[colombiamigra] Fw: [NIEM] México, América Central e Caribe
- From: william mejia <wmejia8a@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: "colombiamigra@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <colombiamigra@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2013 06:18:11 -0800 (PST)
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From: nucleo interdisciplinar de estudos migratorios NIEM <NIEM.migr@xxxxxxxxx>
To: niem_rj@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Friday, February 8, 2013 2:38 AM
Subject: [NIEM] México, América Central e Caribe
Novo presidente mexicano
apóia proposta reforma migratória nos EUA
Dificuldades na adoção de
crianças na Guatemala por famílias norte-americanas (reportagem e vídeo)
Regularização de estrangeiros
indocumentados no Panamá
Situação de haitianos vivendo
em campos de refugiados desde o terremoto
UOL/El Pais, 29/11/12:
Presidente eleito mexicano
apoia reforma imigratória de Obama
C. F. Pereda e Y. Monge
Em Washington (EUA)
Antes de tomar posse na
presidência no próximo domingo (2), quando o Partido Revolucionário
Institucional (PRI) voltará ao poder depois de 12 anos de longo impasse, o
presidente eleito do México, Enrique Peña Nieto, viajou na terça-feira (27)
para os EUA para deixar seu cartão de visita em Washington. Ele se encontrou
com o presidente Barack Obama na Casa Branca e com os líderes do Congresso no
Capitólio.
"O que acontece no
México tem impacto em nossa sociedade", afirmou Obama durante a reunião no
Salão Oval. O presidente americano cumprimentou Peña Nieto por sua vitória nas
eleições presidenciais e reconheceu que sua visita, quatro dias antes da
cerimônia de posse, se deve à "estreita relação" entre os dois
países. Em relação à posse, da qual participará o vice-presidente dos EUA, Joe
Biden, Obama brincou e disse sentir inveja de seu número 2. Peña Nieto convidou
Obama para realizar uma visita de Estado, ao que o líder americano respondeu
efusivamente: "Qualquer desculpa é boa para viajar ao México".
Durante sua primeira reunião,
Obama comemorou a relação diplomática entre EUA e México. O presidente
americano elogiou a agenda reformista de Peña Nieto e se mostrou confiante em
que os dois países manterão seus laços econômicos e comerciais e deverão
aumentar as condições de segurança na fronteira. Nenhuma palavra sobre a
polêmica legalização da maconha que está ocorrendo em vários Estados
americanos.
Peña Nieto declarou seu
compromisso com reforçar as relações com os EUA e sua vontade de criar uma nova
política que lhe permita "ter fronteiras modernas e seguras".
Os dois líderes confirmaram
sua intenção de trabalhar em assuntos como a segurança na fronteira, a
imigração e outros temas "regionais e globais". Peña Nieto
cumprimentou Obama por seu plano para realizar uma reforma do sistema de
imigração e renovou o compromisso do México de trabalhar com o governo
americano na resolução do problema da imigração ilegal a partir de seu
território. "Apoiamos completamente sua proposta", disse o novo líder
mexicano. "Queremos contribuir para a reforma, queremos fazer parte dela."
O fato de Obama ter
reconquistado a Casa Branca no último 6 de novembro com 71% de apoio do voto
hispânico sem dúvida esteve ontem na mente dos dois mandatários. Obama tem
consciência de que o sistema de imigração dos EUA está quebrado e precisa de
uma reforma urgente que tire da ilegalidade os mais de 6 milhões de mexicanos
que vivem nos EUA sem papéis - de um total de 12 milhões -, segundo um estudo
do Centro de Pesquisa Pew.
Obama anunciou em junho a
paralisação das deportações de alguns imigrantes sem documentos que chegaram ao
país quando crianças e hoje podem ter acesso a licenças de trabalho. A reforma
migratória está paralisada há mais de dez anos. A última vez que o México
tentou pressionar os EUA foi cinco dias antes dos atentados terroristas de 11
de Setembro. Em 6 de setembro de 2001, o então presidente Vicente Fox - que
rompeu em 2000 a
invencibilidade do PRI, que estava no poder desde 1929 - se dirigiu em
Washington a uma reunião conjunta das duas câmaras do Congresso para pedir aos
legisladores que confiassem no México e abrissem suas fronteiras. O 11 de
Setembro provocou o efeito contrário.
