Nevins writes: "Instead of a 'surge' in deportations, the U.S. government
should be paying off its imperial debt to Central America. The right to
migration is a form of reparations."
U.S. Border Patrol agents detain immigrants caught crossing the border from
Mexico into the United States in August near McAllen, Texas. A federal
agency is recommending that border agents not wear body cameras. (photo:
John Moore/Getty)
Border Wars: Migration as Reparations
By Joseph Nevins, NACLA
25 May 16
Instead of a surge in deportations, the U.S. government should be paying
off its imperial debt to Central America.
On May 12, Reuters revealed that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
(ICE) is poised to undertake a 30-day surge in deportations. The label for
the operation suggests a military-like endeavorthe stated goal of which is
to arrest and deport hundreds of single adults, mothers, and children from
El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras who arrived after January 1, 2014, have
been ordered to leave the country, yet remain in the United States without
authorization. According to Reuters, it will constitute the largest
deportation sweep targeting immigrant families by the administration of
President Barack Obama this year.
Reports of the looming surge have led to protests, with many asserting that
the would-be targets of the operation are in fact refugees, as defined by
international law. They are individuals who have a well-founded fear of
being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a
particular social group or political opinion and cant rely on their
national governments for protection. As such, the critics (who range from
immigrant rights advocates to Bernie Sanders to mainstream Democrats) argue
that the women and children from Central Americas Northern Triangle who
are said to be in the United States illegally have a right to stayeven if
only temporarily.
While this argument certainly has merit, their critique of Obama
administration policy accepts the narrow international definition of who is
and isnt deserving of asylum. The result is that the criticism can only
bear fruit to the extent that U.S. authorities accept and acknowledge that
the humans they prey upon are under extraordinary threat in their countries
of birth. Under this framing, would-be deportees do not have a right to stay
in the United States because of who they areas human beingsbut because of
a determination as to what nefarious forces have done to them, or may do to
them, should they be deported.
By merely asking that Washington be more inclusive in its classification of
those under threat, the critique, one supported by many progressives, allows
the U.S. government to remain the arbiter of who belongs and who does not,
thus ensuring future waves of deportation. Moreover, it disregards an
expansive notion of human rights, particularly a human right to mobility.
Even if one refuses to accept such a right, a basic concept of justice
demands recognition that migration involving the movement of people from
exploited and relatively impoverished parts of the world to countries of
relative wealth and privilege, is, or at least should be, a right born of
debtan imperial debt. The right to migration, in other words, is a form of
reparations.
Take the case of just one of the Central American countries from where the
targeted individuals have fled: El Salvador. As Elise Foley and Roque Planas
have pointed out, although the Obama administration contends that the
country is sufficiently safe for deportees, it considers El Salvador too
dangerous for the U.S. Peace Corps. Due to the ongoing security
environment in El Salvador, the Peace Corps suspended its operations there
in January.
Theres no doubt that El Salvador is very dangerousnot least for deportees
from the United States, many of whom have been killed upon their forced
return. The countrys murder rate is 22 times that of the United States. The
first three months of 2016 saw nearly one murder per hour, making the
country one of the most violent in the world. As in Guatemala and Honduras,
criminal gangs plague the country, and the boundary between gang members and
the police and the military is often quite fuzzy. But horrific violence in
El Salvador is not new, nor is its making limited to the countrys
territory. As is the case for all too many countries in Latin America, the
roots of El Salvadors violence are tied to Washingtons longstanding
project of domination of the hemisphere.
During the 1980s, hundreds of thousands of Salvadorans fled the terror
associated with their countrys brutal civil war and headed to the United
Statestypically entering clandestinely as the Reagan administration, with
rare exceptions, refused to grant them refugee status. It wasnt until 1990,
with both the war in El Salvador and the Cold War winding down, that the
U.S. government granted Temporary Protected Status to Salvadorans living in
the United Statesplacing them in what sociologist Cecilia Menjívar has
characterized as legal limbo.
