Young Center’s Call for Best Interests Standard a “Big Idea” for Children
On March 11, 2015, First Focus—a national, highly-regarded and bipartisan advocacy organization for children and families—published Pioneering Change: Innovative Ideas for Children and Families 2015. The Young Center’s call for the implementation of a “best interests of the child” standard for children in immigration proceedings was selected as one of the 14 innovative ideas for the publication. The Young Center’s article, Best Interests of the Child: Bringing Common Sense to Immigration Decisions, is the only chapter in the book to focus specifically on immigrant children.
Since its inception, the Young Center has called for an end to an immigration system that treats children as adults-in-miniature, and instead recognizes them first as children. We have always believed that a child-protective system, which recognizes children’s strength and their particular vulnerabilities, is in everyone’s best interests.
“We know that government actors are concerned about the safety and welfare of children under their jurisdiction,” said Young Center Policy Director Jennifer Nagda. “For nearly 12 years, the Young Center’s independent Child Advocates have shown that consideration of children’s best interests—including their wishes, their safety, and their rights to family integrity, liberty and development—protects children and makes fair and just proceedings possible.”
The article argues that considering the best interests of children placed in adversarial removal proceedings—where they face separation from family and banishment from a country—is both necessary and practicable. We highlight the Young Center’s paradigm for evaluating best interests, which is grounded in a child’s rights framework and which is centered on the child’s desires and safety, and which flows from the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the child welfare laws of all 50 states.
The article links the critical work of independent, Young Center Child Advocates — whose role is to advocate for the best interests of immigrant children — with principles of fundamental fairness and a child’s right to be heard. Said Maria Woltjen, the Young Center’s Director, “This is precisely what child welfare and human rights principles call upon us, as a country, to do—to protect children.”
You can download the PDF of the article or view the full publication, Pioneering Change: Innovative Ideas for Children and Families.