O encontro no Salão Oval
ocorreu em um momento especial para a relação entre os dois países, quando a
imigração alcançou um nível zero devido à crise econômica americana - desemprego
elevado, mercado da construção precário - e se reduziu a violência do crime
organizado, que custou quase 70 mil vidas, mais de 30 mil delas desde que
Felipe Calderón, o presidente mexicano de saída, utilizou o exército para
enfrentar os cartéis da droga quando chegou ao poder, em dezembro de 2006.
Tradutor: Luiz Roberto Mendes
Gonçalves
[notícia enviada por Rogério
Haesbaert]
==================================
New York Times, 08/12/12:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/09/world/americas/stalled-adoption-program-in-guatemala-leaves-families-in-limbo.html
A Family, for a Few Days a
Year
By RACHEL L. SWARNS
GUATEMALA CITY — The little
boy flies like an airplane through the hotel, his arms outstretched. Then he
leaps like a superhero, beaming as the red lights on his new sneakers flash and
flicker, while the American couple he is with dissolve in laughter.
He calls them Mamá and Papi. They
call him Hijo — Son. He corrects their fledgling Spanish. They teach him
English. “Awe-some,” he repeats carefully, eyeing his new shoes.
To outsiders, they look like
a family. But Geovany Archilla Rodas, an impish 6-year-old boy with spiky black
hair, lives in an orphanage on the outskirts of this capital city. The
Americans — Amy and Rob Carr of Reno, Nev. — live a world away. They are the
only parents he has ever known.
They have been visiting him
every year, usually twice a year, since he was a toddler, flying into this
Central American city for a few days at a time to buy him clothes and to read
him stories, to wipe his tears and to tickle him until he collapses in giggles
at their hotel or in the orphanage.
Yet half a decade after
agreeing to adopt him, the Carrs still have no idea when — or if — they will
ever take Geovany home.
“There’s this hope in you
that doesn’t want to die,” said Mrs. Carr, who arrived here last month with her
husband, more determined than ever to cut through the bureaucracy. “In my
heart, he’s my son.”
The Carrs are among the 4,000
Americans who found themselves stuck in limbo when Guatemala shut down its
international adoption program in January 2008 amid mounting evidence of
corruption and child trafficking. Officials here and in Washington promised at
the time to process the remaining cases expeditiously.
But officials and prospective
parents say that bureaucratic delays, lengthy investigations and casework
hobbled by shortages of staff and resources have left hundreds of children
stranded in institutions for years. Today, 150 children — including Geovany —
are still waiting in orphanages and foster homes here while the Guatemalan
authorities weigh whether to approve their adoptions to families in the United
States.
Stalled adoptions are not
unique to Guatemala. Concerns about fraud, including allegations of kidnappings
and baby selling, have held up American adoptions for months, and sometimes
years, from Ethiopia, Kyrgyzstan, Vietnam and Haiti. The State Department
currently refuses to approve adoptions from Cambodia and Vietnam to pressure
those countries to install safeguards so that children with biological
relatives who can care for them are not shipped overseas, officials say.
But the problem of delayed
adoptions is particularly acute in Guatemala, a country of about 14 million
people, which in 2007 ranked second only to China in the number of children
sent to the United States.
As officials here have spent
months, and then years, trying to distinguish legitimate adoptions from
fraudulent ones, many hopeful couples who had painted nurseries, hosted baby
showers and bought brand new cribs began to despair as the infants they had
hoped to adopt took their first steps and spoke their first words without them.
Faced with a seemingly
endless process, scores of prospective parents quietly abandoned their efforts
to adopt the children they once considered their own, officials say.
Guatemalan officials said
they never intended for the children to remain institutionalized for so long.
They
say they have had to thoroughly investigate the cases, some of which are
complicated by inconsistencies, false documents and questionable stories, to
ensure that the children were not bought or stolen from impoverished rural
women.
