U.S. Immigration -- "Living With 'Em and Without 'Em"

The United States must adopt an immigration system that best serves the national interest. We, the American citizens, agree upon this simple statement. This time of globalization will see America either descend into isolation or affirm its openness. Illegal immigration – what to do about a growing problem? It seems the key phrase that defies a singular interpretation is “best serves the national interest.” The real solution – the “best” solution – should be addressed with attention to the American heritage, not with fear generated from xenophobic political interests.

Speaking of the immigration issue, did you know …

* During recent decades, the economy, society, politics and culture of the United States have become ever more intertwined with those of Mexico and the countries of Central America and the Caribbean.

* 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.

Yet in reality, the administration has sought to dismantle the US asylum system through policies and practices that include mass illegal pushbacks of asylum-seekers at the US-Mexico border; illegally breaking up thousands of families by separating children from their parents; limiting where and when individuals can apply for asylum and by increasingly relying on the use of arbitrary and indefinite detention of people seeking protection.
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.

Lisa Haugaard, Executive Director Latin America Working Group Education Fund, and Tom Lantos. Challenges for Public Security & Human Rights in Honduras and El Salvador. Testimony Human Rights Commission Hearing on Human Rights and Humanitarian Challenges in Central America. November 1, 2017.

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.