Academic

Yablon-Zug on Grandparent Deportation

By Lawrence Solum

Marcia Anne Yablon-Zug (University of South Carolina School of Law) has posted Deporting Grandma: Why Grandparent Deportation May Be the Next Big Immigration Crisis and How to Solve it on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

This article explores the important role served by primary caregiver grandparents and discusses the particular problems faced by non-citizen primary caregiver grandparents and their grandchildren.

The number of children being raised by grandparents is at an all time high and this trend shows no sign of abating. For thousands of children, grandparents are the only family they have, and the only people keeping them out of the foster care system and away from the devastating problems that plague children in foster care. Consequently, legislation and policies impacting grandparent headed households deserve special concern and attention.

In particular, the issue of non-citizen grandparent caregivers and the problems posed by the ever present threat of their deportation deserves special concern and attention. By 2012, the Department of Homeland Security plans to deport all immigrants to the United States, approximately 12 million people, thousands of whom are the primary caregivers to American citizen children.

In response to these problems, this article will argue that the hardship exception of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which permits cancellation of deportation when such deportation would cause significant hardship to certain qualifying relatives, should be amended to include grandchildren as qualifying relatives. The article will also suggest possible additional solutions to the problem of non-citizen primary caregiver deportation and examine the financial and social ramifications of deporting primary caregiver grandparents.

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on March 24, 2009 (boomark / email).