“These are very vulnerable
people, who can be easily taken advantage of,” said Elizabeth Orrego de
Llerena, president of the board of directors of the National Adoption Council,
which is processing the adoption cases once they have been cleared by the child
welfare investigative branch. “At times, they have not had the opportunity to
make a complaint or to seek solutions.”
Ms. Orrego de Llerena said
that the investigations, which typically include searches for biological
relatives, were necessary to ensure that children were given up voluntarily.
“This is why, at times, the
process takes longer,” said Ms. Orrego de Llerena, who added that her office
was committed to finding permanent families for children as quickly as
possible.
American officials counter
that the process has taken long enough, noting that officials have published
notices seeking out birth parents in local newspapers, have encouraged parents
to report missing children and have sought out adoptive parents domestically.
They added that anomalies in
case files often reflect complicated family situations, not corruption,
pointing to instances in which unmarried teenagers and victims of rape and
incest have lied about their identities or asked others to hand over their
babies to protect themselves and their families from shame.
They say many judges and
child welfare officials in Guatemala have delayed approving cases out of fear
of increased government scrutiny and prosecution, not because the children
should not be approved for adoption.
“I think these investigations
have gone on long enough,” said Susan Jacobs, the State Department’s special
adviser for children’s issues, who has traveled to Guatemala four times trying
to resolve the backlog.
“If no one, after all this
time, has come forward to say I want to give this child a home, I think the
matches they have made in the past should be honored,” Ms. Jacobs said. “Just
decide. Don’t leave these kids forever in institutions. It’s just wrong.”
Desperate for a resolution,
the prospective parents have created Web sites and Facebook pages to highlight
their plight, made costly visits to Guatemala to maintain their fragile bonds
with their faraway sons and daughters, and pleaded with lawmakers and
administration officials for help. They found a champion in Senator Mary L.
Landrieu, Democrat of Louisiana, who has prodded American and Guatemalan
officials to focus on their situation.
“It is unwarranted and
unnecessary,” Ms. Landrieu said of the prolonged process.
Alejandro Mayorkas, director
of United States Citzenship and Immigration Services, has also
traveled to Guatemala to try to ease the logjam. Prospective parents hope that
an agreement worked out by Guatemalan and American officials will speed the
processing of the remaining cases.
But so far, only five
adoptions have been made final this year. More than 100 cases remain
unresolved, including Geovany’s, without any word of a concrete timeline.
A Test of Patience
In November, the Carrs packed
a green suitcase full of socks, underwear, Legos and coloring books for Geovany
and flew back for four full days here, determined to make some headway on their
ninth trip to Guatemala in five years.
They arrived on a Friday
evening at the Grand Tikal Futura Hotel, armed with a letter from their senator
Harry Reid, the majority leader, and a plan to meet with their lawyer as well
as officials at the National Adoption Council and the American Embassy.
And as they unpacked, they
prayed that they would finally clear the last hurdles, even as they worried
about the inevitable difficulties ahead.
The Carrs, who have three
biological children, adopted their first child — a little girl named Samantha —
from Guatemala without a hitch. They agreed to adopt Geovany in December 2007,
just weeks before Guatemala closed its program. He was abandoned, their
adoption agency told them. A clear-cut case.
They were told he would be
home within six months, a toddler who would integrate relatively easily into
their lives. They never dreamed that they would be trying someday to assimilate
a Spanish-speaking boy who had grown up in an orphanage, or that they would be
forced to confront the unexpected mysteries in his past.
Mrs. Carr, 42, who is a
stay-at-home mother, and her husband, 43, who is a software engineer, firmly
believe that God has called on them to give Geovany a home.
But they still wonder: How
will Geovany cope in school without speaking English? How will he adjust to a
life that is considerably more free-flowing than the regimented rhythms of the
orphanage? And what about the impact of years of institutionalization?
Geovany, who has lived in an
orphanage since he was an infant, shies away from hugs and kisses and rarely
seeks comfort from adults if he is sad or hurt.
“If somebody had said to me
five years ago, would you adopt a 6-year-old boy, I would have said no,” Mrs.
