This is not ok

I posted on Instagram this week about how it was one of my last “mommy joy-joy” days before the kids are out for the summer and then she starts kindergarten in the fall. I posted this picture of her with the WANTED underneath it. Then last night I spent the evening trying to wrap my head around our nation’s immigration policy of separating children from their families and putting the kids in cages. We are treating like calfs we are separating from their mothers. Here I am lamenting my last day alone with my child and there are thousands of children separated from their families, because their families risked life and death to try to find a better, new way of life.
 
It is horrifiying to me. Like I can’t sleep at night. I have spent my entire adult life working on behalf of kids. I have worked with Stanford and University of Washington college students, junior and high school students at some of the best public and private schools, AND deaf kids from Siberia, street kids from South Africa AND as a dependency attorney with foster kids, some who are in the foster care system as illegal immegrants. It doesn’t matter, rich, poor, orphan, deaf, or not-virtually ALL of the kids I have worked with long to have a place they call home, long to be safe. For the majority of the kids, even children with abusive, neglectful parents, they would prefer to be with their parents, then a foster care family or group home with people who don’t care about them.
 
I’m convinced in a 100 years we are going to look back at this policy like people look at the practice of separating Native American or Aboriginal children from their parents to “educate them”. OR like the policy of Japanese Internment.  The foster care systems I have been around, in California, Oregon and Washington States all have major problems. And these are systems put in place for kids who parent's are abusing and neglecting their children. These families at our border, while they have gone through a dangerous journey, are risking EVERYTHING frequently in order to provide something BETTER for their children. They are risking life, imprisonment, losing all the money they have in order to get their children into a safer environment.
 
Whatever your stance on immigration and who we should let in and who we should keep out, this separation is not only unnecessary it creates a bigger mess. The Republican party regularly says it wants to focus on the family and bring the family back as the center of society. And yet it endorsed a systemwide policy of separating families. This policy creates more problems not less, more cost not less, more beaurocracy not less, more damage short and long term not less. Call your senator, your congress person. Enough is enough.

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