Skip to main content

New top story from Time: The Situation at the U.S.-Mexico Border Can’t Be ‘Solved’ Without Acknowledging Its Origins

https://ift.tt/3we2bo3

With the U.S. “on pace to encounter more individuals on the southwest border than we have in the last 20 years,” as Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement March 16, immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border has emerged as one of the toughest challenges facing the Biden Administration. Last week, President Biden put Vice President Kamala Harris in charge of “stemming” the flow of migrants, Biden was questioned about the immigration situation at his first official press conference, immigrant detention centers began to fill up once again, and lawmakers from both sides of the aisle made trips to the border to publicize the issue and propose solutions.

Biden’s attempts to address immigration may be new, but the issue is one that has dogged his predecessors for decades. Since the 1970s, Republicans and Democrats alike have tried to address undocumented immigration by constructing ever more draconian policies of border control, deportation and detention—border theater that grabs headlines and sometimes leads to short-term change, but never actually solves the problem.

There’s a reason why the U.S. government has failed for so many years to “control” the border: none of these policies have addressed the real reasons for migration itself. In migration studies, these are known as “push” and “pull” factors, the causes that drive migrants from one country to another.

Today, the countries sending the most migrants to the U.S.-Mexico border–especially the Central American countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador–are experiencing a combination of push factors that include poverty and inequality, political instability, and violence. And while the current situation may be unique, it is also deeply rooted in history.

Get your history fix in one place: sign up for the weekly TIME History newsletter

Many countries in Central America have struggled with poverty since the time of independence from Spain in the early 19th century. While they are beautiful countries that are rich in culture and history, that colonial past has meant they have historically been home to large, landless, poor, rural populations, including many indigenous people of Mayan descent. In the years after Spanish control, they were typically ruled by small oligarchies that disproportionately held wealth, land and power, and their economies were primary export-dependent, which brought great riches to landowners but also exacerbated and perpetuated inequality and the poverty of the majority. Those dynamics have carried forward to today. More recently, climate change–in particular, drought and massive storms–has forced the vulnerable rural poor out of the countryside.

Throughout Central America, political instability has also been a long-term problem. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, there were constant struggles between liberal and conservative elites. While rural, landless populations—such as the followers of guerrilla insurgent Augusto Sandino in Nicaragua in the 1920s—would occasionally rise up in popular resistance, more often than not these uprisings were suppressed in violent conflicts. The United States often exacerbated these conflicts, deploying the U.S. Marines in Latin America whenever political uprisings seemed to threaten U.S. business interests or national security.

By the mid-20th century, there were new and worse waves of political violence. Popular movements on the Left—some influenced by Marxist movements, others by the labor movement or by anti-imperialism—aggressively, and sometimes violently, attempted to challenge old hierarchies and ruling classes. Conservative political elites often responded to these movements by inviting the military to take power, and the resulting conflict would eventually develop into civil wars in Guatemala (1960-1996), El Salvador (1980-1992) and Nicaragua (1979-1990). The United States played a central role in many of these conflicts, propping up military dictatorships and supporting them with logistical aid, money, training and weapons, even as many of them committed human rights atrocities. These conflicts generated huge surges in emigration from Central America, establishing the migration patterns that persist today.

Read more: How 1970s U.S. Immigration Policy Put Mexican Migrants at the Center of a System of Mass Expulsion

A final push factor—with a very important transnational history—is gang violence. MS-13 is now one of the largest gangs in the world, and has contributed to violent crime across the region. What many Americans don’t know is that MS-13 was founded in poor neighborhoods in Los Angeles in the 1980s, within communities of Central American refugees who had fled civil wars. Many of these gang members were subsequently imprisoned in the United States, and then deported to Central America through a program that began under President Bill Clinton. With governments weakened by decades of war and incapable of dealing with this criminal influx, there was a huge rise in violence, extortion and impunity across Central America, contributing to a new increase in emigration as people sought the security and safety that their governments could not provide.

Pull factors in the U.S. have also created the conditions for continued unauthorized migration from Central America. Since the 1990s, entire sectors of the U.S. economy have become increasingly dependent on low-wage immigrant labor. Today, undocumented immigrants make up significant proportions of the labor force in certain industries, especially agriculture, the service industry (restaurants and housecleaning), and construction.