Carr said. “There are a lot of pieces of this that do concern me. He doesn’t
really know what family really means.”
But during their brief visit,
there was little time to mull over such worries. A manager from the Remar
Foundation, which runs the City of Children orphanage where Geovany lives,
brought him to the hotel lobby on Saturday morning. He hurtled into Mr. Carr’s
arms.
For four precious days,
Geovany was no longer a child without parents, a face in the crowd among the
nearly 300 children at the Remar orphanage. Instead, he was the center of
attention as he pored over the Carrs’ family photos and greeted their children
and parents in the United States using a video chatting program.
He stamped his feet in the
new sneakers they bought for him and played pirates with Mr. Carr, jousting
with brightly colored balloons, as they scrambled through their hotel room.
“Cha-cha!” Geovany shouted,
slashing his orange balloon sword through the air.
Geovany shrugged uncertainly
when asked whether he knew what the word adoption meant. But he spoke with
confidence when asked about the Carrs, saying that they were his mother and
father who lived in the United States with his brothers and sisters. He said he
had never flown on an airplane and would like to try it.
Then he practiced adding
their name to his own.
“Geovany Archilla Rodas
Carrrr,” he said, rolling the r’s on the surname he hopes to take someday soon.
The Carrs tried to treasure
the moments as the time flew by, counting down to the day when Geovany would
return to the orphanage and they would have to fly back to Reno.
They alternated story time
with Geovany with e-mails and phone calls to their lawyer, their interpreter
and government officials, as they tried to set up the appointments they prayed
would help them complete their adoption.
The Carrs no longer expect
miracles. They know it is possible that they may never take Geovany home. But
on this trip, they were determined to finally get what has long eluded them.
“Straight answers,” Mr. Carr
said.
At their home in Reno, the
uncertainty often feels unbearable.
Geovany is there, but not
there. He is an ephemeral presence, peering out of a black frame that hangs on
the wall alongside photos of all the Carr children. A group photo of the entire
family, with Geovany when he was just a baby, sits on a shelf in the living
room.
Their adopted daughter,
Samantha, conjures him up in her evening prayers. And he occasionally slips
into Mrs. Carr’s dreams or into her mind during the day when someone asks,
unknowingly, unwittingly, how many children she has.
Mrs. Carr’s children are no
longer surprised when they stumble across her weeping and wondering whether
Geovany is sick or scared or feeling abandoned. She cannot help thinking of all
the milestones she has missed: the day he spoke his first words, lost his first
tooth, took his first bus ride to school.
The caseworkers at their
adoption agency advised them several years ago to give up on the process. Even
Mr. Carr has wondered at times how long they should continue to wait. In
October, as they planned their trip here, Mr. Carr told his wife that he did
not think he could do it again.
“I don’t want to go down and
visit him and leave,” he recalled telling her before recommitting himself yet
again to Geovany. “I said, ‘I’m just ready to quit.’ ”
A Tangled Background
It was not the journey that
the Carrs envisioned when they first saw Geovany’s photograph. He was a baby
boy in a battered, wooden crib with a runny nose and a missing sock. It was
December 2007 and in the midst of completing the adoption of Samantha, the
Carrs were studying the pictures of hundreds of children who were available for
adoption, trying to decide whether to bring one last needy child home.
Mr. Carr stopped short when
he saw the dark-eyed baby with the bare foot. He could not explain the wave of
emotion that swept over him. But suddenly he was sure. “That boy needs a dad,”
he said, “and I’m his dad.”
So the Carrs accepted Geovany
on the spot, without worrying about the identity of his mother or how or why he
had been deserted by his biological family. Their adoption agency assured them
that the courts had issued a decree certifying that he had been abandoned, and
that was good enough.
“We were thinking about bunk
beds,” Mrs. Carr said. “We fully expected that he would be home before his
second birthday.”
But the case stalled. First,
they were told that there was a typo on their power of attorney form. Then in
November 2008, they learned that their case was being investigated, because the
woman who had given him up for adoption was not his birth mother.
