Heard this one before?: Immigration reports have familiar ring

Published: 2007-10-05

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- A stack of reports helps define some of the human consequences of the gnarled U.S. immigration system: "Portrait of Injustice: The Impact of Immigration Raids on Families, Workers and Communities"; "Liberty Denied: Women Seeking Asylum Imprisoned in the United States"; and "Slipping Through the Cracks: Unaccompanied Children Detained by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service." The reports, issued a decade ago, remain relevant today. Also unchanged are the conditions outlined in the report on women seeking asylum, published in April 1997 by the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children, and the October 1998 report on the impact of immigration raids, published by the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. The reports illustrate that the United States didn't get into its current immigration mess overnight. Despite changes in who controls Congress, who occupies the White House and who runs many of the relevant government offices -- indeed, despite extensive restructuring of the federal agencies that deal with immigrants -- some of the most compelling human dramas sound a lot like those of the 1990s.

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