G. Grzywacz use a case study method and a risk and resilience perspective, to illustrate the stresses inherent in the daily lives of mixed-status families. Results sug-gest that unauthorized status is a family-level experience. Unauthorized immigrants, authorized residents, and US citizens in mixed-status families are exposed to numerous and cumulative stressors, because of the adversity derived from the lack of legal documents, the constant vigilance to potential arrest by the authorities, and the fear of family fragmentation due to removal of an unauthorized family member from the country. Results also show that individuals in mixed-status families exhibit remarkable resilience despite the limited legal, economic, and community resources available to them.

Chapter 6 concludes this section of the book. In “Being Mixed-Status,” Sheryl Tuliao Silva and Eric O. Silva, a couple in a mixed-status marriage, reflect on a number of conversations they have had that highlight the com-plex and ambiguous ways in which their mixed-status family exists.

Part II, “Experiences of Inequality: Legal Status and Family Well-Being,” explores health disparities and educational inequalities among and within mixed-status families.

In chapter 7, “Voice of an American-Mexican,” Neida Soto Arrington focuses on her experiences growing up in the United States as an undocu-mented person within a mixed-status family. Mexican by birth and a recent recipient of the DACA program, she arrived “illegally” in the United States with her parents and seven siblings before her first birthday. She and her family labored in the fields of southern Georgia up through her high school




years, but her parents always emphasized the importance of education for social mobility.

In chapter 8, “Mixed-Status Families in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas: Health Disparities along the US-Mexico Border,” Heide Castañeda discusses mixed-status families in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas, among the most medically underserved areas in Texas. Although the Affordable Care Act extends coverage to millions of uninsured people across the United States, policy analysts have suggested that the changes accompanying the reform will have multiple direct and indirect influences on predominantly Latino/a mixed-status families in this region. Coupled with a weak local public health infrastructure and insufficient resources, the lifelong con-sequences of disadvantage for families living in South Texas’s Rio Grande Valley become readily evident not only for immigrant but also for US citizen children.

In chapter 9, “‘Someday I’m Going to Have Papers!’ (¡Algún Día Yo Voy a Tener Papeles!): Mixed-Status Families in the Rural South,” Scott Beck and Alma Stevenson highlight the experiences and knowledge of Latino/a, predominantly Mexican-heritage, educators who have worked in the schools of rural southeast Georgia during the rapid growth of the region’s “new Latino diaspora.” The participants in this study, many of them members of mixed-status families and the children of mixed-status families, have endured hard work, discrimination, humiliation, emotional distress, and family separation. Some children of mixed-status have found—through education—the support, motivation, and exceptional resilience necessary to overcome obstacles.

In chapter 10, “The Green Card Waiting Game: U Visa Holders, Mixed-Status Families, and Marginal Membership,” Sarah Morando Lakhani examines how the U visa legalization process—a temporary legal standing that provides victims of violent crime a path to permanent residency and citizenship—affects the mobility and well-being of mixed-status immi-grant families. Specifically, this chapter provides accounts from formerly undocumented female U visa holders who experienced domestic violence, and it details their evolving access to education and employment. Data sources include participant observation within a nonprofit organization in Los Angeles, California, which provides free legal and social services, and interviews with formerly undocumented U visa recipients who were clients of that organization. Findings suggest that secure forms of legal status are in fact especially important for the welfare and advancement of contemporary immigrant families in the United States. However, respondents also encoun-




tered obstacles in their efforts to enter institutions of higher education and to acquire and maintain steady and remunerative jobs.

In chapter 11, “‘El Otro Lado’ (The Other Side),” Eva Betancourt, a US citizen, raised in Mexico, and a member of an intergenerational mixed-status family, illustrates both struggle and resilience and, ultimately, the sacrifices one makes for the goal of a better life.

Part III, “The Public Face of Illegal: Confronting Legal Institutions and the Media,” explores the private realities of mixed-status families within the context of larger social policies.

In chapter 12, “MIXED-UP,” Carlos-Manuel examines the intersection of immigrant status and sexuality. He describes the challenges and hopes that he and his husband, an undocumented immigrant, have as they forge a path and build a life together.

Chapter 13, “Constructing Mixed-Status Families in Public Discourse,” is written by Eric O. Silva. Conducting an ethnographic content analysis, Silva identifies the various frames that are used to define mixed-status families. The findings suggest three frames used to construct unsympathetic versions of mixed-status families: illegality, anchor babies, and welfare drains. Alter-natively, a number of sympathetic frames emerged: social welfare, noncrimi-nal, injustice and irrationality, valuable community member, citizen rights, and family unity. This chapter highlights a potential discursive opportunity that could arise from discussing mixed-status families.

In chapter 14, “Qualifying Relatives: US Immigration Policies and Fam-ily Reunification or Deunification?,” Connie Oxford focuses on the ways that immigrants who seek “cancellation of removal” are dependent on an immigration judge’s determination of whether their removal constitutes exceptional and extremely unusual hardship to a specified qualifying rela-tive. One particular type of mixed-status family is discussed—that compris-ing undocumented immigrant parents and their US-born children. Using ethnographic data from fieldwork conducted in the federal immigration courts of Los Angeles and New York City, this chapter argues that while US immigration policies were intended ostensibly to reunify family members (as they certainly do), they have also resulted in family deunification because of the limitations of who constitutes a qualifying relative.

In chapter 15, “From Driving to Deportation: Experiences of Mixed-Status Immigrant Families under ‘Secure Communities,’” Diana M. Guelespe describes the experiences and difficulties that mixed-status families confront as the Secure Communities program is implemented. Guelespe found that families faced certain challenges, such as how undocumented wives and hus-




bands made the decision to drive or not, how their limited mobility affected their life as a “normal” family, and how driving had a connection to their ability to be providers and caretakers to their children. She also found that families developed strategies to manage their daily challenges. Their strate-gies allowed them to reduce the risks of being taken into police custody for driving without a license and eased the stress on family members waiting for them to arrive home safely.

Chapter 16, “Dynamics and Ramifications of US Immigration and Visa Policies: Nepali Transnational Workers, Families, and Children in the United States,” is written by Shobha Hamal Gurung. Using ethnographic fieldwork with Nepali immigrant women living in the United States, this study exam-ines the ways in which immigration status and nonimmigrant visa catego-ries—as well as changing US immigration policies—affect the personal, family, and work lives of Nepali families in the United States. The impacts of mixed visa categories and immigration statuses are a source of significant stress for families who are both immigrant and nonimmigrant visa holders; they foster marginality as well as feelings of powerlessness and invisibility in different domains of their lives.

Chapter 17, “Bringing Pedro Home,” is an autobiographical essay written by Emily Guzman that chronicles the unjust detainment of her husband, Pedro, by ICE. She writes about the trauma that Pedro and her family endured and their journey into immigration activism.

Finally, in chapter 18, we close with the voice of Luis A. Hernández, a Mexican immigrant, with a US citizen spouse and US citizen child. He explores the struggles and joys he has faced living without legal status in the United States. His narrative, titled “My Path to Happiness,” considers whether the pain he has endured is worth his American dream.

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Notes

1 Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007, S. 1348, 110th Cong. (2007), http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/110/s1348.

2 For more information on DACA and DAPA, see National Immigration Law Center 2015.



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