China’s one-child policy was part of a birth planning program designed to control the size of its population. Distinct from the family planning policies of most other countries (which focus on providing contraceptive options to help women have the number of children they want), it set a limit on the number of children parents could have, the world’s most extreme example of population planning. It was introduced in 1979 (after a decade-long two-child policy),[1] modified in the mid 1980s to allow rural parents a second child if the first was a daughter, and then lasted three more decades before being eliminated at the end of 2015. The policy also allowed exceptions for some other groups, including ethnic minorities. The term one-child policy is thus a misnomer, because for nearly 30 of the 37 years that it existed (1979–2015 included) about half of all parents in China were allowed to have a second child.
Provincial governments could, and did, require the use of contraception, sterilizations and abortions to ensure compliance, and imposed enormous fines for violations. Local and national governments created commissions to raise awareness and carry out registration and inspection work. China also rewards families with only one child. From 1982 onwards, in accordance with the instructions on further family planning issued by the CPC central committee and the state council in that year, regulations awarded 5 yuan per month for only children. Parents who had one child would also get a “one-child glory certificate”.[2]
According to the Chinese government, 400million births were prevented, starting from 1970, a decade before the start of the one child policy. Some scholars have disputed this claim, with Martin King Whyte and Wang et alcontending that the policy had little effect on population growth or the size of the total population.[3][4][5] China has been compared to countries with similar socioeconomic development like Thailand and Iran, along with the Indian states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu, which achieved similar declines of fertility without a one-child policy.[6] However, a recent demographic study challenged these scholars by showing that China’s low fertility was achieved two or three decades earlier than would be expected given its level of development, and that more than 500 million births were prevented between 1970 and 2015 (a calculation based on an alternative model of fertility decline proposed by the scholars themselves),[4] some 400 million of which may have been due to one-child restrictions.[7] In addition, by 2060 China’s birth planning policies may have averted as many as 1 billion people in China when one adds in all the eliminated descendants of the births originally averted by the policies.[8][9] Although 76% of Chinese people said that they supported the policy in a 2008 survey, it was controversial outside of China.[10]
Effective from January 2016, the national birth planning policy became a universal two-child policy that allowed each couple to have two children.
China’s population since 1950
Background
During the period of Mao Zedong‘s leadership in China, the birth rate fell from 37 per thousand to 20 per thousand.[11] Infant mortality declined from 227 per thousand births in 1949 to 53 per thousand in 1981, and life expectancy dramatically increased from around 35 years in 1948 to 66 years in 1976.[11][12] Until the 1960s, the government encouraged families to have as many children as possible[13] because of Mao’s belief that population growth empowered the country, preventing the emergence of family planning programs earlier in China’s development.[14] The population grew from around 540million in 1949 to 940million in 1976.[15] Beginning in 1970, citizens were required to marry at later ages and many were limited to have only two children.[1]
Although China’s fertility rate plummeted faster than anywhere else in the world during the 1970s under these restrictions, the Chinese government thought that fertility was still too high, influenced by the global debate over a possible overpopulation catastrophe suggested by organizations such as Club of Rome and Sierra Club. It thus began to encourage one-child families in 1978, and then announced in 1979 its intention to advocate for one-child families. In 1980, the central government organized a meeting in Chengdu to discuss the speed and scope of one-child restrictions.[1]
One participant at the Chengdu meeting had read two influential books about population concerns, The Limits to Growth and A Blueprint for Survival while visiting Europe in 1979. That official, Song Jian, along with several associates, determined that the ideal population of China was 700million, and that a universal one-child policy for all would be required to meet that goal.[16] Moreover, Song and his group showed that if fertility rates remained constant at 3 births per woman, China’s population would surpass 3 billion by 2060 and 4 billion by 2080.[1] In spite of some criticism inside the party, the plan (also referred to as the Family Planning Policy[17]) was formally implemented as a temporary measure on 18 September 1980.[18][19][20][21] The plan called for families to have one child each in order to curb a then-surging population and alleviate social, economic, and environmental problems in China.[22][23]
Although a recent and often-repeated interpretation by Greenhalgh claims that Song Jian was the central architect of the one-child policy and that he “hijacked” the population policymaking process,[24] that claim has been refuted by several leading scholars, including Liang Zhongtang, a leading internal critic of one-child restrictions and an eye-witness at the discussions in Chengdu.[25] In the words of Wang et al., “the idea of the one-child policy came from leaders within the Party, not from scientists who offered evidence to support it”[3] Central officials had already decided in 1979 to advocate for one-child restrictions before knowing of Song’s work and, upon learning of his work in 1980, already seemed sympathetic to his position.[26] Moreover, even if Song’s work convinced them to proceed with universal one-child restrictions in 1980, the policy was loosened to a “1.5”-child policy just five years later, and it is that policy which has been misnomered since as the “one-child policy.” Thus, it is misleading to suggest that Song Jian was either the inventor or architect of the policy.
History
The one-child policy was originally designed to be a “One-Generation Policy”.[27] It was enforced at the provincial level and enforcement varied; some provinces had more relaxed restrictions. The one-child limit was most strictly enforced in densely populated urban areas.[28]
Beginning in 1980, the official policy granted local officials the flexibility to make exceptions and allow second children in the case of “practical difficulties” (such as cases in which the father was a disabled serviceman) or when both parents were single children,[29] and some provinces had other exemptions worked into their policies as well. In most areas, families were allowed to apply to have a second child if their first-born was a daughter.[30][31] Furthermore, families with children with disabilities have different policies and families whose first child suffers from physical disability, mental illness, or intellectual disability were allowed to have more children.[32] However, second children were sometimes subject to birth spacing (usually 3 or 4 years). Children born in overseas countries were not counted under the policy if they did not obtain Chinese citizenship. Chinese citizens returning from abroad were allowed to have a second child.[33] Sichuan province allowed exemptions for couples of certain backgrounds.[34] By one estimate there were at least 22 ways in which parents could qualify for exceptions to the law towards the end of the one-child policy’s existence.[35] As of 2007, only 36% of the population were subjected to a strict one-child limit. 53% were permitted to have a second child if their first was a daughter; 9.6% of Chinese couples were permitted two children regardless of their gender; and 1.6% – mainly Tibetans – had no limit at all.[36]
The Danshan, Sichuan Province Nongchang Village people Public Affairs Bulletin Board in September 2005 noted that RMB 25,000 in social compensation fees were owed in 2005. Thus far 11,500 RMB had been collected, so another 13,500 RMB had to be collected.
Following the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, a new exception to the regulations was announced in Sichuan for parents who had lost children in the earthquake.[37][38] Similar exceptions had previously been made for parents of severely disabled or deceased children.[39] People have also tried to evade the policy by giving birth to a second child in Hong Kong, but at least for Guangdong residents, the one-child policy was also enforced if the birth was given in Hong Kong or abroad.[40]
In accordance with China’s affirmative action policies towards ethnic minorities, all non-Han ethnic groups are subjected to different laws and were usually allowed to have two children in urban areas, and three or four in rural areas. Han Chinese living in rural towns were also permitted to have two children.[41] Because of couples such as these, as well as who simply pay a fine (or “social maintenance fee”) to have more children,[42] the overall fertility rate of mainland China was close to 1.4 children per woman as of 2011.[43]
On 6 January 2010, the former national population and family planning commission issued the “national population development” 12th five-year plan.[44]
Enforcement
Chinese One-Child Policy propaganda from 1982
Financial
The Family Planning Policy was enforced through a financial penalty in the form of the “social child-raising fee”, sometimes called a “family planning fine” in the West, which was collected as a fraction of either the annual disposable income of city dwellers or of the annual cash income of peasants, in the year of the child’s birth.[45] For instance, in Guangdong, the fee was between 3 and 6 annual incomes for incomes below the per capita income of the district, plus 1 to 2 times the annual income exceeding the average. The family was required to pay the fine.[46]
Mandatory contraception and sterilization
As part of the policy, women were required to have a contraceptive intrauterine device (IUD) surgically installed after having a first child, and to be sterilized by tubal ligation after having a second child. From 1980 to 2014, 324 million Chinese women were fitted with IUDs in this way and 108 million were sterilized. Women who refused these procedures – which many resented – could lose their government employment and their children could lose access to education or health services. The IUDs installed in this way were modified such that they could not be removed manually, but only through surgery.
In 2016, following the abolition of the one-child policy, the Chinese government announced that IUD removals would now be paid for by the government.[47]
Relaxation
In 2013, Deputy Director Wang Peian of the National Health and Family Planning Commission said that “China’s population will not grow substantially in the short term”.[48] A survey by the commission found that only about half of eligible couples wish to have two children, mostly because of the cost of living impact of a second child.[49]
In November 2013, following the Third Plenum of the 18th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, China announced the decision to relax the one-child policy. Under the new policy, families could have two children if one parent, rather than both parents, was an only child.[50][51] This mainly applied to urban couples, since there were very few rural only children due to long-standing exceptions to the policy for rural couples.[52] Zhejiang, one of the most affluent provinces, became the first area to implement this “relaxed policy” in January 2014,[53] and 29 out of the 31 provinces had implemented it by July 2014,[54] with the exceptions of Xinjiang and Tibet. Under this policy, approximately 11million couples in China are allowed to have a second child; however, only “nearly one million” couples applied to have a second child in 2014,[55] less than half the expected number of 2 million per year.[54] By May 2014, 241,000 out of 271,000 applications had been approved. Officials of China’s National Health and Family Planning Commission claimed that this outcome was expected, and that “second-child policy” would continue progressing with a good start.[56]
In 2016, 433 births and 211 deaths were recorded in Wulipu, Hubei. The birth rate was 8.9% and death rate was 4.3% resulting in a natural population increase of 4.6%.[57] In the results of a separate survey published by the Shayang County government, Wulipu’s population had increased from 48,044 to 48,132 during a survey period. 424 children were born during the survey period resulting in a birth rate of 8.82%. During the same period, 63 people died, resulting in death rate of 1.31%. Of the births in the survey, 406 (95.75%) were in compliance with the family planning policy of China. 312 (73.58%) of the births were the firstborn in the family. (All of these births were in compliance with the family planning policy of China.) Among the firstborn children, 157 were female. 107 (25.24%) of the births were the second-born child in the family. 90 of these births were in compliance with the family planning policy of China. Among the second-born children, 47 were female. Five (1.18%) of the births surveyed were neither the firstborn nor second-born child in the family. Four of these births were in compliance with the family planning policy of China. Among the children born who were neither firstborn nor second-born, two were female.[58]
Abolition
In October 2015, the Chinese news agency Xinhua announced plans of the government to abolish the one-child policy, now allowing all families to have two children, citing from a communiqué issued by the Communist Party “to improve the balanced development of population” – an apparent reference to the country’s female-to-male sex ratio – and to deal with an aging population according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.[22][59][60][61][62][63][64][65] The new law took effect on 1 January 2016 after it was passed in the standing committee of the National People’s Congress on 27 December 2015.[66][67]
The rationale for the abolition was summarized by former Wall Street Journal reporter Mei Fong: “The reason China is doing this right now is because they have too many men, too many old people, and too few young people. They have this huge crushing demographic crisis as a result of the one-child policy. And if people don’t start having more children, they’re going to have a vastly diminished workforce to support a huge aging population.”[68] China’s ratio is about five working adults to one retiree; the huge retiree community must be supported, and that will dampen future growth, according to Fong.