Astonished, the Carrs turned
to the only tangible link they had to Geovany’s past, an eight-page abandonment
decree issued by the courts, which they had never read because it is in
Spanish. To their dismay, they learned that Geovany’s story was not
straightforward at all.
His surname in the records
was different from the one that the adoption agency had given them. He was
months older than they had been told. The court records said that he had been
given up for adoption by a woman who had described him as her son. The woman
agreed to take a DNA test to prove the relationship, but she vanished before
the results came back. The test results showed that the woman was not Geovany’s
mother.
Notices were placed in the
newspapers calling on the woman, her relatives or anyone who knew anything
about the child to come forward. No one responded.
Officials also checked with
the national police, who reported that no child of Geovany’s description had
been reported missing or kidnapped. Finally, Geovany was formally declared
eligible for adoption.
The Carrs were dumbfounded. Who
was this little boy? What was his real name? Who was his mother? Who was the
woman who had given him up? No one knew.
American officials, who have
reviewed all of the pending adoption cases, said that the Carrs’ case was
similar to many of the others stuck in the pipeline here, filled with
contradictory DNA test results, uncorroborated accounts, sloppy casework and
unresolved mysteries.
Maybe Geovany’s mother was an
unwed teenager, the Carrs thought, or a rape victim who had handed her child to
someone else. If she had really wanted him, would she not have searched for him
or visited him?
Those worries faded — only to
be replaced by new ones — as the years passed without the birth mother’s
re-emergence.
In the end, the couple found some comfort in the fact that Geovany’s biological
mother, whoever she is, never came looking for him.
“Sometimes you have questions
that you don’t have answers to,” Mrs. Carr said. “You just have to keep going.”
She reminded herself of that
in Guatemala after she and her husband and Geovany visited their lawyer. She
arrived feeling hopeful. She left in tears.
A judge had certified that
Geovany was eligible for adoption, but the decree was written up incorrectly,
the lawyer said. It was likely that the National Adoption Council would reject
it, and the Carrs would have to go back to court to have it reissued.
To make matters worse, there
had been some confusion about the length of their visit, and as a result they
would not be able to meet with anyone at the Adoption Council.
Geovany, who listened quietly
as the legal discussion swirled around him, was somber after the meeting, which
took place on a Monday afternoon. That evening, the Carrs told him that he
would be going back home the next day.
“To the United States?”
Geovany asked.
They shook their heads. To
the orphanage, they said.
Mrs. Carr took a sleeping
pill that night to ease the heartbreak. She reassured herself that Geovany
would be fine. He was accustomed now to their comings and goings and the
syncopated rhythms of their dislocated lives.
“It’s much easier for him
than it is for us,” she said.
But Geovany did not sleep
well in their hotel room that evening. On his last night before returning to
the orphanage, he tossed and turned restlessly in his rollaway bed. Twice, they
awoke to hear him crying.
How Many More Delays?
Nearly 300 children live in
the sprawling orphanage that sits behind a black metal gate in the impoverished
community of San Jose Villanueva. Ask Geovany and he will tell you that he was
born here, even though the administrators know that is not true. It is the only
home he has ever known.
Inside the compound, he
shares the top floor of a spare house that bears the name, “The Love of God,”
with other abandoned children.
Sofia Villanova, the house
mother, was waiting for Geovany to return from his visit with the Carrs. She
was bracing herself for the emotional turmoil she said she knew he would
experience once the Americans were gone.
“Every time that they leave,
he finds himself alone once again; he is sad, solitary, isolated,” Ms.
Villanova said. “We try to give him the most support, the most love that we
can. But it’s not the same as having parents. It takes time to reintegrate him
to the routines of the house.”
The orphanage’s
administrators say that none of Geovany’s blood relatives have come to visit
him in all the years he has lived at the institution. No one, they said, knows
who they are.
But on Tuesday, their last
full day in Guatemala, as they settled in for a meeting with officials at the
American Embassy who had reviewed their case file, the Carrs learned that the
Guatemalan authorities had finally unraveled the mystery of Geovany’s origins.
They
had located Geovany’s birth mother.