Despite the demand for their labor, U.S. immigration policy makes it very difficult for would-be migrants from Latin America to come to the United States legally. Although U.S. immigration laws allow for family reunification, it can take a decade or more for U.S. citizens of Central American origin to successfully sponsor family members for visas, and other paths are mostly limited to “highly skilled” immigrants with at least a college degree. Nevertheless, would-be migrants, desperate for a better life, know that if they can make it across the border, odds are they can get a job even without papers. This situation incentivizes risky border crossings and unauthorized entry into the United States.

There is one way that immigrants from Central America can legally migrate immediately—and that is by requesting asylum after they arrive in the United States. To gain asylum, immigrants must prove that they had to leave their country owing to “a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.” And while many Central Americans could indeed qualify for asylum based on their experiences of persecution, the previous administration made every effort to limit their ability to obtain it. Now the Biden Administration must decide whether to restore the asylum framework, which has become the only possible path to legal migration (as well as safety and security) for Central Americans and other migrants who—due to these combined, push and pull factors—are desperate to come to the United States.

Read more: The U.S. Separated Families Decades Ago, Too. With 545 Migrant Children Missing Their Parents, That Moment Holds a Key Lesson

Given the complicated and deep-rooted reasons behind migration, lawmakers cannot control or “solve” the ongoing crisis at the border by simply pouring money and resources into ever more militaristic border theater. It’s no wonder that decades of such policies have done little to change the underlying dynamics.

Instead, if Americans are serious about changing the situation at the border, we need to address the push and pull factors behind Central American migration. We need to acknowledge the reality of the U.S. economy (in particular, that it demands immigrant labor to work low-wage jobs) and work to construct new legal frameworks that reflect that reality. We need to target financial and logistical support to encourage Central American countries to address the poverty and inequality that fuel migration, rather than cutting foreign aid, as the Trump Administration did. We need to do all we can to end the pervasive gang violence that pushes so many migrants out of their homelands. And of course, we must continue to evaluate our own historical and contemporary role in creating the longstanding problems that are pushing Central Americans to migrate.

The Long View

Historians’ perspectives on how the past informs the present

Julia G. Young is an associate professor of history and historian of immigration and Latin America at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Bihar: Stages collapse during Congress rallies in Darbhanga, West Champaran https://ift.tt/37QFnks

The stage on which Congress candidate from Jale assembly seat, Mashkoor Ahmad Usman was addressing a rally broke and collapsed in Bihar's Darbhanga on Thursday. In a similar incident, another stage collapsed and took down party leaders Imran Pratapgarhi and Akhilesh Singh along with several party workers who were on the dias, during a Congress rally at Bagahi Deoraj in Champaran.

FOX NEWS: Bride's father asks stepdad to help walk her down the aisle in sweet viral moment A selfless gesture by the father of a bride was shared on social media in a viral moment of him surprising the girl’s stepfather by asking him to help walk her to the altar.

Bride's father asks stepdad to help walk her down the aisle in sweet viral moment A selfless gesture by the father of a bride was shared on social media in a viral moment of him surprising the girl’s stepfather by asking him to help walk her to the altar. via FOX NEWS https://ift.tt/ZkQ1Rpt

New Dashboards Give a Window into Muni Service Changes

New Dashboards Give a Window into Muni Service Changes By Kate McCarthy An inspector manages Muni service. New dashboards that help inform changes to Muni service are now live at SFMTA.com/MuniData Many factors inform our decisions about Muni service adjustments. These include making sure changes to service support the SFMTA’s values, which are economic vitality, environmental stewardship, trust and equity. We also evaluate travel patterns. You can now explore these patterns using the new Muni data dashboards  (SFMTA.com/MuniData). When looking at possible Muni service changes, the first thing we do is turn to the Muni Service Equity Strategy for guidance. Using the Muni Service Equity Strategy, we prioritize providing Muni service along routes that more often serve people of color, members of low-income households, and/or those who are dependent upon transit service, including people with disabilities and seniors. We also use ridership data to analyze where riders are boa...

India reports first 6 cases of new coronavirus strain after UK returnees test positive https://ift.tt/3pA0T2j

India on Tuesday reported the first six cases of the new coronavirus strain after six people who had returned from the United Kingdom were tested positive for the new UK variant genome. According to the details, the new coronavirus strain cases were reported from Hyderabad, Pune and Bangalore. Samples of 3 UK returnees were tested and found positive for the new UK strain in NIMHANS, Bengaluru. The other two cases were tested at the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad; while the last case was tested at the National Institute of Virology, Pune.