Since the citizens of China are living longer and having fewer children, the growth of the population imbalance is expected to continue, as reported by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation which referred to a United Nations projections forecast that “China will lose 67million working-age people by 2030, while simultaneously doubling the number of elderly. That could put immense pressure on the economy and government resources.”[22] The longer term outlook is also pessimistic, based on an estimate by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, revealed by Cai Fang, deputy director. “By 2050, one-third of the country will be aged 60 years or older, and there will be fewer workers supporting each retired person.”[69]
Although many critics of China’s reproductive restrictions approve of the policy’s abolition, Amnesty International said that the move to the two-child policy would not end forced sterilizations, forced abortions, or government control over birth permits.[70][71] Others also stated that the abolition is not a sign of the relaxation of authoritarian control in China. A reporter for CNN said, “It was not a sign that the party will suddenly start respecting personal freedoms more than it has in the past. No, this is a case of the party adjusting policy to conditions. … The new policy, raising the limit to two children per couple, preserves the state’s role.”[72][73]
The abolition may not achieve a significant benefit, as the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation analysis indicated: “Repealing the one-child policy may not spur a huge baby boom, however, in part because fertility rates are believed to be declining even without the policy’s enforcement. Previous easings of the one-child policy have spurred fewer births than expected, and many people among China’s younger generations see smaller family sizes as ideal.”[22] The CNN reporter adds that China’s new prosperity is also a factor in the declining[69] birth rate, saying, “Couples naturally decide to have fewer children as they move from the fields into the cities, become more educated, and when women establish careers outside the home.”[72]
The Chinese government had expected the abolishing of the one-child rule would lead to an increase in births to about 21.9 million births in 2018. The actual number of births was 15.2 million – the lowest birth rate since 1961.[74]
Administration
The one-child policy was managed by the National Population and Family Planning Commission under the central government since 1981. The Ministry of Health of the People’s Republic of China and the National Health and Family Planning Commission were made defunct and a new single agency National Health and Family Planning Commission took over national health and family planning policies in 2013. The agency reports to the State Council.
The policy was enforced at the provincial level through fines that were imposed based on the income of the family and other factors. “Population and Family Planning Commissions” existed at every level of government to raise awareness and carry out registration and inspection work.[75]
Effects
Fertility reduction: Debates over the roles of policy vs. socio-economic change
The fertility rate in China continued its fall from 2.8 births per woman in 1979 (already a sharp reduction from more than five births per woman in the early 1970s) to 1.5 by the mid 1990s. Some scholars claim that this decline is similar to that observed in other places that had no one-child restrictions, such as Thailand as well as Indian states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu, a claim designed to support the argument that China’s fertility might have fallen to such levels anyway without draconian fertility restrictions.[3][76][6][77]
According to a 2017 study in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, “the one-child policy accelerated the already-occurring drop in fertility for a few years, but in the longer term, economic development played a more fundamental role in leading to and maintaining China’s low fertility level.”.[78] However, a more recent study found that China’s fertility decline to very low levels by the mid 1990s was far more impressive given its lower level of socio-economic development at that time;[9] even after taking rapid economic development into account, China’s fertility restrictions likely averted over 500 million births between 1970 and 2015, with the portion caused by one-child restrictions possibly totaling 400 million.[7] Fertility restrictions also had other unintended consequences, such as a deficit of 40 million female babies. Most of this deficit was due to sex-selective abortion as well as the 1.5 child stopping rule, which required rural parents to stop childbearing if their first born was a son.[79] Another consequence was the acceleration of the aging of China’s population.[80][81]
Disparity in sex ratio at birth
The sex ratio at birth in People’s Republic of China, males per 100 females, 1980–2010.
The sex ratio of a newborn infant (between male and female births) in mainland China reached 117:100, and stabilized between 2000 and 2013, about 10% higher than the baseline, which ranges between 103:100 and 107:100. It had risen from 108:100 in 1981—at the boundary of the natural baseline—to 111:100 in 1990.[82] According to a report by the National Population and Family Planning Commission, there will be 30million more men than women in 2020, potentially leading to social instability, and courtship-motivated emigration.[83]
The disparity in the gender ratio at birth increases dramatically after the first birth, for which the ratios remained steadily within the natural baseline over the 20 year interval between 1980 and 1999. Thus, a large majority of couples appear to accept the outcome of the first pregnancy, whether it is a boy or a girl. If the first child is a girl, and they are able to have a second child, then a couple may take extraordinary steps to assure that the second child is a boy. If a couple already has two or more boys, the sex ratio of higher parity births swings decidedly in a feminine direction. This demographic evidence indicates that while families highly value having male offspring, a secondary norm of having a girl or having some balance in the sexes of children often comes into play. Zeng 1993 reported a study based on the 1990 census in which they found sex ratios of just 65 or 70 boys per 100 girls for births in families that already had two or more boys.[84] A study by Anderson & Silver (1995) found a similar pattern among both Han and non-Han nationalities in Xinjiang Province: a strong preference for girls in high parity births in families that had already borne two or more boys.[85] This tendency to favour girls in high parity births to couples who had already borne sons was later also noted by Coale and Banister, who suggested as well that once a couple had achieved its goal for the number of males, it was also much more likely to engage in “stopping behavior”, i.e., to stop having more children.[86]
The long-term disparity has led to a significant gender imbalance or skewing of the sex ratio. As reported by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, China has between 32million and 36million more males than would be expected naturally, and this has led to social problems. “Because of a traditional preference for baby boys over girls, the one-child policy is often cited as the cause of China’s skewed sex ratio … Even the government acknowledges the problem and has expressed concern about the tens of millions of young men who won’t be able to find brides and may turn to kidnapping women, sex trafficking, other forms of crime or social unrest.”[22] The situation will not improve in the near future. According to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, there will be 24 million more men than women of marriageable age by 2020.[87]
Education
According to a 2017 study in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, “existing studies indicate either a modest or minimal effect of the fertility change induced by the one-child policy on children education”.[78]
Adoption and abandonment
A roadside sign in rural Sichuan: “It is forbidden to discriminate against, mistreat or abandon baby girls.”
For parents who had “unauthorized” births or who wanted a son but had a daughter, giving up the child for adoption was a kind of strategy to avoid penalties under one-child restrictions. In fact, “out adoption” was not uncommon in China even before birth planning. In the 1980s, adoptions of daughters accounted for slightly above half of the so-called “missing girls”, as out-adopted daughters often went unreported in censuses and survey and adoptive parents were not penalized for violating birth quotas [88] However, in 1991, a central decree attempted to close off this loophole by raising penalties and levying those penalties on any household that had an “unauthorized” child, including those that had adopted children.[89] This closing of the adoption loophole resulted in the abandonment of some two million Chinese children (mostly daughters),[9] many of who ended up in orphanages, some 120,000 of whom would be adopted by international parents.
The peak wave of abandonment occurred in the 1990s, with a smaller wave after 2000.[89] Around the same time, poor care and high mortality rates in some state orphanages generated intense international pressure for reform.[90][91]
After 2005, the number of international adoptions declined, due both to falling birth rates and the related increase in demand for adoptions by Chinese parents themselves. In an interview with National Public Radio on 30 October 2015, Adam Pertman,[92] president and CEO of the National Center on Adoption and Permanency, indicated that “the infant girls of yesteryear have not been available, if you will, for five, seven years. China has been … trying to keep the girls within the country … And the consequence is that, today, rather than those young girls who used to be available – primarily girls – today, it’s older children, children with special needs, children in sibling groups. It’s very, very different.”[93]
Twins
Since there are no penalties for multiple births, it is believed that an increasing number of couples are turning to fertility medicines to induce the conception of twins. According to a 2006 China Daily report, the number of twins born per year was estimated to have doubled.[timeframe?][94]
Quality of life for women
Some sources state that the one-child policy has played a major role in improving the quality of life for women in China.[citation needed] Proponents of this view hold that with the one-child policy, gender equality started to be emphasized in China and women had the same opportunity to be educated as men.[citation needed] For thousands of years, girls have held a lower status in Chinese households. However, the one-child policy’s limit on the number of children has prompted parents of women to start investing money in their well-being. As a result of being an only child, women have increased opportunity to receive an education, and support to get better jobs. One of the side effects of the one-child policy is to have liberated women from heavy duties in terms of taking care of many children and the family in the past; instead women had a lot of spare time for themselves to pursue their career or hobbies. The other major “side effect” of the one child policy is that the traditional concepts of gender roles between men and women have weakened. Being one and the only “chance” the parents have, women are expected to compete with peer men for better educational resources or career opportunities. Especially in cities where one-child policy was much more regulated and enforced, expectations on women to succeed in life are no less than on men. Recent data has shown that the proportion of women attending college is higher than that of men. The policy also has a positive effect of the policy fines at 10 to 19 years of age on the likelihood of completing senior high school in women of Han ethnicity. At the same time, the one-child policy reduces the economic burden for each family. The condition for each family has become better. As a result, women also have much more freedom within the family.They are supported by their family to pursue their life achievements.[95]
Healthcare improvements
It is reported that the focus of China on population planning helps provide a better health service for women and a reduction in the risks of death and injury associated with pregnancy. At family planning offices, women receive free contraception and pre-natal classes that contributed to the policy’s success in two respects. First, the average Chinese household expends fewer resources, both in terms of time and money, on children, which gives many Chinese people more money with which to invest. Second, since Chinese adults can no longer rely on children to care for them in their old age, there is an impetus to save money for the future.[96]
“Four-two-one” problem
A government sign in Tangshan Township: “For a prosperous, powerful nation and a happy family, please practice family planning.”
As the first generation of law-enforced only-children came of age for becoming parents themselves, one adult child was left with having to provide support for his or her two parents and four grandparents.[97][98] Called the “4-2-1 Problem”, this leaves the older generations with increased chances of dependency on retirement funds or charity in order to receive support. If not for personal savings, pensions, or state welfare, most senior citizens would be left entirely dependent upon their very small family or neighbours for assistance. If, for any reason, the single child is unable to care for their older adult relatives, the oldest generations would face a lack of resources and necessities. In response to such an issue, by 2007, all provinces in the nation except Henan had adopted a new policy allowing couples to have two children if both parents were only children themselves;[99][failed verification][100] Henan followed in 2011.[101]
Unregistered children
Heihaizi (Chinese: 黑孩子; pinyin: hēiháizi) or “black child” is a term denoting children born outside the one-child policy, or generally children who are not registered in the Chinese national household registration system.