Their adoption, the American
officials told the couple, was delayed once again while Guatemalan caseworkers
tried to reach the woman, who lives in a remote area. They wanted to give her a
DNA test and to interview her to determine once and for all if she had
voluntarily given up Geovany when he was a baby.
The Carrs were stunned. Their
lawyer had not mentioned a word of this. It had been nearly four years since
anyone had brought up Geovany’s birth mother. Geovany, unable to understand the
conversation in English, sat quietly on Mr. Carr’s lap.
“My heart just sank,” Mr.
Carr said. “Another hurdle. How many hurdles are we going to have to go through
to get this kid home?”
Mrs. Carr thought fearfully
about the stories she had heard from other prospective adoptive parents, about
Guatemalan officials who forced birth families to accept their abandoned
children, a charge that Guatemalan officials have denied.
Then she thought of that
woman out there somewhere, Geovany’s mother.
“We love him,” Mrs. Carr said
finally. “We want him to be a part of our family. But if there was a birth
family out there who wanted to raise him, would that be better for him?”
Her shaky voice trailed off.
Geovany and the Carrs wept
quietly in the hotel lobby when it was finally time for him to go, and they
clung to each other on the bus ride back to the orphanage. But the little boy’s
face brightened when he stepped into his house and received a hero’s welcome.
“Geovany!” the other boys
shouted. “Geovany!”
Geovany proudly reintroduced
the Carrs as his Mamá and Papi and opened his brand new Ben 10 backpack to
share his goodies. He offered bites of cold pizza (saved from lunch) to his
closest friends, glowsticks to everyone, and displayed the drawing that the
Carrs’ daughter Samantha had made just for him.
“This is from my sister,” he
told them.
Then Mrs. Carr began blowing
up dozens of brightly colored balloons, twisting them into animal shapes and
swords, transforming the orphaned and abandoned boys into a motley crew of
rambunctious, swashbuckling pirates.
It was dark by the time the
Americans finally said goodbye to Geovany and clambered back onto the bus. As
they headed back to the hotel, they tried not to lose themselves in sorrow.
[para ver vídeo ir ao
endereço da notícia]
============================
Diario Las Americas,
17/10/12:
http://www.diariolasamericas.com/noticia/147412/31/panama-abre-las-puertas-a-extranjeros-sin-papeles
Panamá abre las puertas a
extranjeros sin papeles
Por JUAN ZAMORANO
PANAMA (AP)
Los dos primeros años de Julia Rodríguez en Panamá fueron duros. Había dejado
atrás su país, Colombia, y a su hijo. Tenía una situación inmigratoria
irregular y el negocio de venta de motocicletas donde trabajaba le pagaba 300
dólares por mes, muy por debajo del salario mínimo promedio, que en ese
entonces era de casi 400 dólares. “El fuerte vive del más débil”, comenta hoy
al recordar esa época.
La existencia de la mujer, no obstante, cambió radicalmente en julio del 2010,
cuando el gobierno del presidente Ricardo Martinelli permitió a los extranjeros
que llevaban al menos dos años viviendo en el país sin autorización legal sacar
permisos de residencia y de trabajo por dos años.
Rodríguez, oriunda de Cartagena, de 31 años, recibe desde entonces todos los
beneficios laborales, incluido el pago de horas extras y derecho a recibir
atención médica de la Caja de Seguro Social, entidad estatal.
La cartagenera renovó en junio pasado ese permiso migratorio por dos años más,
hasta mediados del 2014.
Rodríguez es una de miles de extranjeros, mayormente colombianos,
nicaragüenses, dominicanos y venezolanos, que han podido regularizar su estatus
migratorio con ese proceso, que el gobierno bautizó como la feria “Crisol de
Razas”. En la última feria, realizada a principios de octubre, a quienes
renovasen permisos se les dio una estadía de diez años.
Las autoridades migratorias panameñas argumentan que se trata de una
“necesidad” coyuntural: El auge económico que vive el país demanda mano de obra
para numerosos proyectos de construcción, áreas técnicas y ligados al turismo.
