Eighty-five percent of immigrant children separated from families during migration

An ongoing study of more than 400 children who have immigrated to the United States shows that 85 percent of them experience separation from one or both parents during the process of moving to this country. About 35 percent of these children are separated from their fathers for more than five years. Nearly half (49 percent) of these children have been separated from both parents at some time during the moving process. Carola Suárez-Orozco, Irina Todorova, and Josephine Louie, researchers from the Harvard Immigration Project at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, said the findings are significant for two reasons: immigrant children who are separated from their parents show more symptoms of depression than those who remain with their families, and 20 percent of children in the United States are now growing up in immigrant homes.