Being excluded from the family register means they do not possess a Hukou, which is “an identifying document, similar in some ways to the American social security card.”[102] In this respect they do not legally exist and as a result cannot access most public services, such as education and health care, and do not receive protection under the law.[103][104][105]
Potential social problems
Some parents may over-indulge their only child. The media referred to the indulged children in one-child families as “little emperors“.[106] Since the 1990s, some people have worried that this will result in a higher tendency toward poor social communication and cooperation skills amongst the new generation, as they have no siblings at home. No social studies have investigated the ratio of these so-called “over-indulged” children and to what extent they are indulged. With the first generation of children born under the policy (which initially became a requirement for most couples with first children born starting in 1979 and extending into the 1980s) reaching adulthood, such worries were reduced.[107]
However, the “little emperor syndrome” and additional expressions, describing the generation of Chinese singletons are very abundant in the Chinese media, Chinese academia and popular discussions. Being over-indulged, lacking self-discipline and having no adaptive capabilities are traits that are highly associated with Chinese singletons.[108]
Some 30 delegates called on the government in the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference in March 2007 to abolish the one-child rule, citing “social problems and personality disorders in young people”. One statement read, “It is not healthy for children to play only with their parents and be spoiled by them: it is not right to limit the number to two children per family, either.”[109] The proposal was prepared by Ye Tingfang, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, who suggested that the government at least restore the previous rule that allowed couples to have up to two children. According to a scholar, “The one-child limit is too extreme. It violates nature’s law. And in the long run, this will lead to mother nature’s revenge.”[109][110]
Birth tourism
Reports surfaced of Chinese women giving birth to their second child overseas, a practice known as birth tourism. Many went to Hong Kong, which is exempt from the one-child policy. Likewise, a Hong Kong passport differs from China mainland passport by providing additional advantages. Recently though, the Hong Kong government has drastically reduced the quota of births set for non-local women in public hospitals. As a result, fees for delivering babies there have surged. As further admission cuts or a total ban on non-local births in Hong Kong are being considered, mainland agencies that arrange for expectant mothers to give birth overseas are predicting a surge in those going to North America.[111][unreliable source?]
As the United States practises birthright citizenship, all children born in the US will automatically have US citizenship. The closest US location from China is Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands, a US dependency in the western Pacific Ocean that allows Chinese visitors without visa restrictions. As of 2012, the island was experiencing an upswing in Chinese births, since birth tourism there had become cheaper than to Hong Kong. This option is used by relatively affluent Chinese who often have secondary motives as well, wishing their children to be able to leave mainland China when they grow older or bring their parents to the US. Canada, compared to US, is less achievable as their government denies many visa requests.[112][113]
Sex-selective abortion
Due to the preference in Rural Chinese society to give birth to a son,[114] pre-natal sex determination and sex-selective abortions are illegal in China.[115] Often argued as one of the key factors in the imbalanced sex-ratio in China, as excess female infant mortality and underreporting of female births cannot solely explain this gender disparity.[116] Researchers have found that the gender of the firstborn child in rural parts of China impact whether or not the mother will seek an ultrasound for the second child. 40% of women with a firstborn son seek an ultrasound for their second pregnancy, versus 70% of women with firstborn daughters. This clearly depicts a desire for women to birth a son if one has not yet been birthed.[117] In response to this, the Chinese government made sex-selective abortions illegal in 2005.[117]
Criticism
The policy is controversial outside China for many reasons, including accusations of human rights abuses in the implementation of the policy, as well as concerns about negative social consequences.[118]
Statement of the effect of the policy on birth reduction
The Chinese government, quoting Zhai Zhenwu, director of Renmin University’s School of Sociology and Population in Beijing, estimates that 400million births were prevented by the one-child policy as of 2011, while some demographers challenge that number, putting the figure at perhaps half that level, according to CNN.[119] Zhai clarified that the 400million estimate referred not just to the one-child policy, but includes births prevented by predecessor policies implemented one decade before, stating that “there are many different numbers out there but it doesn’t change the basic fact that the policy prevented a really large number of births”.[120]
This claim is disputed by Wang Feng, director of the Brookings-Tsinghua Center for Public Policy, and Cai Yong from the Carolina Population Center at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill[120] Wang claims that “Thailand and China have had almost identical fertility trajectories since the mid 1980s”, and “Thailand does not have a one-child policy.”[120] China’s Health Ministry has also disclosed that at least 336million abortions were performed on account of the policy.[121]
According to a report by the US Embassy, scholarship published by Chinese scholars and their presentations at the October 1997 Beijing conference of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population seemed to suggest that market-based incentives or increasing voluntariness is not morally better but that it is in the end more effective.[122] In 1988, Zeng Yi and Professor T. Paul Schultz of Yale University discussed the effect of the transformation to the market on Chinese fertility, arguing that the introduction of the contract responsibility system in agriculture during the early 1980s weakened family planning controls during that period.[123] Zeng contended that the “big cooking pot” system of the People’s Communes had insulated people from the costs of having many children. By the late 1980s, economic costs and incentives created by the contract system were already reducing the number of children farmers wanted.
A long-term experiment in a county in Shanxi, in which the family planning law was suspended, suggested that families would not have many more children even if the law were abolished.[35] A 2003 review of the policy-making process behind the adoption of the one-child policy shows that less intrusive options, including those that emphasized delay and spacing of births, were known but not fully considered by China’s political leaders.[124]
Unequal enforcement
Corrupted government officials and especially wealthy individuals have often been able to violate the policy in spite of fines.[125] Filmmaker Zhang Yimou had three children and was subsequently fined 7.48million yuan ($1.2million).[126] For example, between 2000 and 2005, as many as 1,968 officials in Hunan province were found to be violating the policy, according to the provincial family planning commission; also exposed by the commission were 21 national and local lawmakers, 24 political advisors, 112 entrepreneurs and 6 senior intellectuals.[125]
Some of the offending officials did not face penalties,[125] although the government did respond by raising fines and calling on local officials to “expose the celebrities and high-income people who violate the family planning policy and have more than one child”.[125] Also, people who lived in the rural areas of China were allowed to have two children without punishment, although the family is required to wait a couple of years before having another child.[127]
Human rights violations
The one-child policy has been challenged for violating a human right to determine the size of one’s own proper family. According to a 1968 proclamation of the International Conference on Human Rights, “Parents have a basic human right to determine freely and responsibly the number and the spacing of their children.”[128][129]
According to the UK newspaper The Daily Telegraph, a quota of 20,000 abortions and sterilizations was set for Huaiji County, Guangdong in one year due to reported disregard of the one-child policy. According to the article local officials were being pressured into purchasing portable ultrasound devices to identify abortion candidates in remote villages. The article also reported that women as far along as 8.5 months pregnant were forced to abort, usually by an injection of saline solution.[130] A 1993 book by social scientist Steven W. Mosher reported that women in their ninth month of pregnancy, or already in labour, were having their children killed whilst in the birth canal or immediately after birth.[131]
According to a 2005 news report by Australian Broadcasting Corporation correspondent John Taylor, China outlawed the use of physical force to make a woman submit to an abortion or sterilization in 2002 but ineffectively enforces the measure.[132] In 2012, Feng Jianmei, a villager from Shaanxi province was forced into an abortion by local officials after her family refused to pay the fine for having a second child. Chinese authorities have since apologized and two officials were fired, while five others were sanctioned.[133]
In the past, China promoted eugenics as part of its population planning policies, but the government has backed away from such policies, as evidenced by China’s ratification of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which compels the nation to significantly reform its genetic testing laws.[134] Recent[when?] research has also emphasized the necessity of understanding a myriad of complex social relations that affect the meaning of informed consent in China.[135] Furthermore, in 2003, China revised its marriage registration regulations and couples no longer have to submit to a pre-marital physical or genetic examination before being granted a marriage license.[136]
The United Nations Population Fund‘s (UNFPA) support for family planning in China, which has been associated with the One-Child policy in the United States, led the United States Congress to pull out of the UNFPA during the Reagan administration,[137] and again under George W. Bush‘s presidency, citing human rights abuses[138] and stating that the right to “found a family” was protected under the Preamble in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.[139] President Obama resumed U.S. government financial support for the UNFPA shortly after taking office in 2009, intending to “work collaboratively to reduce poverty, improve the health of women and children, prevent HIV/AIDS and provide family planning assistance to women in 154 countries”.[140][141]
Effect on infanticide rates
Sex-selected abortion, abandonment, and infanticide are illegal in China. Nevertheless, the United States Department of State,[142] the Parliament of the United Kingdom,[143] and the human rights organization Amnesty International[144] have all declared that infanticide still exists.[145][146][147] A writer for the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs wrote, “The ‘one-child’ policy has also led to what Amartya Sen first called ‘Missing Women’, or the 100million girls ‘missing’ from the populations of China (and other developing countries) as a result of female infanticide, abandonment, and neglect”.[148]
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation offered the following summary as to the long term effects of sex-selective abortion and abandonment of female infants:
Multiple research studies have also found that sex-selective abortion – where a woman undergoes an ultrasound to determine the sex of her baby, and then aborts it if it’s a girl – was widespread for years, particularly for second or subsequent children. Millions of female fetuses have been aborted since the 1970s. China outlawed sex selective abortions in 2005, but the law is tough to enforce because of the difficulty of proving why a couple decided to have an abortion. The abandonment, and killing, of baby girls has also been reported, though recent research studies say it has become rare, in part due to strict criminal prohibitions.[22]
Anthropologist G. William Skinner at the University of California, Davis and Chinese researcher Yuan Jianhua have claimed that infanticide was fairly common in China before the 1990s.[149]
In popular culture
- Ball, David (2002). China Run. Simon & Schuster. ISBN978-0-74322743-8. A novel about an American woman who travels to China to adopt an orphan of the one-child policy, only to find herself a fugitive when the Chinese government informs her that she has been given “the wrong baby”.
- The prevention of a state-imposed abortion during labor to conform with the one child policy is a key plot point in Tom Clancy‘s novel The Bear and the Dragon.
- The difficulties of implementing the one-child policy are dramatized in Mo Yan‘s novel Frog (2009; English translation by Howard Goldblatt, 2015).
- Avoiding the family-planning enforcers is at the heart of Ma Jian‘s novel The Dark Road (translated by Flora Drew, 2013).
- Novelist Lu Min writes about her own family’s experience with the One Child Policy in her essay “A Second Pregnancy, 1980” (translated by Helen Wang, 2015).[150]
- Xue, Xinran (2015). Buy Me the Sky. Rider (imprint). ISBN978-1-8460-4471-7. Tells the stories of the children brought up under China’s one-child policy and the effect that has had on their lives, families and ability to deal with life’s challenges.
- Fong, Mei (2016). One Child: The Story of China’s Most Radical Experiment. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN 9780544275393.
See also
General:
References …
Further reading
- Better 10 Graves Than One Extra Birth: China’s Systemic Use of Coercion To Meet Population Quotas. Washington, DC: Laogai Research Foundation. 2004. ISBN978-1-931550-92-5.
- Fong, Mei (2015). One Child: The Past and Future of China’s Most Radical Experiment. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN978-0-544-27539-3. Interview with Mei on her challenges writing the book.
- Hardee-Cleaveland, Karen (1988). Family Planning in China: Recent Trends, Volume 3. Center for International Research, U.S. Bureau of the Census.
- Goh, Esther C.L. (2011). “China’s One-Child Policy and Multiple Caregiving: raising little suns in Xiamen”(PDF). Journal of International and Global Studies. New York: Routledge. Archived from the original(PDF) on 24 May 2012.
- Greenhalgh, Susan (2008). Just One Child: Science and Policy in Deng’s China (illustrated ed.). University of California Press. ISBN978-0-520-25339-1.
- Johnson, Kay Ann (2016). China’s Hidden Children: Abandonment, Adoption, and the Human Costs of the One-Child Policy. University Of Chicago Press. ISBN978-0226352510.
External links
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-child_policy
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NATIONAL CHOCOLATE MILK DAY – September 27
NATIONAL CHOCOLATE MILK DAY
Across the country, folks enjoy a tall, frosty glass on National Chocolate Milk Day, which is observed annually on September 27.
In the late 1680s, an Irish-born physician by the name of Sir Hans Sloane invented the chocolatey beverage. When offered the position of personal physician to an English Duke in Jamaica, Sloane jumped at the opportunity. Jamaica interested the naturalist in him.
