Speaking of the immigration issue, did
you know …
* There is an overwhelming difference between U.S. relations with these countries in our “near abroad" – Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean and our relations with the rest of the world.
* Conditions in the northern tier countries of Central America – Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador – are desperate and getting worse;
* More than 60 percent of Mexicans have relatives in the United States. 15 percent of those alive today who were born in the Caribbean or Central America now reside in this country.
* Remittances from migrants abroad are crucial for the economies of a number of Caribbean and Central American countries, and important for Mexico.
* Contrary to popular belief, Mexico
is not encouraging people to flow into the United States. In January
and February of this year, Mexico detained and deported over 15,000
Central Americans. In 2015, Mexico deported more Central Americans
than did the United States.
* There is a legal obligation for
Mexico and for the United States to allow migrants to make their
case if they feel they fear for their lives if they're returned.
* The numbers of Mexicans going to
the United States is way down. We're actually at net zero migration –
more Mexicans leaving the United States than entering.
* Migrants from El Salvador and
Honduras often come from larger cities, where gang violence is
rampant, while those from rural areas in Guatemala often note family
or domestic violence as a driving factor. Migrants from across the
highlands of Guatemala or the rural areas of Honduras may seek to
leave behind grinding poverty, exacerbated at times by a shifting
local economy or climate change.
There is a stunning disconnect between
everyday reality and the concepts, policies and rhetoric of
immigration in the United States and its “near abroad” neighbors.
All the political wrangling is a veritable sideshow, a mishmash of
truths, half-truths, and lies designed to elicit more emotion than
thought. Border agents, armed troops, massive walls – much of the
Washington “fix” is centered on response and not on tackling
causes of discontent. Any effective policy seems destined to fail
until the United States seeks new solutions to help quell the enemies of
the Latin human population.
Abraham F. Lowenthal of Brookings
Institution says ...
“The issues that flow directly
from the growing mutual interpenetration between the United States
and its closest neighbors — human, drug and arms trafficking,
immigration, environmental protection, public health, law
enforcement, border management, medical tourism, portable health and
pension benefits, drivers’ licenses and auto insurance — are all
difficult to handle. This is largely because the democratic political
process pushes policies, both in the United States and in the
neighboring countries, in counterproductive directions.
“The pressure in many states to
deny drivers’ licenses and access to public education and social
services to undocumented immigrants who are here to stay illustrates
this tendency. On the other side, it is difficult for countries like
Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras to manage these issues because of
the power of criminal syndicates, deep socioeconomic inequities and
very weak state capacity.”
What should be done to improve and
sustain border security? It is evident much more attention must be
given to economic, social, and political realities of the countries
in the region. Consider how the U.S. deports criminals back into the
area without providing information to local authorities. Consider
that the demand for narcotics in America fuels the international drug
trade. And, consider that most of the weapons used for terrible
violence in Central America and the Caribbean come from the U.S. More
must be done to reduce the high murder rates and widespread violence
by gangs and drug cartels.
Human Rights Abuses
How does America fight human rights
abuses in these countries? Domestic violence? Overwhelming poverty?
Human trafficking? Civil war, land disputes and military rule are
just some of the factors that have affected human rights conditions
in Central America.
Honduras, home to most of the caravan
people, has faced terrible times. After
decades of military rule, setting limits on the actions of law
enforcement agencies became one of Honduras’s most pressing
challenges. Generations of young people have realized that in
Honduras the self-perpetuating cycles of violence, corruption, and
poverty have robbed them of their right to grow old.
Honduras and El Salvador remain two of
the most dangerous countries on earth not at war. El Salvador led the
world in homicides per capita in 2015 and 2016, wresting the infamous
title from Honduras, which held it the previous year. In Honduras and
El Salvador, youth are under assault: as victims of gangs; as gang
members killed in gang violence; as victims of organized crime. They
are also victims of state violence. Of the top countries in the world
with the highest child homicide rates, in 2015, the last year
available, all are in Latin America, and Honduras is number one, El
Salvador number 3.
Teenagers and children are forcibly
recruited by gangs. Gangs levy extortion taxes that affect everyone
from tortilla sellers to restaurant owners; people are threatened or
killed for being unable to pay. Young women and girls are affected by
sexual violence. Youth are killed in gang warfare and by state
security forces. Many Salvadorans have to leave their homes due to
violence, are internally displaced, and then may have to flee the
country.
WE, the United States of America, need
to meet the challenges people face in these countries. It is in our
best interest to do this – OUR neighbors' and OUR own interests.
Why historically hasn't this occurred?
History of U.S. Relations
Relations between Anglo-Saxon America
and Latin America have long been in conflict in both economy and
ideology. J. F. Normano, lecturer on economics at Harvard University
and author of The Struggle for South America says, “For more
than a century the two Americas have been accustomed to the word
Pan-Americanism; but sincere Pan-American sentiment has not
synchronized with the reality.”
Allow me to share this bit of history
by Lisa García Bedolla, associate professor of Education at UC
Berkeley, in the Berkeley Review of Latin American Studies
(Spring 2009) ...