Life in the neighborhoods where Salvadoran refugees settled helped to give
rise to El Salvadors contemporary gang problem. As anthropologist Elana
Zilberg writes in her book, Spaces of Detention: The Making of a
Transnational Gang Crisis Between Los Angeles and El Salvador, many of the
young people were products of the very violence they were fleeing:
Many Salvadoran youth had lost family members to the Salvadoran civil war,
or were left by parents on the run from political persecution or for reasons
of mere economic survival. They had seen tortured corpses and severed body
parts on their way to school. While in school or out on the streets, boys no
more than twelve years old were forcefully conscripted into the army.
Children joined the guerrillasin the early years, sometimes by force. Some
learned to make Molotov cocktails, to kill and to torture. This was the
history that followed them . . . a history funded by the United States.
Once in El Norte, a lot of them, particularly those residing in and around
Los Angeles, found themselves living in poor, often destitute communities in
which gangs already had a strong presence. The marginalized conditions in
which many Salvadoran refugee youth subsisted, along with the violent
histories they embodied, led many to join and form gangsnot least for
reasons of self-protection.
As Zilberg suggests, the United States funded much of the terror associated
with the civil warin the form of hundreds of millions of dollars in aidto
prop up El Salvadors right-wing government and the grossly unjust
political-economic order it defended. The Pentagon, via the infamous School
of the Americas, also trained some of El Salvadors most notorious military
officersones found to have committed some of the worst atrocities
associated with the civil war. This included the assassination of Catholic
Archbishop Oscar Romero and the massacre of several hundred civilians, many
of them young children, in the village of El Mozote.
In addition, Washington sent what were euphemistically referred to in
official circles as advisers to help El Salvadors brutal military
establishment in its fight against the guerrillas of the Farabundo Marti
National Liberation Front (FMLN). It was later revealed that these
advisersmembers of the U.S. Special Forces, who, over the course of the
war, numbered in the thousandsactively engaged in combat operations, and
presumably some of the associated war crimes as well.
According to El Salvadors official truth commission, more than 75,000
Salvadoran civilians lost their lives during the civil war (1980-1992)this
in a country of about five million people at the time. The commissions
report attributed 85 percent of the deaths to the U.S.-backed state (in the
form of the countrys military, paramilitary forces, and death squads),
and five percent to the FMLN.
Since the 1992 Peace Accords, which marked the end of the civil war and a
transition to democratic elections, the U.S. government has deported gang
membersreal and imaginedto El Salvador in large numbers. This, combined
with the countrys legacy of violence, its impoverished state, and the
dislocating effects of a neoliberal free trade agreement, the Dominican
Republic-Cental America Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA) imposed by the
countrys conservative elites and heavily pushed by the United States more
than a decade ago, is what has given rise to El Salvadors present-day gang
crisis and the marked increase in out-migration.
All this manifests U.S. culpability for much of El Salvadors past and
inextricably-tied present-day plight. It illustrates how deeply
interconnected, and unjustly so, U.S. and Salvadoran societies are, a
reality that strict boundary and immigration policing, which the deportation
surge embodies, disguises and works to erase. It also should negate any
justification by the United States government to deport and deny rights of
residence to people of Salvadoran origin.
Donald Trumps promise to engage in mass deportations if and when he becomes
president has given rise to much concern and derision. The reaction to
Trump, however, has often served to mask the fertile soil from which the
reality TV stars ugly dreams bloom. As the threatened surge demonstrates,
its soil that the Obama administration has played a large a role in
producing, having deported more individuals than any previous administration
and almost as many as all those of the 20th century combined.
The roots of this deportation regime must be eradicated and replaced. But
this will not occur by asking the federal government to be more
humanitarian in carrying out its regime of immigrant and territorial
exclusion. It will only come about by demandingand fighting fora very
different world, in which the U.S. government does not undermine the very
conditions that make life viable for the majority in migrant-sending
countries. This would be a world in which the U.S. state does not block
those fleeing the ravages Washington has helped to produce from seeking a
better life in U.S. territorial confinesif not for reasons of common
humanity, then, at the very least, as compensation for the conditions it
created.