While in Jamaica, Sloane encountered a local beverage. The locals mixed cocoa and water together. However, when Sloane tasted it, he reported the flavor to be nauseating. After some experimentation, the doctor found a way to combine cocoa with milk. The creamy combination made it a more pleasant-tasting drink. Years later, Sloane returned to England with the chocolate recipe in hand. Initially, apothecaries introduced the concoction as a medicine.
Generations later, chocolate milk lovers enjoy their treat a variety of ways. It can be purchased premixed by the jug or individual serving. For a custom mix, powders and syrups allow us to make it as chocolatey as we like at home.
HOW TO OBSERVE #ChocolateMilkDay
Do you use powder, premix or syrup? Today we even have skim, 2% and whole milk. Which do you prefer? Mix up some chocolate milk to drink. Invite a friend to enjoy the celebration with you. Besides, the best way to #CelebrateEveryDay is with others. Share your celebration using #ChocolateMilkDay on social media.
Educators, visit the National Day Calendar® classroom for ways to incorporate this day into your classes.
NATIONAL CHOCOLATE MILK DAY HISTORY
National Day Calendar® continues researching the origins of this sweet beverage holiday.
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National Chocolate Day
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There are a variety of dates that have been designated as “Chocolate Day” around the world. The most commonly accepted such date is July 7.[citation needed] Various Chocolate Days have been called Local, National or International/World, including conflicting claims.[citation needed]
The U.S. National Confectioners Association lists four primary chocolate holidays on their calendar[1][improper synthesis?] (Chocolate Day (July 7), two National Chocolate Days (October 28 and December 28), and International Chocolate Day (September 13)[2]), in addition to variants such as National Milk Chocolate Day, National White Chocolate Day, and National Cocoa Day.
International Chocolate Day coincides with the birth date of Milton S. Hershey (September 13, 1857),[3][4][5] founder of The Hershey Chocolate Company.
See also
References
Further reading
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Chocolate_Day
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Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty
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(General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union)
(President of the United States)
The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty, formally Treaty Between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on the Elimination of Their Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missiles; Russian: Договор о ликвидации ракет средней и меньшей дальности / ДРСМД, Dogovor o likvidatsiy raket sredney i menshey dalnosti / DRSMD) was an arms control treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union (and its successor state, the Russian Federation). US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev signed the treaty on 8 December 1987.[1][2] The United States Senate approved the treaty on 27 May 1988, and Reagan and Gorbachev ratified it on 1 June 1988.[2][3]
The INF Treaty banned all of the two nations’ land-based ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and missile launchers with ranges of 500–1,000 kilometers (310–620 mi) (short medium-range) and 1,000–5,500 km (620–3,420 mi) (intermediate-range). The treaty did not apply to air- or sea-launched missiles.[4][5] By May 1991, the nations had eliminated 2,692 missiles, followed by 10 years of on-site verification inspections.[6]
Amidst continuing growth of China’s missile forces, US President Donald Trump announced on 20 October 2018 that he was withdrawing the US from the treaty, accusing Russia of non-compliance.[7][8] The US formally suspended the treaty on 1 February 2019,[9] and Russia did so on the following day in response.[10] The US formally withdrew from the treaty on 2 August 2019.[11] On September 4, 2019, President Putin stated that Russia will make new missiles but will not deploy them until the United States does so first. [12]
Contents
Background
In March 1976, the Soviet Union first deployed the RSD-10 Pioneer (called SS-20 Saber in the West) in its European territories, a mobile, concealable intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) with a multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle (MIRV) containing three nuclear 150-kiloton warheads.[13] The SS-20’s range of 4,700–5,000 kilometers (2,900–3,100 mi) was great enough to reach Western Europe from well within Soviet territory; the range was just below the SALT II minimum range for an intercontinental ballistic missile, 5,500 km (3,400 mi).[14][15][16] The SS-20 replaced aging Soviet systems of the SS-4 Sandal and SS-5 Skean, which were seen to pose a limited threat to Western Europe due to their poor accuracy, limited payload (one warhead), lengthy preparation time, difficulty in being concealed, and immobility (thus exposing them to pre-emptive NATO strikes ahead of a planned attack).[17] Whereas the SS-4 and SS-5 were seen as defensive weapons, the SS-20 was seen as a potential offensive system.[18]
The US, then under President Jimmy Carter, initially considered its strategic nuclear weapons and nuclear-capable aircraft to be adequate counters to the SS-20 and a sufficient deterrent against possible Soviet aggression. In 1977, however, Chancellor Helmut Schmidt of West Germany argued in a speech that a Western response to the SS-20 deployment should be explored, a call which was echoed by NATO, given a perceived Western disadvantage in European nuclear forces.[16] Leslie H. Gelb, the US Assistant Secretary of State, later recounted that Schmidt’s speech pressured the US into developing a response.[19]
SS-20 launchers
On 12 December 1979, following European pressure for a response to the SS-20, Western foreign and defense ministers meeting in Brussels made the NATO Double-Track Decision.[16] The ministers argued that the Warsaw Pact had “developed a large and growing capability in nuclear systems that directly threaten Western Europe”: “theater” nuclear systems (i.e., tactical nuclear weapons).[20] In describing this “aggravated” situation, the ministers made direct reference to the SS-20 featuring “significant improvements over previous systems in providing greater accuracy, more mobility, and greater range, as well as having multiple warheads”. The ministers also attributed the altered situation to the deployment of the Soviet Tupolev Tu-22M strategic bomber, which they believed to display “much greater performance” than its predecessors. Furthermore, the ministers expressed concern that the Soviet Union had gained an advantage over NATO in “Long-Range Theater Nuclear Forces” (LRTNF), and also significantly increased short-range theater nuclear capacity.[21]
To address these developments, the ministers adopted two policy “tracks” which Joseph Stalin had created in 1941. One thousand theater nuclear warheads, out of 7,400 such warheads, would be removed from Europe and the US would pursue bilateral negotiations with the Soviet Union intended to limit theater nuclear forces. Should these negotiations fail, NATO would modernize its own LRTNF, or intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF), by replacing US Pershing 1a missiles with 108 Pershing II launchers in West Germany and deploying 464 BGM-109G Ground Launched Cruise Missiles (GLCMs) to Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom beginning in December 1983.[15][22][23][24]
Negotiations
Early negotiations: 1981–1983
The Soviet Union and United States agreed to open negotiations and preliminary discussions, named the Preliminary Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Talks,[15] which began in Geneva, Switzerland, in October 1980. On 20 January 1981, Ronald Reagan was sworn into office as President after defeating Jimmy Carter in an election. Formal talks began on 30 November 1981, with the US then led by Ronald Reagan and the Soviet Union by Leonid Brezhnev. The core of the US negotiating position reflected the principles put forth under Carter: any limits placed on US INF capabilities, both in terms of “ceilings” and “rights”, must be reciprocated with limits on Soviet systems. Additionally, the US insisted that a sufficient verification regime be in place.[25]
Paul Nitze, 1983
Paul Nitze, a longtime hand at defense policy who had participated in the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT), led the US delegation after being recruited by Secretary of State Alexander Haig. Though Nitze had backed the first SALT treaty, he opposed SALT II and had resigned from the US delegation during its negotiation. Nitze was also then a member of the Committee on the Present Danger, a firmly anti-Soviet group composed of neoconservatives and conservative Republicans.[19][26] Yuli Kvitsinsky, the well-respected second-ranking official at the Soviet embassy in West Germany, headed the Soviet delegation.[18][27][28][29]
On 18 November 1981, shortly before the beginning of formal talks, Reagan made the Zero Option proposal (or the “zero-zero” proposal).[30] The plan called for a hold on US deployment of GLCM and Pershing II systems, reciprocated by Soviet elimination of its SS-4, SS-5, and SS-20 missiles. There appeared to be little chance of the Zero Option being adopted, but the gesture was well received in the European public. In February 1982, US negotiators put forth a draft treaty containing the Zero Option and a global prohibition on intermediate- and short-range missiles, with compliance ensured via a stringent, though unspecific, verification program.[27]
Opinion within the Reagan administration on the Zero Option was mixed. Richard Perle, then the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Global Strategic Affairs, was the architect of the plan. Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, who supported a continued US nuclear presence in Europe, was skeptical of the plan, though eventually accepted it for its value in putting the Soviet Union “on the defensive in the European propaganda war”. Reagan later recounted that the “zero option sprang out of the realities of nuclear politics in Western Europe”.[30] The Soviet Union rejected the plan shortly after the US tabled it in February 1982, arguing that both the US and Soviet Union should be able to retain intermediate-range missiles in Europe. Specifically, Soviet negotiators proposed that the number of INF missiles and aircraft deployed in Europe by one side be capped at 600 by 1985 and 300 by 1990. Concerned that this proposal would force the US to withdraw aircraft from Europe and not deploy INF missiles, given US cooperation with existing British and French deployments, the US proposed “equal rights and limits”—the US would be permitted to match Soviet SS-20 deployments.[27]
Between 1981 and 1983, US and Soviet negotiators gathered for six rounds of talks, each two months in length—a system based on the earlier SALT talks.[27] The US delegation was composed of Nitze, General William F. Burns of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Thomas Graham of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA), and officials from the US Department of State, Office of the Secretary of Defense, and US National Security Council. Colonel Norman Clyne, a SALT participant, served as Nitze’s chief of staff.[18][31]
There was little convergence between the two sides over these two years. A US effort to separate the question of nuclear-capable aircraft from that of intermediate-range missiles successfully focused attention on the latter, but little clear progress on the subject was made. In the summer of 1982, Nitze and Kvitsinsky took a “walk in the woods” in the Jura Mountains, away from formal negotiations in Geneva, in an independent attempt to bypass bureaucratic procedures and break the negotiating deadlock.[32][18][33] Nitze later said that his and Kvitsinsky’s goal was to agree to certain concessions that would allow for a summit meeting between Brezhnev and Reagan later in 1982.[34]
Protest in Amsterdam against the nuclear arms race between the US/NATO and the Soviet Union
Nitze’s offer to Kvitsinsky was that the US would forego deployment of the Pershing II and continue deployment of GLCMs, but limited to 75 missile launchers. The Soviet Union, in return, would also have to limit itself to 75 intermediate-range missile launchers in Europe and 90 in Asia. Due to each GLCM launcher containing four GLCMs and each SS-20 launcher containing three warheads, such an agreement would have resulted in the US having 75 more intermediate-range warheads in Europe than the Soviet Union, though SS-20s were seen as more advanced and maneuverable than GLCMs. While Kvitsinsky was skeptical that the plan would be well received in Moscow, Nitze was optimistic about its chances in Washington.[34] The deal ultimately found little traction in either capital. In the US, the Office of the Secretary of Defense opposed Nitze’s proposal, as it opposed any proposal that would allow the Soviet Union to deploy missiles to Europe while blocking US deployments. Nitze’s proposal was relayed by Kvitsinsky to Moscow, where it was also rejected. The plan accordingly was never introduced into formal negotiations.[32][18]
Thomas Graham, a US negotiator, later recalled that Nitze’s “walk in the woods” proposal was primarily of Nitze’s own design and known beforehand only to William F. Burns, another arms control negotiator and representative of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), and Eugene V. Rostow, the director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. In a National Security Council meeting following the Nitze-Kvitsinsky walk, the proposal was received positively by the JCS and Reagan. Following protests by Richard Perle, working within the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Reagan informed Nitze that he would not back the plan. The State Department, then led by Alexander Haig, also indicated that it would not support Nitze’s plan and preferred a return to the Zero Option proposal.[18][33][34] Nitze argued that one positive consequence of the walk in the woods was that the European public, which had doubted US interest in arms control, became convinced that the US was participating in the INF negotiations in good faith.[34]
In early 1983, US negotiators indicated that they would support a plan beyond the Zero Option if the plan established equal rights and limits for the US and Soviet Union, with such limits valid worldwide, and excluded British and French missile systems (as well as those of any other third party). As a temporary measure, the US negotiators also proposed a cap of 450 deployed INF warheads around the world for both the US and Soviet Union. In response, Soviet negotiators expressed that a plan would have to block all US INF deployments in Europe, cover both missiles and aircraft, include third parties, and focus primarily on Europe for it to gain Soviet backing. In the fall of 1983, just ahead of the scheduled deployment of US Pershing IIs and GLCMs, the US lowered its proposed limit on global INF deployments to 420 missiles, while the Soviet Union proposed “equal reductions”: if the US cancelled the planned deployment of Pershing II and GLCM systems, the Soviet Union would reduce its own INF deployment by 572 warheads. In November 1983, after the first Pershing IIs arrived in West Germany, the Soviet Union walked out of negotiations, as it had warned it would do should the US missile deployments occur.[35]
Restarted negotiations: 1985–1987
Reagan and Gorbachev shake hands after signing the INF Treaty ratification during the Moscow Summit on 1 June 1988.
