Merging Social Work and Social Advocacy in Response to...

Merging Social Work and Social Advocacy in Response to the Plight of Unaccompanied Child Refugees in the United States Introduction More than any country in the world, the United States has been a haven for refugees fleeing religious and political persecution in their home countries. Linked forever to the phrase inscribed on the Statue of Liberty, Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the United States, in the eyes of persecuted people throughout the world, has been idealized as a land of freedom and new beginnings. However, the changing face of refugees seeking asylum in the United States in the past several decades has exposed stark gaps in the legal, administrative, and social treatment of†¦show more content†¦The United States Response Administratively and legally, the United States has been slow in responding to the changes in refugee and asylum-seeking patterns. Until very recently, United States federal policy toward undocumented aliens and refugees was still largely influenced by post-World War II United Nations conventions, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1976) and the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (1954). As dated guidelines for dealing with the asylum claims of refugees, these international norms treat all refugees according to adult standards of proof. The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) refugees guidelines, however, have for many years failed to account for the growing numbers of unaccompanied children entering the United States. United States domestic family law and juvenile justice have recognized that children should be held to different standards of proof, evidence, and culpability than adults. This standard of dual proof is not evident i n United States policy regarding immigrant asylum seekers. United States immigration policy has only in the past year begun to think of children as different from adults.3 Due to the relative newness and slowness of reform, children asylum seekers in the United States continue to be routinely detained, like adults, in INS and INS-contracted state detention facilities as they await hearings before immigration judges to