OUR FAMILY-FRIENDLY US of A: Learn OUR Language or We Will Take Away YOUR Baby

DONT LEAVE ME ALONE

In courts across the nation, judges continue to question a mother’s fitness by measuring her ability, or better put, inability, to speak English. In 2004, a Tennessee judge ordered into foster care the child of a Mexican migrant mother who spoke only an indigenous tongue, and last year, a California court took custody of the U.S.-born twin babies of another non-Spanish and non-English speaking indigenous mother from Oaxaca.

Yes, they are poor; yes, they rarely speak English, let alone Spanish; and yes, they are usually undocumented migrants. Regardless, these women are natural and legally entitled mothers. While the State seems to think her place in the world—her native tongue, level of poverty, cultural traditions, immigration status—deems her unfit to mother, she is rightfully entitled to remain united with her child.  It is her human right. There is a universal consensus that the family is a  fundamental unit of society, therefore entitled to respect, protection, and assistance.  Arbitrary interference with the family is a violation of international human rights and humanitarian law.  As such, don’t you think the State should be providing English lessons as opposed to taking children from their mothers for failing to learn English?

Nina Perdida

Why is it that the State has the right to deprive a new mother of invaluable moments with her child simply because it fears she cannot articulate a call to 911 in a language spoken by an operator? It is one thing to rescue a child from an unsafe, violent, dangerous home; it is quite another to deprive a child of a home merely because the language spoken in the home puts the child at suspected risk.  Such a taking by the State, in my opinion, is a bad excuse for what in actuality is institutional racism at its best!

As true as it is that all immigrants should make a pronounced effort to learn English, it is not the State’s duty to erect small towers of Babylon in our homes. It is also not the State’s role to set aside cultural customs, traditions, or religious practices because they seem backward or un-American.

Most recently, another young indigenous Mexican mother, Cirila Baltazar Cruz, awaits deportation while her newborn baby girl, Rubi, lays in the arms of an affluent attorney couple in Ocean Springs,

EL REBOZO

Mississippi. The child was immediately placed in foster care after the Department of Human Services (DHS) determined Ms. Baltazar Cruz’s inability to properly care for the newborn.  Ms. Baltazar Cruz speaks no English and no Spanish. She speaks Chatino, a dialect spoken by only 50,000 people. Upon birth, the Hospital failed to provide a proper Chatino translator, assuming she spoke Spanish, but rather called DHS, who found Ms. Baltazar Cruz to be an unfit mother in part because her lack of English “placed her unborn child in danger and will place the baby in danger in the future.” The Hospital also called DHS because Ms. Baltazar Cruz had not purchased a crib, clothes, food, or formula.What was not taken into consideration was the cultural background of Ms. Baltazar Cruz; as a typical indigenous Oaxacan mother, Ms. Baltazar Cruz neither needs formula nor a crib, as it is custom to breast feed and carry babies in a rebozo, a type of sling.

I am certain that justice will prevail for Ms. Baltazar Cruz, as it did for other similarly situated indigenous mothers. Thankfully, the law sits in their favor. The home is a private sphere and is constitutionally protected as such. This guarantee is found in the “penumbras” of other constitutional protections and in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Given  cases such as Griswold v. Conneticut, Pierce v. Society of Sisters, and Meyers v. Nebraska, courts continuously uphold such degrees of family privacy. The Meyers Court most relevantly stated, “The Constitution protected everyone, even people who speak a foreign language, and the laudable goal of promoting English ‘cannot be promoted by prohibited means.’”

I mean no disrespect when I say this, but a judge has no legal right whatsoever to weigh language as a determinative factor in assessing a parent’s fitness! And, as true as it may be that speaking English may improve a parent’s fitness or increase the guarantee of safety within a home, to qoute Meyers, such goals cannot be promoted by “prohibited means,” –entering a home and pointing a finger in punishment at a mother’s failure to learn the language does not and WILL NEVER be a sufficient basis to remove the child from that home. A parent’s right to raise their child as they see fit, in whichever language they see fit, is a constitutional right and a human right!

I wish only that little time, energy, and cost is expended in Ms. Baltazar Cruz’s struggle to hold her precious Rubi once again.

If you wish to take action in Ms. Baltazar Cruz’s case, please visit the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights.

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