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher played a key role in brokering the negotiations between Reagan and Gorbachev in 1986 to 1987.[36]
In March 1986, negotiations between the US and the Soviet Union resumed, covering not only the INF issue, but also separate discussions on strategic weapons (START I) and space issues (Nuclear and Space Talks). In late 1985, both sides were moving towards limiting INF systems in Europe and Asia. On 15 January 1986, Gorbachev announced a Soviet proposal for a ban on all nuclear weapons by 2000, which included INF missiles in Europe. This was dismissed by the US and countered with a phased reduction of INF launchers in Europe and Asia to none by 1989. There would be no constraints on British and French nuclear forces.[37]
A series of meetings in August and September 1986 culminated in the Reykjavík Summit between Reagan and Gorbachev on 11 and 12 October 1986. Both agreed in principle to remove INF systems from Europe and to equal global limits of 100 INF missile warheads. Gorbachev also proposed deeper and more fundamental changes in the strategic relationship. More detailed negotiations extended throughout 1987, aided by the decision of West Germany Chancellor Helmut Kohl in August to unilaterally remove the joint US-West German Pershing 1a systems. Initially, Kohl had opposed the total elimination of the Pershing Missiles, claiming that such a move would increase his nation’s vulnerability to an attack by Warsaw Pact Forces.[38] The treaty text was finally agreed in September 1987. On 8 December 1987, the Treaty was officially signed by President Reagan and General Secretary Gorbachev at a summit in Washington and ratified the following May in a 93-5 vote by the United States Senate.[39][40]
Contents
The treaty prohibits both parties from possessing, producing, or flight-testing ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges of 500–5,000 km. Possessing or producing ground-based launchers of those missiles is also prohibited. The ban extends to weapons with both nuclear and conventional warheads, but does not cover air-delivered or sea-based missiles.[41]
Existing weapons had to be destroyed, and a protocol for mutual inspection was agreed upon.[41]
Each party has the right to withdraw from the treaty with six months’ notice, “if it decides that extraordinary events related to the subject matter of this Treaty have jeopardized its supreme interests”.[41]
Timeline
Implementation[edit]
A Soviet inspector examines a BGM-109G Gryphon ground-launched cruise missile in 1988 prior to its destruction.
Accompanied by their NATO counterparts, Soviet inspectors enter a nuclear weapons storage area at Greenham Common, UK, 1989.
By the treaty’s deadline of 1 June 1991, a total of 2,692 of such weapons had been destroyed, 846 by the US and 1,846 by the Soviet Union.[42] The following specific missiles, their launcher systems, and their transporter vehicles were destroyed:[43]
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991, the United States considered twelve of the post-Soviet states to be inheritors of the treaty obligations (the three Baltic states are considered to preexist their annexation by the Soviet Union). Of the six having inspectable INF facilities on their territories, Belarus, Kazakhstan, the Russian Federation, and Ukraine became active participants in the treaty process, while Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, having less significant INF sites, assumed a less active role.[44]
As provided by the treaty, onsite inspections ended in 2001. After that time, compliance was checked primarily by satellites.[45]
Initial skepticism and allegations of treaty violations
In February 2007, the Russian president Vladimir Putin gave a speech at the Munich Security Conference in which he said the INF Treaty should be revisited to ensure security, as it only restricted Russia and the US but not other countries.[46] The Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation Yuri Baluyevsky contemporaneously said that Russia was planning to unilaterally withdraw from the treaty in response to deployment of adaptable defensive NATO missile system and because other countries were not bound to the treaty.[47]
According to US officials, Russia violated the treaty by testing the SSC-8 cruise missile in 2008.[48] Russia rejected the claim that their SSC-8 missiles violates the treaty, and says that the SSC-8 can travel only up to a maximum of 480 km.[49] In 2013, reports came out that Russia had tested and planned to continue testing two missiles in ways that could violate the terms of the treaty: the SS-25 road mobile intercontinental ballistic missile and the newer RS-26 ICBM.[50] The US representatives briefed NATO on a Russian nuclear treaty breach again in 2014[51][52] and 2017,[48][53] and in 2018, NATO formally supported the US accusations and accused Russia of breaking the treaty.[11][54] Russia denied the accusation and Putin said it was a pretext for the US to leave the pact.[11] A BBC analysis of the meeting that culminated in the NATO statement said that “NATO allies here share Washington’s concerns and have backed the US position, thankful perhaps that it includes this short grace period during which Russia might change its mind.”[55]
In 2011, Dan Blumenthal of the American Enterprise Institute wrote that the actual Russian problem with the INF was that China is not bound by it and continued to build up their own intermediate-range forces.[56]
According to Russian officials and academic Theodore Postol, the American decision to deploy the missile defense system in Europe was a violation of the treaty as they claim they could be quickly retrofitted with offensive capabilities;[57][58][59] this accusation has in turn been rejected by US and NATO officials and analyst Jeffrey Lewis.[59][60] Russian experts also stated that the US usage of target missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles, such as the MQ-9 Reaper and MQ-4, violated the INF Treaty[61] which has also in turn been rejected by US officials.[62]
US withdrawal and termination
The United States declared its intention to withdraw from the treaty on 20 October 2018.[7][63][64] Donald Trump mentioned at a campaign rally that the reason for the pullout was because “they’ve [Russia has] been violating it for many years”.[63] This prompted Putin to state that Russia would not launch first in a nuclear conflict but would “annihilate” any adversary, essentially re-stating the policy of “Mutually Assured Destruction“. Putin claimed Russians killed in such a conflict “will go to heaven as martyrs”.[65]
It was also reported that the United States’ need to counter a Chinese arms buildup in the Pacific, including within South China Sea, was another reason for their move to withdraw, because China is not a signatory to the treaty.[7][63][64] US officials extending back to the Obama period have noted this. For example, Kelly Magsamen, who helped craft the Pentagon’s Asian policy under the Obama administration, said China’s ability to work outside of the INF treaty had vexed policymakers in Washington, long before Trump came into office.[66] A Politico article noted the different responses US officials gave to this issue: “either find ways to bring China into the treaty or develop new American weapons to counter it” or “negotiating a new treaty with that country”.[67] The deployment since 2016 of the DF-26 missile system with a range of 4,000 km meant that US forces as far as Guam can be threatened.[66] The United States Secretary of Defense at the time, Jim Mattis, was quoted stating that “the Chinese are stockpiling missiles because they’re not bound by it at all”.[7] Bringing an ascendant China into the treaty, or into a new comprehensive treaty including other nuclear powers, was further complicated by relationships between China, India and Pakistan.[68]
John R. Bolton holds a meeting with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu in Moscow on 23 October 2018
The Chinese Foreign Ministry said a unilateral US withdrawal would have a negative impact and urged the US to “think thrice before acting”. John R. Bolton, US National Security Advisor, said on Echo of Moscow that recent Chinese statements indicate that it wants Washington to stay in the treaty, while China itself is not bound in a treaty.[66] It’s been estimated that 90% of China’s ground missile arsenal would be outlawed if China were a party to the treaty.[67] Bolton said in an interview with Elena Chernenko from the Russian newspaper Kommersant on 22 October 2018: “we see China, Iran, North Korea all developing capabilities which would violate the treaty if they were parties to it. So the possibility that could have existed fifteen years ago to enlarge the treaty and make it universal today just simply was not practical.”[69]
On 26 October 2018, Russia called but lost a vote to get the UN General Assembly to consider calling on Washington and Moscow to preserve and strengthen the treaty.[70] Russia had proposed a draft resolution in the 193-member General Assembly’s disarmament committee, but missed the 18 October submission deadline[70] so it instead called for a vote on whether the committee should be allowed to consider the draft.[70] On the same day, John R. Bolton said in an interview with Reuters that the INF Treaty was a cold war relic and he wanted to hold strategic talks with Russia about Chinese missile capabilities.[71] China has been suggested to be “the real target of the [pull out]”.[67]
Four days later, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg called on Russia to comply with the treaty at a news conference in Norway saying “The problem is the deployment of new Russian missiles”.[72]
Russian president Vladimir Putin announced on 20 November 2018 that the Kremlin was prepared to discuss INF with Washington but would “retaliate” if the United States withdrew.[73]
Starting on 4 December 2018, the United States said Russia had 60 days to comply with the treaty.[74] On 5 December 2018, Russia responded by revealing their Peresvet combat laser, stating they had been deployed to Russia armed forces as early as 2017 “as part of the state procurement program”.[75]
Russia presented the 9M729 (SSC-8) missile and its technical parameters to foreign military attachés at a military briefing on 23 January 2019, held in what it said was an exercise in transparency it hoped would persuade Washington to stay in the treaty.[76] The Russian Defence Ministry said diplomats from the United States, Britain, France and Germany had been invited to attend the static display of the missile, but they declined to attend.[76] The United States had previously rejected a Russian offer to do so because it said such an exercise would not allow it to verify the true range of its warheads.[76]
The summit between US and Russia on 30 January 2019 failed to find a way to preserve the treaty.[77]
The United States suspended its compliance with the INF Treaty on 2 February 2019 following an announcement by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo the day prior. In addition the US said there was a six-month timeline for full withdrawal and INF Treaty termination if the Russian Federation did not come back into compliance within those six months given.[78][68] The same day, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that Russia had also suspended the INF Treaty in a ‘mirror response’ to President Donald Trump’s decision to suspend the treaty, effective that day.[10] The next day, Russia started work on new intermediate range (ballistic) hypersonic missiles along with land based (club kalibr – biryuza) systems (both nuclear armed) in response to the USA announcing it would start to conduct research and development of weapons prohibited under the treaty.[79]