Al mismo tiempo, aseguran que el extranjero que se regularice puede contribuir
al pago de impuestos y de las cuotas por los servicios de la seguridad social.
El auge económico que vive Panamá los últimos seis años, ha motivado a que
miles de extranjeros lleguen y permanezcan en este país de servicios y
dolarizado, de 3,5 millones de habitantes, en busca de una buena paga.
“Panamá pasa por un período de gran crecimiento económico y gracias a su
estabilidad política y social se ha convertido en un lugar de destino para
muchos migrantes”, planteó a la AP Alberto Brenes, jefe de misión de la
Organización Internacional para las Migraciones en Panamá. “El país ha sido muy
exitoso en la atracción de inversión extranjera, lo cual aunado a los
mega-proyectos de infraestructura que se están construyendo produce una gran
demanda de mano de obra que no ha podido ser cubierta por la oferta local”.
La economía panameña ha sido una de las de mayor crecimiento en América Latina
desde el 2006, gracias a un descomunal auge en la industria de la construcción
ligado al sector inmobiliario, en el turismo y en el transporte de carga.
La Comisión Económica para América Latina (CEPAL) anunció a principios de
octubre que Panamá será nuevamente el país que mantendrá el mayor nivel de
crecimiento regional en 2012, de 9,5%, y para el año entrante figurará también
con 7% entre los de mayor actividad.
Megaproyectos como la ampliación del Canal de Panamá por 5.250 millones de
dólares, que arrancó en 2007, y la construcción de una línea del tren
metropolitano (Metro de Panamá) por 1.452 millones de dólares, que comenzó en
febrero del 2011, requieren una mano de obra de la que el país no dispone.
“Hay una demanda voraz por mano de obra, la cual es muy escasa en el país,
donde hay poco desempleo. El vacío lo han venido a llenar los migrantes”,
abundó Brenes.
El desempleo en Panamá pasó de 6,6% en 2009 a 4,6% en 2012 en una fuerza
económicamente activa de 1,6 millones de personas, según el Ministerio de
Trabajo.
“Se está requiriendo una gran cantidad de mano de obra que, de hecho, se
estaban llenando con extranjeros que se mantenían ilegales”, apuntó el director
del Servicio Nacional de Migración de Panamá, Javier Carrillo.
En las diez ferias realizadas hasta ahora, 30.437 migrantes lograron obtener el
permiso migratorio. De ellos 16.321 son colombianos, 6.708 nicaragüenses, 1.574
dominicanos, 1.562 venezolanos y el resto de otras nacionalidades, según el
jefe migratorio.
La más reciente jornada de regularización se realizó entre el 2 y 11 de octubre
en un gimnasio de esta capital. Las autoridades migratorias decidieron en esta
edición otorgar a aquellos que llegaron a tramitar la renovación del carnet una
extensión por diez años de permanencia en el país. A ese carnet lograron
acceder un total de 3.424 extranjeros.
Carrillo explicó que ello se hizo porque los trámites resultaban muy costosos.
Los costos varían dependiendo de los países de donde provienen los inmigrantes
y van desde los 1.267 dólares por los dos permisos hasta los 3.102 dólares.
“Como sabemos, la mayoría de los migrantes irregulares son personas de escasos
recursos para quienes no es sencillo pagar estas altas sumas de dinero y menos
por una solución temporal”, dijo Brenes.
Los oriundos de países a los que Panamá no les exige visa --Colombia, Venezuela
y los centroamericanos--, pagan 767 dólares por el permiso migratorio y 500 por
el laboral.
Los extranjeros de esos países ingresan generalmente con visa de turista por un
periodo de seis meses y luego deciden quedarse a trabajar o hacer algún negocio
informal, como vender comida en las calles, sin sus documentos en orden.
Los extranjeros de países que requieren visa para entrar a Panamá, como los
dominicanos, tienen que pagar algo más por el permiso migratorio (1.272
dólares) e igual cantidad por el laboral (500), mientras que los migrantes de
países con los que Panamá tiene visado restringido, como los cubanos,
haitianos, chinos, indios y africanos, deben destinar 2.602 y 500 dólares,
respectivamente.
