Haitian children in Boston had been apart from a parent for years

Clinicians reviewing outpatient charts at five community mental health clinics in the Boston area recorded whether a child had been separated from a parent or guardian. For Haitian children the note appears in fifty six percent of charts, against twenty seven percent for African American children and twenty two percent for white children. The separations were also much longer. The Haitian average came to forty four months, roughly double the twenty three months for African American children and the twenty months for white children, and the average Haitian child had been seven or eight years old when the separation started. That is the arithmetic of chain migration written into a clinical record. One parent goes first, works, sends money home and files the paperwork, and the child follows years later after being raised by a grandmother or an aunt. The clinic sees only the arrival. The four years happened in Haiti and reach the chart as a single line.