Recognizing the Civic Value of Parenting a New Generation

Abstract

This chapter contends that polities have a long-term public policy interest in applying the same best interests of the child standard that they use for domestic child welfare determinations to immigration cases that involve deportable noncitizen parents, balanced against the interests of citizens in effective immigration regulation and enforcement. The burden lies with parents who have entered and continued to reside without authorization in a country to show that their right to remain is of benefit to existing citizens. This means that unauthorized immigrant parents should initially be given conditional permission to stay in their children’s country of long-term residence to raise them. Deportable parents should be legalized to fulfill a duty of care to their long-term resident or citizen children in the communities where they reside and be offered the opportunity to acquire citizenship based on their service to their broader communities.