Following the six-month period from 2 February suspension from INF, the United States administration formally announced it had withdrawn from the treaty on 2 August 2019. According to US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, “Russia is solely responsible for the treaty’s demise”.[80] While formally ratifying a treaty requires two-thirds of the Senate to ratify, a number of presidential decisions during the 20th and 21st centuries have set a common legal ground that the President and executive branch can unilaterally withdraw from a treaty without congressional approval, as Congress has rarely acted to stop such actions.[81] On the same day of the withdrawal, the United States Department of Defense announced plans to test a new type of missile, one that would have violated the treaty, from an eastern NATO base. Military leaders stated the need for this new missile as to stay ahead of both Russia and China, in response to Russia’s continued violations.[80]
The US’s withdrawal was backed by several of its NATO allies, citing the years of Russia’s non-compliance with the INF treaty.[80] In response to the withdrawal, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov invited the US and NATO “to assess the possibility of declaring the same moratorium on deploying intermediate-range and shorter-range equipment as we have, the same moratorium Vladimir Putin declared, saying that Russia will refrain from deploying these systems when we acquire them unless the American equipment is deployed in certain regions.”[80] This moratorium request was rejected by Stoltenberg who said that it was not credible as Moscow had already deployed such warheads.[82] On August 5, 2019, Russian president Vladimir Putin stated, “As of August 2, 2019 the INF Treaty no longer exists. Our US colleagues sent it to the archives, making it a thing of the past.”[83]
United States test firing a conventionally configured ground-launched medium-range cruise missile on 18 August 2019
On 18 August 2019, the United States conducted a test firing of a missile that would not have been allowed under the treaty.[84][85] The Pentagon said that the data collected and lessons learned from this test would inform its future development of intermediate-range capabilities while the Russian foreign ministry said that it was a cause for regret, and accused the US of escalating military tensions.[84][85]
Reactions to the withdrawal
Numerous prominent nuclear arms control experts, including George Shultz, Richard Lugar and Sam Nunn, urged Trump to preserve the treaty.[86] Mikhail Gorbachev commented that Trump’s nuclear treaty withdrawal is “not the work of a great mind” and that “a new arms race has been announced”.[87][88]
The decision was criticized by chairmen of the United States House of Representatives Committees on Foreign Affairs and Armed Services who said that instead of crafting a plan to hold Russia accountable and pressure it into compliance, the Trump administration has offered Putin an easy way out of the treaty and has played right into his hands.[89] Similar arguments were brought previously, on 25 October 2018 by European members of NATO who urged the United States “to try to bring Russia back into compliance with the treaty rather than quit it, seeking to avoid a split in the alliance that Moscow could exploit”.[70]
Stoltenberg has suggested the INF Treaty could be expanded to include countries such as China and India, whose non-inclusion, Stoltenberg said, Russia had previously admonished.[90]
There were contrasting opinions on the withdrawal among American lawmakers. The INF Treaty Compliance Act (H.R. 1249) was introduced to stop the United States from using Government funds to develop missiles prohibited by the treaty.[91][92] while Senators Jim Inhofe and Jim Risch issued statements of support.[93]
On 8 March 2019, the Foreign Ministry of Ukraine announced that since the United States and Russian Federation had both pulled out of the INF treaty, it now had the right to develop intermediate-range missiles, citing Russian aggression as a serious threat to the European continent, and the presence of Russian Iskander-M nuclear-capable missile systems in Crimea.[94] Ukraine had about forty percent of Soviet space industry, but never developed a missile with the range to strike Moscow[95] (only having both longer and shorter-ranged missiles). Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko said “We need high-precision missiles and we are not going to repeat the mistakes of the Budapest Memorandum“.[95]
After the United States withdrew from the treaty, multiple sources opined that it would allow the country to more effectively counter Russia and China’s missile forces.[96][97][98]
References…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermediate-Range_Nuclear_Forces_Treaty
Story 3: Trump Administration Will Appeal Ruling Barring Indefinite Detention of Illegal Alien Families Thus Ending Catch and Release Under The Flores Agreement — Democrats Want The Invasion of United States To Continue and Citizenship For All Illegal Aliens That Reach The United States — The Majority of American People Want Immigration Laws Enforced and Deportation of All 30-60 Millions Illegal Aliens — American People vs. The REDS (Radical Extremist Democrat Socialists) — Videos
Judge blocks effort to extend migrant children’s detention
Carafano: Trump’s Action On Flores Agreement Much More Humane
News Wrap: House challenges Trump on border national emergency
19 States File Lawsuit Against Government Over Flores Settlement Agreement
Trump Administration To Allow Longer Detention Of Migrant Families
Press conference of the U.S. Secretary of Immigration and Customs Enforcement
Trump administration ends “loophole” immigration rule that could keep kids in detention for longer
Flores Settlement
U.S. judge blocks Trump rule on migrant child detention
By REUTERS
PUBLISHED: 19:42 EDT, 27 September 2019 | UPDATED: 19:42 EDT, 27 September 2019
By Kristina Cooke
LOS ANGELES, Sept 27 (Reuters) – A U.S. judge on Friday blocked a Trump administration rule that would have allowed indefinite detention of migrant families, saying it was inconsistent with a decades-old court settlement that governs conditions for migrant children in U.S. custody.
The 1997 settlement agreement, which originated in 1985 with a complaint brought on behalf of 15-year-old Salvadoran immigrant Jenny L. Flores, set standards for humane treatment of children in detention and ordered their prompt release in most cases.
The Trump administration had hoped a new rule issued on Aug. 23 would replace the settlement, which had been modified over the years to prevent the long-term detention of families. The administration had said its rule would allow families to be held in humane conditions while their U.S. immigration court cases were decided.
The judge disagreed.
“This regulation is inconsistent with one of the primary goals of the Flores Agreement, which is to instate a general policy favoring release and expeditiously place minors ‘in the least restrictive setting appropriate to the minor’s age and special needs,'” U.S. District Court Judge Dolly Gee in Los Angeles wrote in her ruling.
“The Flores Settlement Agreement remains in effect and has not been terminated,” she wrote.
U.S. President Donald Trump has made cracking down on immigration a hallmark of his presidency, and administration officials have repeatedly referred to the Flores agreement’s standards as “loopholes” that have attracted increasing numbers of mostly Central American families seeking U.S. asylum by forcing authorities to release them into the United States to wait for the outcome of their immigration hearings.
The new regulation would have allowed the administration to hold families indefinitely during court processes that can take months or years because of large court backlogs. It had been due to go into effect next month.
In a court hearing in Los Angeles on Friday, Gee asked Department of Justice Attorney August Flentje how he could argue that the new regulations were not inconsistent with the terms of the Flores agreement.
“Just because you tell me it is night outside, doesn’t mean it is not day,” Gee said.
Lawyers for the Trump administration are expected to appeal. A Department of Justice spokesman said it was “disappointed that the court is continuing to impose the outdated Flores Agreement even after the government has done exactly what the Agreement required: issue a comprehensive rule that will protect vulnerable children, maintain family unity, and ensure due process for those awaiting adjudication of their immigration claims.”
The acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Matthew Albence, said earlier this week that family detention was just one tool available to the administration as it seeks to end what it calls “catch and release”. A policy that began this year of sending border crossers back to Mexico to wait for their immigration hearings is another, he said.
Albence and other administration officials have said the government would not be able to add to its around 3,300 family detention beds without additional funds being made available by the U.S. Congress. (Reporting by Kristina Cooke in Los Angelese and Alexandra Alper in Washington; Editing by Sandra Maler )
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/reuters/article-7514067/U-S-judge-blocks-Trump-rule-migrant-child-detention.html
Reno v. Flores
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Supreme Court of the United States
Decided March 23, 1993
John P. Stevens · Sandra Day O’Connor
Antonin Scalia · Anthony Kennedy
David Souter · Clarence Thomas
Janet Reno, Attorney General, et al. v. Jenny Lisette Flores, et al. (Reno v. Flores), 507 U.S. 292 (1993), was a Supreme Court of the United States case that addressed the detention and release of unaccompanied minors.
The Supreme Court ruled that the Immigration and Naturalization Service‘s regulations regarding the release of alien unaccompanied minors did not violate the Due Process Clause of the United States Constitution.[1] The Court held that “alien juveniles detained on suspicion of being deportable may be released only to a parent, legal guardian, or other related adult.” The legacy for which Reno v. Flores became known was the subsequent 1997 court-supervised stipulated settlement agreement which is binding on the defendants (the federal government agencies)[2]—the Flores v. Reno Settlement Agreement or Flores Settlement Agreement (FSA) to which both parties in Reno v. Flores agreed in the District Court for Central California (C.D. Cal.).[3][Notes 1] The Flores Settlement Agreement (FSA), supervised by C.D. Cal., has set strict national regulations and standards regarding the detention and treatment of minors by federal agencies for over twenty years. It remains in effect until the federal government introduces final regulations to implement the FSA agreement. The FSA governs the policy for the treatment of unaccompanied alien children in federal custody of the legacy INS and its successor—United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the various agencies that operate under the jurisdiction of the DHS. The FSA is supervised by a U.S. district judge in the District Court for Central California.[4]
The litigation originated in the class action lawsuit Flores v. Meese filed on July 11, 1985 by the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law (CHRCL) and two other organizations on behalf of immigrant minors, including Jenny Lisette Flores, who had been placed in a detention center for male and female adults after being apprehended by the former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) as she attempted to illegally cross the Mexico-United States border.
