“As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live” – Pope John Paul II
Immigrant families’ face challenges unknown to the modern, average American family just for the mere fact of having one of their family members out of status. 
As for the adults involved in the process, with great difficulty, they understand the immediate and long-term consequences everyone will face if the family becomes separated.
For the US Citizen husband left behind — let’s call him “John” — he will learn the concept of becoming physically isolated from his family, left to work twice as hard to meet the financial obligations the entire family had before “Maria” [that is his wife] and their children left the country: Their mortgage, their car payments and their credit card debt will not change because his wife and children are no longer with him. On the contrary, the financial obligations most likely will increase since John has now to support the unchanged financial obligations they had as a family in the United States and support his wife and children abroad: Pay for their rent, food, and all of their living expenses while the family remains separated.
To add to his emotional distress, he has to be responsible for all the expenses associated with the petition he filed for his wife with USCIS [the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service] while he was attempting to keep his wife legally in the United States. With the added financial burdens, when is he supposed to save enough money to travel abroad? When will he have time to take off from work and leave on vacation to visit his wife and children? …
Let’s leave that thought alone for a minute. While we take a pause from attempting to understand John’s new reality — let’s take a brief look at Jane.
What happens when the roles are reversed?
US Citizen Jane marries the man of her dreams, Jose. Sometimes, after a traumatic childhood or a devastating first marriage, women like Jane form a family with a man that provides for them and cares for their children, even for the children from her prior marriage, emotionally and financially neglected by their biological father.
After Jane married Jose, she was able to stay at home and take care of her family. Jose continued to be a good husband, a good father and a good provider to all of them. Jane has limited education and she relies on Jose as the family’s sole source of financial support. Once Jose is gone, Jane’s life will dramatically change.
She will have to find a job; a job that pays enough to afford childcare and that offers a work schedule that allows her to pick up her children from a childcare center before it closes, usually at 6:00PM. Finding a job under the current unemployment conditions in the United States would already be a miracle; more so for a woman with limited skills; however, finding a job that pays enough for her and that meets her availability, her “mom schedule,” would be nearly impossible.
If she does find a job, Jane will have strangers caring for her children while Jose is separated from the family, grieving the loss of his wife and children alone. Jane has to join the workforce outside the home, and also continue to care for her family as a single parent. At the same time, she has to send financial aid to her husband since in all likelihood Jose will not be able to find a job to support himself much less send Jane financial support for her and their children (if that was the case, Jose would not have left his country looking for a better future in the first place).
So, what happens to the children?
The US born, American children … are unjustly punished. Punished if they stay in the United States since they will grow up without their father (given that he has been forcefully removed from their home) and without their mother (given that she will have to work outside the home, possibly two jobs, to support them and their father).
The punishment is even worse when the father is the United States Citizen since his American born children would likely be sent to live with their mother in countries like Mexico where crime and violence are extremely serious problems and can occur anywhere, anytime and where U.S. citizens have fallen victim to criminal activity, including homicides, gun battles, kidnappings, carjacking and highway robberies not to mention becoming victims of drug trafficking organizations.
Countries like Honduras, a country with highest murder rate in the world or countries like El Salvador, a country with the second highest murder rate in the world and a femicide paradise; or even places like Guatemala, which per the U.S. Department of State, is one of the most dangerous countries in the world.
These American children are exiled along with their deported mothers, to underdeveloped countries where they will only learn to resent and emotionally detach from their American family members and their country of birth … the United States of America.
These children are US born American citizens who will grow up without speaking proper English, who will grow up not knowing American history and who will grow up without having a sense of love and patriotism for their country of birth, the USA. These children, for the most part, will have been deprived from receiving the educational opportunities other American children receive by the mere privilege of being born American.
Without speaking proper English and without an education beyond sixth grade, these children will return to the United States as adults without any hopes of having a better future. Some will join the millions of Americans in the labor force but others will take a different road perhaps even ending up in the US prison system.
The damage our immigration system does to families by tearing them apart is not only to the one person who entered the country undocumented, ten, fifteen or twenty years ago.
The immigration system, as is, causes extreme and undue hardship to everyone alike including innocent children, American Citizens, who under any other circumstances would have been protected by their own government.
While living in the United States, these American children learn to accept that they too have to be punished for what their parents did; even if their parents were children themselves when they entered the country without proper documentation by no fault of their own. Many of them accept these consequences as facts of life. Mistakenly, they begin to learn that the police are “bad” and that the police enforce immigration laws because of “racism” not because it is federal law. These children perceive their fear as valid and real. Sadly, these American born children learn to live in constant fear of being abandoned by their parents, fear of the police and fear of being ridiculed and humiliated in school for having parents who live in the shadows.
As a nation, we are a world leader. We can conquer the immigration problem and we can put an end to the suffering of these innocent American children. I believe the following quote sums up this immigration dilemma:
Family is not an important thing. It’s everything.
Michael J. Fox
Rocio D Woody, Licensed Psychotherapist 
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