FOX NEWS: Ohio amusement park shut down after multiple fights break out Kings Island in Mason, around 20 miles north of Cincinnati, closed down 30 minutes early Saturday night after several fights among teenagers occurred, reports suggest.

Ohio amusement park shut down after multiple fights break out Kings Island in Mason, around 20 miles north of Cincinnati, closed down 30 minutes early Saturday night after several fights among teenagers occurred, reports suggest. via FOX NEWS https://ift.tt/3wsn8uI

New top story from Time: At Thanksgiving, Biden Seeks Unity as Trump Stokes Fading Embers of a Campaign

https://ift.tt/3q4cU1i WILMINGTON, Del. — On a day of grace and grievance, President-elect Joe Biden summoned Americans to join in common purpose against the coronavirus pandemic and their political divisions while the man he will replace stoked the fading embers of his campaign to “turn the election over.” Biden, in a Thanksgiving-eve address to the nation, put the surging pandemic front and center, pledging to tap the “vast powers” of the federal government and to “change the course of the disease” once in office. But for that to work, he said, Americans must step up for their own safety and that of their fellow citizens. “I know the country has grown weary of the fight,” Biden said Wednesday. “We need to remember we’re at war with the virus, not with one another. Not with each other.” President Donald Trump, who has scarcely mentioned the pandemic in recent days even as it has achieved record heights, remained fixated on his election defeat. He sent his lawyer Rudy ...

PM Modi lauds IFS officers for their work towards serving nation, furthering national interests https://ift.tt/36HoEzw

Greeting Indian Foreign Service officers on IFS day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday said that their work towards serving the nation and furthering national interests globally are commendable. Their efforts during the Vande Bharat Mission, which was launched to bring Indians home from abroad during the COVID-19 pandemic as international travel came to a halt, and other related help to our citizens and other nations is noteworthy, Modi added.

New top story from Time: In New Zealand, ‘Hello’ Has Become ‘Kia Ora.’ Will That Save the Māori Language?

https://ift.tt/2LMKZ6a Kenny Williams began to study the Māori language during his second COVID-19 lockdown . Williams, 36, lives alone and the isolation made him yearn to feel closer to his identity as an indigenous New Zealander—an identity he had spent most of his childhood trying to hide. After he ordered some Māori language books, he found his studies helped him build a connection to his Māori history. “I didn’t know it was a gap that was missing in my life,” he says. It’s not just lockdown isolation—New Zealanders of all stripes are signing up to learn the language of the Māori people, New Zealand’s original inhabitants—“te reo Māori,” as it is widely called. But COVID-19 may have provided a boost: One university reported that 7,000 people accessed a free online Māori language and culture course in a 10-day period during lockdown. The New Zealand government has pledged to ensure 1 million residents are able to speak basic Māori by 2040—an effort to revive a langu...

New Muni Service Changes Start Saturday, August 19

New Muni Service Changes Start Saturday, August 19 By Clive Tsuma 28R 19th Avenue will run on weekdays between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. starting Monday, August 21.  Back to School  With SFUSD students returning to school August 16, many families who rely on Muni to get to school will see service increase after school as part of the new schedule. Because Muni vehicles often become crowded during morning peak hours and sometimes pass up stops when there is not enough room for more riders, families are encouraged to plan their trips ahead of time and hop on Muni early to make sure students get to school on time.  With every public school in the San Francisco Unified School District being served by at least one Muni route , students can expect extra Muni service on the first day of the school this fall and continue providing service throughout the school year. While the Muni service changes won’t be implemented until August 19, school tripper service will be offered starting Au...

Safer and Easier Parking in Every City-Owned Facility

Safer and Easier Parking in Every City-Owned Facility By Pamela Johnson Parking at any of our 22 city-owned facilities is now easier and safer than ever. Late last month we completed the Parking Access Revenue and Control Systems (PARCS) project. This four-year effort replaced aging parking equipment with modern technology and significant operational upgrades. Customer using new PARCS kiosk at North Beach parking garage Patrons will notice enhanced lighting, new wayfinding signs, audible alarms, cameras, gate arms, and payment machines with two-way digital intercoms . Behind the scenes is an all-new parking management system and 24/7 command center, connected to every machine. Can’t find your ticket to pay for parking?  No worries! Thanks to license plate recognition technology, cameras located at every facility’s entrance capture patrons’ plate numbers as they arrive . If a customer loses her ticket, the manager is able to re-issue a ticket based on her license plate...