Under the Flores Settlement and current circumstances, DHS asserts that it generally cannot detain alien children and their parents together for more than brief periods [4]. In his June 20, 2018 executive order, President Trump had directed then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to ask the District Court for the Central District of California, to “modify” the Flores agreement to “allow the government to detain alien families together” for longer periods, which would include the time it took for the family’s immigration proceedings and potential “criminal proceedings for unlawful entry into the United States”.[4]:2 In July 9, Judge Gee of the Federal District of California, ruled that there was no basis to amend the 1997 Flores Settlement Agreement (FSA) that “requires children to be released to licensed care programs within 20 days.”[5]
In 2017, U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee found that children who were in custody of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection lacked “food, clean water and basic hygiene items” and were sleep-deprived. She ordered the federal government to provide items such as soap and to improve the conditions.[6] The federal government appealed the decision saying that the order forcing them to offer specific items and services exceeded the original Flores agreement. The June 18, 2019 hearing became infamous[7] and caused nation wide outrage when a video of the Department of Justice senior attorney arguing against providing minors with toothbrushes and soap, went viral. The federal government lost their appeal when the 3 judge appeals court upheld Judge Gee’s order on August 15, 2019.[6]
Contents
Background and lower court cases
In 1985, Jenny Lisette Flores, an unaccompanied 15-year-old girl from El Salvador, was apprehended by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) after illegally attempting to cross the Mexico-United States border.[8]:1648 The unaccompanied minor was taken to a detention facility where she was held among adults of both sexes, was daily strip searched, and was told she would only be released to the custody of her parents, who, INS suspected, were illegal immigrants.[9]
On July 11, 1985, the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law and two other organizations, filed a class action lawsuit Flores v. Meese, No. 85-4544 (C.D. Cal.) on behalf of Flores and “all minors apprehended by the INS in the Western Region of the United States”,[3]:1 against U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese, challenging the conditions of juvenile detention and alleging that the “defendants’ policies, practices and regulations regarding the detention and release of unaccompanied minors taken into the custody of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) in the Western Region” were unconstitutional.[3]:1 Lawyers for the plaintiffs said that government’s detention and release policies were in violation of the children’s rights under the Equal Protection Clause and the Due Process Clause of the United States Constitution.[8]:1648[10] The plaintiffs originally directed their complaint at the newly released policy introduced by then director of Western Region of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), Harold W. Ezell. Under the new policy—83 Fed. Reg. at 45489—which was introduced on September 6, 1984, a detained immigrant minor “could only be released to a parent or legal guardian”. This resulted in minors, such as Flores, being detained in poor conditions for “lengthy or indefinite” periods of time.[11]:33
In late 1987, the C.D. Cal District Court had “approved a consent decree to which all the parties had agreed, “that settled all claims regarding the detention conditions”.[12]
In 1988, INS issued a new regulation— 8 CFR 242.24—that amended the 8 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) parts 212 and 242 regarding the Detention and Release of Juveniles. The new INS regulation, known as 242.24, provided for the “release of detained minors only to their parents, close relatives, or legal guardians, except in unusual and compelling circumstances.”[12] The stated purpose of the rule was “to codify the [INS] policy regarding detention and release of juvenile aliens and to provide a single policy for juveniles in both deportation and exclusion proceedings.”[13]
On May 25, 1988, soon after the 8 CFR 242.24 regulation took effect, C.D. Cal District Judge Kelleher in Flores v. Meese, No. CV 85-4544-RJK (Px) rejected it and removed limitations regarding which adults could receive the minors. Judge Kelleher held that all minors have the right to receive a hearing from an immigration judge.[14][15] Judge Kelleher held that 8 CFR 242.24 “violated substantive due process, and ordered modifications to the regulation.”[13] He ruled that “INS release and bond procedures for detained minors in deportation proceedings fell short of the requirements of procedural due process.” He ordered the INS to provide the minors with an “administrative hearing to determine probable cause for his arrest and the need for any restrictions placed upon his release.”[13] The court granted summary judgment to the plaintiffs regarding the release conditions.[12][16]:35 This “invalidating the regulatory scheme on due process grounds” and ordered the INS to “release any otherwise eligible juvenile to a parent, guardian, custodian, conservator, or “other responsible adult party”. The District Court also required that the juvenile have a hearing with an immigration judge immediately after their arrest, even if the juvenile did not request it.[12][14]
In Flores v. Meese, 681 F. Supp. 665 (C.D. Cal. 1988), U.S. District Judge Robert J. Kelleher found that the INS policy to strip search children was unconstitutional.[17][Notes 2]
In June 1990, in Flores v. Meese, 934 F.2d 991 (9th Cir. 1990), in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Judges John Clifford Wallace and Lloyd D. George, reversed Judge Kelleher’s 1988 ruling. Judge Betty Binns Fletcher dissented.[18][19] In the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the judges concluded that the INS did not exceed its statutory authority in promulgating 242.24. They ruled that 242.24 did not violate substantive due process, under the Federal Constitution’s Fifth Amendment. They ruled that a remand was necessary with respect to a procedural due process claim (934 F2d 991).
On August 9, 1991, the Ninth Circuit 11-judge en banc majority in Flores v. Meese, overturned its June 1990 panel opinion and affirmed Judge Kelleher’s 1988 ruling against the government citing federal constitutional grounds including due process.[Notes 3][20] They vacated the panel opinion and affirmed the District Court’s order in all respects (942 F2d 1352).[Notes 4][21] According to Judge Dee’s ruling in Flores v. Sessions, the Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s grant of plaintiffs’ motion to enforce [Paragraph 24A of] the Flores Agreement, holding that nothing in the text, structure, or purpose of the Homeland Security Act (HSA) or Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000 (TVPRA) renders continued compliance with Paragraph 24A, as it applies to unaccompanied minors, “impermissible.”[22]
On March 23, 1993, the Supreme Court announced judgment in favor of the government, in Janet Reno, Attorney General, et al. v. Jenny Lisette Flores, et al.[23][24] Justice Antonin Scalia, joined by Chief Justice William Rehnquist, and Justices Byron White, Sandra Day O’Connor, Anthony Kennedy, David Souter, and Clarence Thomas, held that the unaccompanied alien children had no constitutional right to be released to someone other than a close relative, nor to automatic review by an immigration judge.[25]
On January 17, 1997 both parties signed the class action settlement agreement in Flores v. Reno, The Flores Settlement Agreement (FSA), which is binding on the defendants—the federal government agencies.[2]
USSC Reno v. Flores 1993
507U.S. 292 (1993) 1993[23]
In Reno v. Flores, the Supreme Court ruled on March 23, 1993 that while “detained children in question had a constitutionally protected interest in freedom from institutional confinement”, the Court reversed the Court of Appeals’ 1991 decision in Flores v. Meese because the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) regulation 8 CFR 242.24 in question, complied with the requirements of due process. The INS regulation—8 CFR 242.24—”generally authorized the release of a detained alien juvenile, in order of preference, to a parent, a legal guardian, or specified close adult relatives of the juvenile, unless the INS determined that detention was required to secure an appearance or to ensure the safety of the juvenile or others”.[23][12] This “meant that in limited circumstances” juveniles could be released to “to another person who executed an agreement to care for the juvenile and to ensure the juvenile’s attendance at future immigration proceedings”. Juveniles who are not released would “generally require” a “suitable placement at a facility which, in accordance with the [1987] consent decree, had to meet specified care standards.”[12][Notes 5][Notes 6]
On March 23, 1993, on certiorari the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the government, voting 7–2 to reverse the lower court—the Court of Appeals.[24]:A19 Justice Antonin Scalia, joined by Chief Justice William Rehnquist, and Justices Byron White, Sandra Day O’Connor, Anthony Kennedy, David Souter, and Clarence Thomas, held that the unaccompanied alien children had no constitutional right to be released to someone other than a close relative, nor to automatic review by an immigration judge.[25] In an opinion by Scalia, joined by Rehnquist, White, O’Connor, Kennedy, Souter, and Thomas, it was held that the INS policy—242.24—did not violate substantive due process under the Fifth Amendment. While lawyers for the plaintiffs alleged in a “novel” way that children have a fundamental right to liberty, in which a child who has “no available parent, close relative, or legal guardian, and for whom the government was responsible” has the right “to be placed in the custody of a willing and able private custodian rather than the custody of a government-operated or government-selected child care institution.” The Court ruled that if that fundamental right existed, “it would presumably apply to state custody over orphaned and abandoned children as well.” They ruled that “under the circumstances” “continued government custody was rationally connected to a government interest in promoting juveniles’ welfare and was not punitive” and that “there was no constitutional need to meet even a more limited demand for an individualized hearing as to whether private placement would be in a juvenile’s “best interests,” so long as institutional custody was good enough.” The Court held that the INS “did not violate procedural due process, under the Fifth Amendment, through failing to require the INS to determine in the case of each alien juvenile that detention in INS custody would better serve the juvenile’s interests than release to some other “responsible adult,” not providing for automatic review by an immigration judge of initial INS deportability and custody determinations, or failing to set a time period within which an immigration judge hearing, if requested, had to be held.” The Court also held that this was not “beyond the scope of the Attorney General’s discretion” because the INS 242.24 “rationally pursued the lawful purpose of protecting the welfare of such juveniles.”[12][Notes 7][26][Notes 8] It held that the juveniles could be “detained pending deportation hearings pursuant” under 8 CFR § 242.24 which “provides for the release of detained minors only to their parents, close relatives, or legal guardians, except in unusual and compelling circumstances.”[23]
The Supreme Court justices said that in Reno v. Flores, most of the juveniles detained by INS and the Border Patrol at that time [1980s – early 1990s] were “16 or 17 years old”, and had “telephone contact with a responsible adult outside the INS–sometimes a legal services attorney”. They said that due process was “satisfied by giving the detained alien juveniles the right to a hearing before an immigration judge” and that there was no proof at that time “that all of them are too young or too ignorant to exercise that right when the form asking them to assert or waive it is presented.”[27]
Stevens, joined by Blackmun, dissented, expressing the view that the litigation history of the case at hand cast doubt on the good faith of the government’s asserted interest in the welfare of such detained alien juveniles as a justification for 242.24, and demonstrated the complete lack of support, in either evidence or experience, for the government’s contention that detaining such juveniles, when there were “other responsible parties” willing to assume care, somehow protected the interests of those juveniles; an agency’s interest in minimizing administrative costs was a patently inadequate justification for the detention of harmless children, even when the conditions of detention were “good enough”; and 242.24, in providing for the wholesale detention of such juveniles for an indeterminate period without individual hearings, was not authorized by 1252(a)(1), and did not satisfy the federal constitutional demands of due process.[12]
Flores Settlement Agreement (FSA)
On January 28, 1997, during the administration of President Bill Clinton, the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law (CHRCL) and the federal government signed the Flores v. Reno Settlement Agreement, which is also known as The Flores Settlement Agreement (FSA), Flores Settlement, Flores v. Reno Agreement.[28] [29][30][31] Following many years of litigation which started with the July 11, 1985 filing of class action lawsuit, Flores v. Meese, and included the Supreme Court case Reno v. Flores which was decided in 1993, the consent decree or settlement was reached in the United States District Court for the Central District of California between the parties. The court-supervised settlement, The Flores Settlement Agreement (FSA), continues to overseen by the District Court for the Central District of California. The Flores Agreement has set strict national regulations and standards regarding the detention and treatment of minors in federal custody since then. Among other things, the federal government agreed to keep children in the least restrictive setting possible and to ensure the prompt release of children from immigration detention.[8]:1650
According to September 17, 2018 Congressional Research Service (CRS) report, the FSA was “intended as a temporary measure”.[4]:7 By 2001, both parties agreed that the FSA “would remain in effect until 45 days following [the] defendants’ publication of final regulations” governing the treatment of detained, minors.”[4]:7 By 2019, the federal government had “not published any such rules or regulations” so the FSA “continues to govern those agencies that now carry out the functions of the former INS.”[4]:7 With the Flores Settlement in place, the executive branch maintains that it has two options regarding the detention of arriving family units that demonstrate a credible fear of persecution pending the outcome of their removal proceedings in immigration court: (1) generally release family units; or (2) generally separate family units by keeping the parents in detention and releasing the children only.[4]
The Flores Agreement sets nationwide policies and “standards for the detention, release and treatment of minors in the custody of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS)[31] by prioritizing them for release to the custody of their families and requiring those in federal custody to be placed in the least restrictive environment possible,” according to a 2018 NBC News article.[32]
According to the legal nonprofit Human Rights First, the FSA required that immigration authorities “release children from immigration detention without unnecessary delay in order of preference beginning with parents and including other adult relatives as well as licensed programs willing to accept custody”. If a suitable placement is not “immediately available, the government is obligated to place children in the “least restrictive” setting appropriate to their “age and any special needs”.[33] The settlement agreement also required that the government “implement standards relating to the care and treatment of children in immigration detention.[33]