“The United States’ relations
with Latin America have been deeply influenced by two important U.S.
principles: manifest destiny and the Monroe Doctrine. The idea of
manifest destiny – that the United States was “destined” to be
an Anglo-Saxon Protestant nation stretching from coast to coast –
had its roots in colonial political thought. Since the colonial
period, many Americans have believed that it was God’s will that
the United States should control the North American territory and
that the nation needed to be based on a common set of political
ideals, religious beliefs and cultural practices. Over time, the idea
that it was the United States’ destiny to control a particular
geographic sphere would expand beyond the North American continent
and extend across the Western Hemisphere through the Monroe Doctrine.
“John Adams’ son, John Quincy
Adams, developed the Monroe Doctrine in 1823, when he was President
James Monroe’s secretary of state. Formulated when many Latin
American countries were fighting to gain independence from the
imperial European powers, the doctrine sought to ensure that Europe
did not re-colonize the Western Hemisphere. In his State of the Union
message in December of that year, President Monroe declared that the
United States would not interfere in European wars or internal
affairs. Likewise, he expected Europe to stay out of the affairs of
the New World. European attempts to interfere in the Americas would
be interpreted by the United States as threats to its “peace and
safety.”
“In 1904, President Theodore
Roosevelt added the “Roosevelt Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine,
which defined U.S. intervention in Latin American domestic affairs as
necessary for national security:
“All that this country desires
is to see the neighboring countries stable, orderly and prosperous.
Any country whose people conduct themselves well can count upon our
hearty friendship. If a nation shows that it knows how to act with
reasonable efficiency and decency in social and political matters, if
it keeps order and pays its obligations, it need fear no interference
from the United States. Chronic wrongdoing, or an impotence which
results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society, may
in America, as elsewhere, ultimately require intervention by some
civilized nation, and in the Western Hemisphere the adherence of the
United States to the Monroe Doctrine may force the United States,
however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or
impotence, to the exercise of an international police power.
“This corollary was used to
justify U.S. intervention in Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and the Dominican
Republic. It was officially reversed in 1934 with the advent of
Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “good neighbor” policy towards Latin
America. Nonetheless, the principle that the United States’
political and economic interests are intimately related to that of
Latin America remained. Throughout the 20th century, the United
States’ economic interests played a central role in the development
of Latin American banking, infrastructure and industry. Similarly,
the U.S. government, particularly after the start of the cold war,
continued to intervene in Latin American governmental and military
affairs. This, in turn, has had important effects on the timing and
make-up of Latin American migration to the United States.”
There's an old saying: "When the
United States sneezes, Latin America gets pneumonia." In many
ways, those words capture the United States' tendency to exert its
economic, political and military influence over its neighbors to the
south.
The role of the U.S. in governmental
intervention has been generally negative. The U.S. is infamous in the
region for propping up Right-wing dictators and funding violent
paramilitary groups. In the 1980s and 90s, the United States was
intimately involved in the civil wars of El Salvador, Nicaragua, and
Guatemala. Through strong U.S. support and intervention, these became
protracted, proxy wars characteristic of the Cold War era, which had
lasting and devastating economic, political, and social consequences.
Decades of U.S. deportations of gang-affiliated youth and young men
followed and significantly contribute to a cycle of violence in the
Central American region today.
Solutions
Since his election in 2016, President
Trump has regularly demonized asylum seekers as ‘criminals’ or
accused them of taking advantage of “loopholes” in the
immigration system when referring to the asylum process and
threatened a series of hostile measures to “stop them”, including
building a wall along the USA’s 2,000-mile border with Mexico.
Here are five steps on how U.S. policy can contribute to solutions as seen in the publication by the Human Rights Commission Hearing on Human Rights and Humanitarian Challenges in Central America:
1. The State Department and Congress should work to enforce the smart human rights (balance between integration and fragmentation) and anti-corruption conditions in the State, Foreign Operations law, and use them as leverage for human rights improvements and progress in combatting corruption.
2. Congress, the State Department, and other relevant U.S. government agencies should reiterate one clear message to the Honduran and Salvadoran governments: public security must respect rights.
3. U.S. assistance should address the roots of violence and forced migration, such as promoting community violence prevention programs and sustainable development projects designed with local communities.
4. U.S. diplomacy should emphasize, as a central element, respect for human rights defenders, of all descriptions, including indigenous and Afro-descendant leaders, environmental activists, LGBTI and women activists, journalists, student leaders, and union members.
5. Finally, U.S. immigration policy must not undermine avenues to progress in El Salvador and Honduras, especially progress in reducing violence and poverty and addressing the roots of migration Ending Temporary Protected Status for some 250,000 Salvadorans and Hondurans in the United States, ending protections for Dreamers, ramping up deportations, and cutting off access to asylum for refugees fleeing violence will just escalate the violence as returned migrants and refugees will have few alternatives.
Sources
Lisa García Bedolla. “The U.S. Is
Making Things More Dangerous In Central America, Again.”
Berkeley Review of Latin American Studies. Spring 2009.
Abraham F. Lowenthal. “The Underlying
Significance of Central American Immigration.” brookings.edu.
August 3, 2014.
Eric Olsen. “Here's What Enforcement
At Mexico's Southern Border Is Really Like.” wbur.com.
April 04, 2018.
Save the Children, End of Childhood
Report 2017, 23. 2017.
Katie Sizemore. “Young Professionals
in Foreign Policy” Huffington Post. February 09, 2017.
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