Issues Involving Immigrant Families And Children Are Challenging The State Courts

As part of its on-going work for SJI, the Center for Public Policy Studies (CPPS) is finding that addressing the needs of immigrant families and children poses significant challenges; especially when state courts attempt to fulfill their traditional roles of protecting children and working with distressed juveniles and their families. In part, these challenges are fueled by the sizeable numbers of immigrant families with complicated mixes of immigration statuses now living in the United States. Recent demographic assessments from the Pew Hispanic Center indicate that:

• 16.6 million people in the U.S. live in unauthorized families where the head of the family or the spouse of the head of the family is undocumented.
• 8.8 million people live in unauthorized families with U.S. citizen children.
• Nearly half – 47 percent -- of unauthorized immigrant households consist of a couple with children.
• In 2008, most children of unauthorized immigrants – 73 percent -- were U.S. citizens by birth. Specifically, 5.5 million children lived in unauthorized families. Of these children, about 1.5 million are undocumented, but an additional 4 million are U.S. citizens by birth.
• The younger children of undocumented immigrants are far more likely to be U.S. citizens than are older children – among children under age 6 whose parents are undocumented, 91 percent were born in the U.S.; while among those ages 14 – 17, 50 percent were born in the U.S.
• 7 percent of all unauthorized families include both U.S. citizen and non-U.S. citizen children.
• Approximately 10 percent of all children now being born in the U.S. are the children of illegal immigrants.
• Children of undocumented immigrants are 6.8 percent of students enrolled in kindergarten through grade 12.

The state courts are challenged with having to serve immigrant families and children. This has resulted in a disconnect between state court approaches, which emphasize child welfare by preserving families, helping juveniles, protecting children, and serving the best interest of children; and federal immigration approaches that emphasize removing undocumented immigrants and legal permanent resident immigrants who violate federal and/or state criminal laws. As part of the Strategic Initiatives Grants (SIG) program, CPPS is continuing to work in trial court learning sites across the nation to address the policy, process, and operational implications the state and federal approaches have on child custody and support, divorce, domestic violence, dependency, adoption, and case processing.