The FSA required immigration officials to provide detained minors with “food and drinking water as appropriate”, “medical assistance if minor is in need of emergency services”, “toilets and sinks”, “adequate temperature control and ventilation”, “adequate supervision to protect minors from others”, “contact with family members who were arrested with the minor and separation from unrelated adults whenever possible.”[34]:3-4[29]
Under the settlement agreement, immigration officials agreed to release minors “without unnecessary delay” when detention isn’t required to protect the safety and well-being of the minor or to secure the timely appearance of the minor at a proceeding before immigration authorities, that is, when officials release the minor to a parent or guardian who agree to appear, and the minor is not a flight risk.[31]
The FSA set a “preference ranking for sponsor types” with parents, then legal guardians as first choices then an “adult relative”, an “adult individual or entity designated by the child’s parent or legal guardian”, a “licensed program willing to accept legal custody”, an “adult or entity approved” by Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR).[34]:8[3]:10 or sent to a state-licensed facility.[31][35][36]
Immigration officials agreed to provide minors with contact with family members with whom they were arrested, and to “promptly” reunite minors with their families. Efforts to reunify families are to continue as long as the minor is in custody.[31][30][Notes 9][37]
The Flores settlement does, however, require that “Following arrest, the INS shall hold minors in facilities that are safe and sanitary and that are consistent with the INS’s concern for the particular vulnerability of minors” and “…such minor shall be placed temporarily in a licensed program … at least until such time as release can be effected … Or until the minor’s immigration proceedings are concluded, whichever occurs earlier”.[citation needed]
Subsequent history
The parties agreed the litigation would terminate once the government finalized regulations complying with the settlement. Because the government has not yet finalized any such regulations, the litigation is ongoing. Compliance with the settlement has been the subject of criticism and litigation, resulting in extensions and modifications.[34][38] In 2001 the United States Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General concluded “Although the INS has made significant progress since signing the Flores agreement, our review found deficiencies with the implementation of the policies and procedures developed in response to Flores.”[38]
In November 2002, President George W. Bush signed into law the Homeland Security Act, which abolished the INS and removed responsibility for unaccompanied alien minors from the Justice Department.[34] The new United States Department of Homeland Security was given responsibility for the apprehension, transfer, and repatriation of illegal aliens while the Office of Refugee Resettlement inside the United States Department of Health and Human Services was given responsibility for the unaccompanied alien minors’ care, placement, and reunification with their parents.[34] In 2005 the Bush administration launched Operation Streamline, which referred all illegal immigrants for prosecution, but exempted those traveling with children.[39]
In 2008, President Bush signed into law the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, a reauthorization of the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000, which codified some of the standards in the Flores Agreement. The Act provided for the expedited repatriation of unaccompanied alien minors to contiguous nations Mexico and Canada, while exempting unaccompanied children from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras from expedited repatriation in order to provide some protection to victims of human trafficking.[34][35][40][36]
Attempting to comply with the Agreement while keeping families together and coping with the 2014 American immigration crisis, a surge of refugees fleeing violence in Central America, the Department of Homeland Security under President Barack Obama built family detention centers in Pennsylvania and Texas.[41][42][39]
On July 24, 2015, in “Flores v. Johnson” 2015 C.D. Cal., District Judge Dolly M. Gee ruled found that the consent decree applied equally to accompanied and unaccompanied minors and that immigration officials violated the consent decree by refusing to release accompanied minors held in a family detention facility.[16][43][44][36] The government said an average of 20 days was required for adjudication of “credible fear” and “reasonable fear” claims, among the grounds for asylum in the United States, and on August 21, 2015 Judge Gee clarified the “without unnecessary delay” and “promptly” language in the Flores settlement, ruling that holding parents and children for up to 20 days “may fall within the parameters” of the settlement.[43][45][46] Judge Dee ruled that detained children and their parents who were caught crossing the border illegally could not be held more than 20 days, saying that detention centers in Texas, such as the GEO Group‘s privately run Karnes County Residential Center (KCRC) in Karnes City, Texas, and the T. Don Hutto Residential Center, in Taylor, Texas, had failed to meet Flores standards. Gee expanded Flores to cover accompanied and unaccompanied children.[47] Judge Gee ruled that Flores calls on the government to release children “without unnecessary delay”, which she held was within 20 days.[48][49] The court ordered the release of 1700 families that were not flight risks.[42][50][51]
This was a major change to Flores. Dee was an Obama-appointed federal district court judge.[52][53] Judge Dee said that that the defendants’ “blanket no-release policy with respect to minors accompanied by their mothers is a material breach of the Agreement.”[49]
In 2016, in Flores v. Lynch, Ninth Circuit Judge Andrew Hurwitz, joined by Judges Michael J. Melloy and Ronald M. Gould, reversed in part, finding that the Agreement applied to all detained children but that it did not give their parents any affirmative right of release.[54][16][36][55]
District Judge Gee next issued an enforcement order against the government and, on July 5, 2017, in Flores v. Sessions, Ninth Circuit Judge Stephen Reinhardt, joined by Judges A. Wallace Tashima, and Marsha Berzon, affirmed, finding that Congress had not abrogated the Agreement through subsequent legislation.[22][56]:181 Judge Gee ruled that “Congress did not terminate Paragraph 24A of the Flores Settlement with respect to bond hearings for unaccompanied minors” by “[e]nacting the Homeland Security Act (HSA) and the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA).”[22] Judge Gee said that the Flores v. Sessions appeal had stemmed from the Flores Settlement Agreement “between the plaintiff class and the federal government that established a nationwide policy for the detention, release, and treatment of minors in the custody of the INS” and that Paragraph 24A of the Flores Agreement provides that a “minor in deportation proceedings shall be afforded a bond redetermination hearing before an immigration judge.” The Ninth Circuit affirmed Judge Gee’s motion to enforce the Flores Agreement, saying that there was “nothing in the text, structure, or purpose of the HSA or TVPRA” that rendered “continued compliance with Paragraph 24A, as it applies to unaccompanied minors, “impermissible.”[22] Because of the ruling in Flores v. Sessions, ORR is required to “inform all unaccompanied children in staff-secure and secure placements of their right to a bond hearing, and schedule one if requested.”[56]:184
In her July 2017 ruling, U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee found that children who were in custody of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection were sleep-deprived because of inadequate conditions and that their food and water was inadequate, and they lacked “basic hygiene items” which was in violation of the Flores Settlement Agreement.[6] She ordered to federal government to provide an itemized list and improve the conditions.[6] The federal government appealed the decision saying that 1997 Flores Agreement did not mention “allowing children to sleep or wash themselves with soap”.
Judge Marsha S. Berzon. August 15, 2019. 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals[6]
In June 2019, three judges of the Ninth Circuit court of appeals heard the case, 17-56297 Jenny Flores v. William Barr, in which Sarah Fabian, the senior attorney in the Department of Justice’s Office of Immigration Litigation requested the Court to overturn Judge Dee’s 2017 order “requiring the government to provide detainees with hygiene items such as soap and toothbrushes in order to comply with the “safe and sanitary conditions” requirement set forth in Flores Settlement. During the June 20, 2019 proceedings, Ninth Circuit Judge William Fletcher said it was “inconceivable” that the United States government would consider it “safe and sanitary” to detain child migrants in conditions where it was “cold all night long, lights on all night long, sleeping on concrete and you’ve got an aluminium foil blanket?”[57][58] Fabian said that the Flores agreement mandating “safe and sanitary” conditions for detained migrant children was “vague” which let the federal agencies determine “sanitation protocols.”[7] It was not compulsory for the government to provide toothbrushes, soap or adequate bedding to the minors in their care.[59] Videos of the hearing were widely circulated on social media.[60] One of the justices, Judge A. Wallace Tashima, was detained in an internment camp as a child. According to the Los Angeles Times, the “case stirred nationwide outrage” when videos of the hearing went viral.[6]
On August 15, 2019 the three-judge panel of the federal 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld an Judge Dee’s 2017 “order requiring immigration authorities to provide minors with adequate food, water, bedding, toothbrushes and soap.”[6]
Trump administration family separation policy
As Presidential candidate, Donald Trump had promised to end what he called the Obama administration’s policy of “catch and release”. It was the second of his top priorities for immigration reform, after walling off Mexico.[61][62] In the first 15 months of the administration of President Trump, nearly 100,000 immigrants apprehended at the United States-Mexico border were released, including more than 37,000 unaccompanied minors and 61,000 family members.[63][64]
On May 26, 2018 Trump tweeted, “Put pressure on the Democrats to end the horrible law that separates children from there [sic] parents once they cross the border into the U.S.”[65] On May 29, 2018 White House senior policy advisor Stephen Miller told reporters, “A nation cannot have a principle that there will be no civil or criminal immigration enforcement for somebody traveling with a child. The current immigration and border crisis, and all of the attendant concerns it raises, are the exclusive product of loopholes that Democrats refuse to close,”[65] such as the Flores Settlement Agreement and the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008.[35]
By June 2018, the Flores Agreement received increased public attention when Trump, his administration, and supporters cited the FSA and Democratic recalcitrance as justification for the Trump administration family separation policy, in which all adults detained at the U.S.–Mexico border were prosecuted and sent to federal jails while children and infants were placed under the supervision of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS).[66] In June 2018 Vox Media summarized the administration’s interpretation of the settlement as since the government “cannot keep parents and children in immigration detention together, it has no choice but to detain parents in immigration detention (after they’ve been criminally prosecuted for illegal entry) and send the children to” DHS as “unaccompanied alien children.”[55] Despite the wording of Flores v. Reno, human rights advocates asserted that no law or court order mandated the separation of children from their families.[65][63][41][44] On June 11, 2018 Republican Senator from Texas Ted Cruz said in a Dallas public radio interview “There’s a court order that prevents keeping the kids with the parents when you put the parents in jail.” PolitiFact fact-checked Cruz’s statement, concluding it was “mostly false.”[30] On June 14, 2018, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters, “The separation of illegal alien families is the product of the same legal loopholes that Democrats refuse to close. And these laws are the same that have been on the books for over a decade. The president is simply enforcing them,” Republican Representative from Wisconsin and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan told reporters “What’s happening at the border in the separation of parents and their children is because of a court ruling,” and Republican Senator from Iowa Chuck Grassley tweeted “I want 2 stop the separation of families at the border by repealing the Flores 1997 court decision requiring separation of families.” The New York Times said “there is no decades-old law or court decision that requires” separating migrant children from their parents.[41]
On June 19, 2018 White House Legislative Affairs Director Marc Short told reporters the Trump administration had sought legislative relief from Congress on the Flores Settlement, saying “In each and every one of our negotiations in the last 18 months, all the immigration bills, we asked for resolution on the Flores settlement that is what we view requires 20 days before you have to release children and basically parents been released with children into society.”[32] According to the Congressional Research Service (CRS) report, President Trump’s June 20, 2018 executive order, had directed directed then-United States Attorney General Jeff Sessions to ask the Judge Dolly M. Gee of District Court for the Central District of California in Los Angeles, which oversees the Flores Agreement Settlement, to “modify the agreement” to “allow the government to detain alien families together throughout the duration of the family’s immigration proceedings as well as the pendency of any criminal proceedings for unlawful entry into the United States.[4] The executive order reversed the family separation policy, directing the United States Armed Forces to make room available on military bases for family detention and requested that the District Court for the Central District of California be flexible on the provisions of the settlement requiring state licensing of family detention centers and limiting detention of immigrant children to 20 days, in order to detain families for the duration of their immigration court proceedings.[67][68][69] On July 9, 2018, Gee rejected the request, citing that there was no basis to modify the agreement and pointing out that it is an issue the legislative branch has to solve instead.[70]
On September 7, 2018 federal agencies published a notice of proposed rulemaking that would terminate the FSA “so that ICE may use appropriate facilities to detain family units together during their immigration proceedings, consistent with applicable law.”[71]
On August 23, 2019, the administration issued a rule allowing families to be held in humane conditions while their U.S. immigration court cases were decided. On September 27, a judge blocked the rule, stating: “This regulation is inconsistent with one of the primary goals of the Flores Agreement, which is to instate a general policy favoring release and expeditiously place minors ‘in the least restrictive setting appropriate to the minor’s age and special needs’”.[72]
See also
Notes
References …
External links
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reno_v._Flores
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