Our moral obligation to Central American migrants
Alejandro
Hernandez, The Conversation, June 25, 2018
A
significant number of Central American migrants are likely Canada-bound due to
the ongoing immigration and security turmoil in the United States.
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| In this April 2018 photo, siblings from El Salvador huddle together on a soccer field in Mexico. awaiting temporary transit visas that would allow them to continue to the U.S. border, where they hoped to request asylum. (AP Photo/Felix Marquez) |
Consequently,
Canada needs to enact inter-related migration and foreign policy measures that
take into account the reasons why people claim asylum. These actions must go
beyond Band-Aid solutions and ineffective strategies.
Ineffective
strategies include visiting
Latino migrant communities in the U.S. to warn people against
crossing the Canada-U.S. border at irregular border points.
Nor
should we declare the entire Canada-U.S. border an official border crossing, a
proposal rightly described in a recent article in The Conversation Canada as “a fantasy.”
Canada
owes it to help Central Americans
Some
might argue Canada isn’t responsible for what happens in other countries. Based
on this assumption, some Canadians might believe we shouldn’t be responsible
for refugees.
But
Canada is not an isolated country. We have wielded our influence in the past
over Central American countries, usually with detrimental results.
For
example, Canada promptly supported the military coup d’état in Honduras in
2009. This was meant to
preserve Canadian owners’ and investors’ capital in the mining,
garment and tourism industries.
 |
| A woman pleads for the release of two residents who were detained by police during clashes in El Limon, Nicaragua, in October 2015. Riot police clashed with striking workers demanding the reinstatement of fired employees from the Canadian mining company B2Gold, an example of the type of unrest and controversy that has often dogged Canadian mining companies in Central America. (AP Photo/Esteban Felix) |
We should
not forget that under Stephen Harper’s government, Canadian taxpayers paid for
personnel and embassies around the world to be converted into economic war
rooms. As demonstrated by released
government emails, the Conservatives defended Canadian companies
abroad no matter
how they conducted
themselves.
Canada’s
past interventions in some of these countries ethically binds us to care about
what is happening now to their citizens.
Separating
migrant children from parents
Planned since
March 2017, the U.S. has been separating undocumented migrant
children from their parents when detained at its southern border. As a result,
as many as 11,200 children have been detained since last August.
These
children have been interned under conditions that “look more
like incarceration than temporary shelter.” Other children have
alleged they were assaulted and
suffered severe physical and emotional
abuse while in detention.
U.S.
President Donald Trump has signed an
executive order to stop the separation process. But the American
government has no plan yet
for reuniting the separated immigrant families.
What’s
more, as a class-action complaint against these youth detention centres
asserts, the Trump administration’s actions are “part of a
growing trend of punitive, racially discriminatory conditions.” This
is part of Trump’s so-called “zero tolerance” policy at the U.S. southern
border.
These
policies are aimed almost entirely at deterring the migration of Mexicans and
Central Americans. However, the policies and measures ignore the
violence that these people face in their home countries.
Why are
Central Americans fleeing?
There are
extraordinary rates of murder, crime, impunity, extortion and forced gang
recruitment in Central America. This is partly the result of gang networks
operating in that region as well as in Mexico and the U.S.
Add to
this mix the demand for cocaine and
methamphetamine in Canada and the U.S. That’s led the gangs to add
international narcotics and weapons trafficking, along with human smuggling,
trafficking and prostitution, to their criminal repertoire.
Nonetheless,
the U.S. intends to
withdraw Temporary Protected Status from approximately 200,000
Salvadorans in September 2019 and 60,000 Hondurans in January 2020.
The
potential return of these migrants to their homelands will disrupt the economic
and support systems generated by remittances between the U.S. and their
countries of origin.
These
migrants will be sent back to countries with massive income inequality and lack
of health care, social services and educational opportunities. And this sad
state of affairs in Central American countries is the historical result of U.S. foreign
intervention, as well as internal conflicts in the 1970s and 1980s
and the uneven effect
of economic liberalization since the 1980s.
Impact of
upcoming U.S. policy changes
Since
June 11, gang violence (along with domestic violence) is no longer
recognized as a reason to claim asylum in the U.S.
Furthermore,
a bill being
voted on in the House of Representatives, if approved, will
substantially restructure the U.S. asylum system. It will also require further
collaboration by other countries, including collecting and sharing travellers’
biometric data and tackling irregular migration flows that may affect the U.S.
 |
|
Honduran
Diva Funes holds a hand
of her son Evercito, 4, while walking back
from the
U.S. to Reynosa, Mexico, on
June 21, 2018. The family was escorted
back across
the border by U.S. Customs
& Border Patrol agents after trying to
seek
asylum . (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)
|
They will
also spur a re-evaluation process among some Central Americans regarding whether
to migrate at all, or where to go. As scholar Ailsa Winton
puts it, they will try to achieve “a complex balancing act of different kinds
of harm.”
Canada
then needs to develop a comprehensive migration management strategy that
responds to more complex, international realities. This strategy should
consider human development and not only homeland security.
Trying to
stop people from migrating and disregarding the causes of migration is a futile
exercise. As history shows, doing this only increases the risks and costs for
everyone.
Canada
has played a role in creating human misery in Central America. It’s time to do
right by the region’s citizens as doors are slammed in their faces by the
United States.