Until we make this happen, we can be sure that another surge will always
be on the horizon.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
U.S. Border Patrol agents detain immigrants caught crossing the border from
Mexico into the United States in August near McAllen, Texas. A federal
agency is recommending that border agents not wear body cameras. (photo:
John Moore/Getty)
https://nacla.org/blog/2016/05/24/migration-reparationshttps://nacla.org/blo
g/2016/05/24/migration-reparations
Border Wars: Migration as Reparations
By Joseph Nevins, NACLA
25 May 16
Instead of a surge in deportations, the U.S. government should be paying
off its imperial debt to Central America.
n May 12, Reuters revealed that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
(ICE) is poised to undertake a 30-day surge in deportations. The label for
the operation suggests a military-like endeavorthe stated goal of which is
to arrest and deport hundreds of single adults, mothers, and children from
El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras who arrived after January 1, 2014, have
been ordered to leave the country, yet remain in the United States without
authorization. According to Reuters, it will constitute the largest
deportation sweep targeting immigrant families by the administration of
President Barack Obama this year.
Reports of the looming surge have led to protests, with many asserting that
the would-be targets of the operation are in fact refugees, as defined by
international law. They are individuals who have a well-founded fear of
being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a
particular social group or political opinion and cant rely on their
national governments for protection. As such, the critics (who range from
immigrant rights advocates to Bernie Sanders to mainstream Democrats) argue
that the women and children from Central Americas Northern Triangle who
are said to be in the United States illegally have a right to stayeven if
only temporarily.
While this argument certainly has merit, their critique of Obama
administration policy accepts the narrow international definition of who is
and isnt deserving of asylum. The result is that the criticism can only
bear fruit to the extent that U.S. authorities accept and acknowledge that
the humans they prey upon are under extraordinary threat in their countries
of birth. Under this framing, would-be deportees do not have a right to stay
in the United States because of who they areas human beingsbut because of
a determination as to what nefarious forces have done to them, or may do to
them, should they be deported.
By merely asking that Washington be more inclusive in its classification of
those under threat, the critique, one supported by many progressives, allows
the U.S. government to remain the arbiter of who belongs and who does not,
thus ensuring future waves of deportation. Moreover, it disregards an
expansive notion of human rights, particularly a human right to mobility.
Even if one refuses to accept such a right, a basic concept of justice
demands recognition that migration involving the movement of people from
exploited and relatively impoverished parts of the world to countries of
relative wealth and privilege, is, or at least should be, a right born of
debtan imperial debt. The right to migration, in other words, is a form of
reparations.
Take the case of just one of the Central American countries from where the
targeted individuals have fled: El Salvador. As Elise Foley and Roque Planas
have pointed out, although the Obama administration contends that the
country is sufficiently safe for deportees, it considers El Salvador too
dangerous for the U.S. Peace Corps. Due to the ongoing security
environment in El Salvador, the Peace Corps suspended its operations there
in January.
Theres no doubt that El Salvador is very dangerousnot least for deportees
from the United States, many of whom have been killed upon their forced
return. The countrys murder rate is 22 times that of the United States. The
first three months of 2016 saw nearly one murder per hour, making the
country one of the most violent in the world. As in Guatemala and Honduras,
criminal gangs plague the country, and the boundary between gang members and
the police and the military is often quite fuzzy. But horrific violence in
El Salvador is not new, nor is its making limited to the countrys
territory. As is the case for all too many countries in Latin America, the
roots of El Salvadors violence are tied to Washingtons longstanding
project of domination of the hemisphere.
During the 1980s, hundreds of thousands of Salvadorans fled the terror
associated with their countrys brutal civil war and headed to the United
Statestypically entering clandestinely as the Reagan administration, with
rare exceptions, refused to grant them refugee status. It wasnt until 1990,
with both the war in El Salvador and the Cold War winding down, that the
U.S. government granted Temporary Protected Status to Salvadorans living in
the United Statesplacing them in what sociologist Cecilia Menjívar has
characterized as legal limbo.
Life in the neighborhoods where Salvadoran refugees settled helped to give
rise to El Salvadors contemporary gang problem. As anthropologist Elana
Zilberg writes in her book, Spaces of Detention: The Making of a
Transnational Gang Crisis Between Los Angeles and El Salvador, many of the
young people were products of the very violence they were fleeing:
Many Salvadoran youth had lost family members to the Salvadoran civil war,
or were left by parents on the run from political persecution or for reasons
of mere economic survival. They had seen tortured corpses and severed body
parts on their way to school. While in school or out on the streets, boys no
more than twelve years old were forcefully conscripted into the army.
Children joined the guerrillasin the early years, sometimes by force. Some
learned to make Molotov cocktails, to kill and to torture. This was the
history that followed them . . . a history funded by the United States.
Once in El Norte, a lot of them, particularly those residing in and around
Los Angeles, found themselves living in poor, often destitute communities in
which gangs already had a strong presence. The marginalized conditions in
which many Salvadoran refugee youth subsisted, along with the violent
histories they embodied, led many to join and form gangsnot least for
reasons of self-protection.
As Zilberg suggests, the United States funded much of the terror associated
with the civil warin the form of hundreds of millions of dollars in aidto
prop up El Salvadors right-wing government and the grossly unjust
political-economic order it defended. The Pentagon, via the infamous School
of the Americas, also trained some of El Salvadors most notorious military
officersones found to have committed some of the worst atrocities
associated with the civil war. This included the assassination of Catholic
Archbishop Oscar Romero and the massacre of several hundred civilians, many
of them young children, in the village of El Mozote.
In addition, Washington sent what were euphemistically referred to in
official circles as advisers to help El Salvadors brutal military
establishment in its fight against the guerrillas of the Farabundo Marti
National Liberation Front (FMLN). It was later revealed that these
advisersmembers of the U.S. Special Forces, who, over the course of the
war, numbered in the thousandsactively engaged in combat operations, and
presumably some of the associated war crimes as well.
According to El Salvadors official truth commission, more than 75,000
Salvadoran civilians lost their lives during the civil war (1980-1992)this
in a country of about five million people at the time. The commissions
report attributed 85 percent of the deaths to the U.S.-backed state (in the
form of the countrys military, paramilitary forces, and death squads),
and five percent to the FMLN.
Since the 1992 Peace Accords, which marked the end of the civil war and a
transition to democratic elections, the U.S. government has deported gang
membersreal and imaginedto El Salvador in large numbers. This, combined
with the countrys legacy of violence, its impoverished state, and the
dislocating effects of a neoliberal free trade agreement, the Dominican
Republic-Cental America Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA) imposed by the
countrys conservative elites and heavily pushed by the United States more
than a decade ago, is what has given rise to El Salvadors present-day gang
crisis and the marked increase in out-migration.
All this manifests U.S. culpability for much of El Salvadors past and
inextricably-tied present-day plight. It illustrates how deeply
interconnected, and unjustly so, U.S. and Salvadoran societies are, a
reality that strict boundary and immigration policing, which the deportation
surge embodies, disguises and works to erase. It also should negate any
justification by the United States government to deport and deny rights of
residence to people of Salvadoran origin.
Donald Trumps promise to engage in mass deportations if and when he becomes
president has given rise to much concern and derision. The reaction to
Trump, however, has often served to mask the fertile soil from which the
reality TV stars ugly dreams bloom. As the threatened surge demonstrates,
its soil that the Obama administration has played a large a role in
producing, having deported more individuals than any previous administration
and almost as many as all those of the 20th century combined.
The roots of this deportation regime must be eradicated and replaced. But
this will not occur by asking the federal government to be more
humanitarian in carrying out its regime of immigrant and territorial
exclusion. It will only come about by demandingand fighting fora very
different world, in which the U.S. government does not undermine the very
conditions that make life viable for the majority in migrant-sending
countries. This would be a world in which the U.S. state does not block
those fleeing the ravages Washington has helped to produce from seeking a
better life in U.S. territorial confinesif not for reasons of common
humanity, then, at the very least, as compensation for the conditions it
created.
Until we make this happen, we can be sure that another surge will always
be on the horizon.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