El visado restringido exige mayores trámites a los inmigrantes y las fuerzas de
seguridad deben autorizar el ingreso de esas personas.
Los costos son probablemente una de las razones por la que más gente no se
acoge a esta posibilidad de regularizar su situación.
Carrillo dijo que no podía precisar la cifra de los extranjeros que permanecen
sin documentos en el país, en tanto que varias ONGs consultadas por la AP
tampoco manejaban estadísticas al respecto.
Pero Myrna López, la directora de La Fundación Casa Latinoamericana (CASALAT),
estima que su organismo no gubernamental asesora a 10.000 extranjeros cada año
y dice que del 2002 a
la fecha ha orientado aproximadamente a unos 100.000.
Cuando los inmigrantes regularizan su situación, señaló Carrillo, se los obliga
a “contribuir con el pago de impuestos y la seguridad social y se evita que
sean víctimas de explotación, tráfico y trata de personas. Además pueden exigir
sus derechos laborales”.
“El otro (motivo para regularizar el status de los extranjeros) es la
seguridad, saber quiénes están conviviendo con nosotros en el país”, agregó.
“En estos procesos se le toman las huellas dactilares y entran a la base de
datos plenamente identificadas”.
El gobierno exige que los migrantes con menos de dos años de estadía en Panamá
presenten un historial policial de su respectivo país, y en el caso de que
tengan dos años o más en Panamá antecedentes expedidos por las autoridades
panameñas.
Pero López afirma que eso no garantiza nada pues un extranjero que haya
cometido un delito en su país puede viajar a Panamá, “permanecer tranquilo y
portarse bien los dos años y sacar su historial” aquí sin problemas.
La dirigente de COSALAT no ve con buenos ojos esta política de regularización
del status de extranjeros sin papeles.
“Después de haber tenido una ley migratoria en su conjunto muy estricta, en los
últimos tiempos hemos abierto las compuertas”, planteó López a la Associated
Press.
“No sabemos en diez años más, viendo la situación económica internacional, qué
va pasar con Panamá”, agregó. “Tampoco podemos darle documentación a tantas
personas que podrían ser una carga para el Estado panameño”.
Algunos temen que colapse el sistema de atención médica en la Caja de Seguro
Social, criticada desde hace mucho tiempo por sus carencias en medicamentos y
demora en la atención, y advierten que una avalancha de extranjeros podría
afectar las condiciones laborales de los nacionales, incluyendo el salario.
“Se está fomentando que se pueble Panamá, con personas foráneas que no tienen
los recursos para poder subsistir”, planteó a la AP Ernesto Cedeño,
especialista en derecho Administrativo, Constitucional, Procesal, Comercial y
Civil en Panamá.
Agregó que se corre el peligro de que “esta aventura migratoria” haga “que
colapse el sistema de salud, por la atención a los menesterosos foráneos”.
“Significa también que los nacionales tendrán problemas para conseguir
trabajos” y “que se vayan practicando nuevas figuras delictivas”, como el
“secuestro exprés” y ejecuciones, delitos más comunes en otras naciones,
manifestó Cedeño.
Crisol de Razas, por otro lado, irrita a extranjeros que buscan regularizar su
situación por conductos ordinarios.
La colombiana Miriam García se quejó que tuvo que luchar tres años y medio para
conseguir la cédula de identidad aquí después de haberse casado con un
panameño.
“Está bien que se regularicen, pero no que le den diez años (de permanencia
provisional a los que renueven)”, lamentó la oriunda de Barranquilla, de 40
años.
“Si es así, no me hubiese casado y hubiese vivido sólo con mi pareja sin tener
que tramitar y pagar tanto dinero, pasar por la entrevista matrimonial, que
muchas veces es humillante y vejatoria”, agregó a la AP.
Un extranjero que se casa con un nacional también tiene que renovar anualmente
y por diez años el permiso de trabajo, destacó López. Y si enviuda y no tiene
hijos, pierde el derecho.
La medida, empero, le resuelve la vida a miles. El nicaragüense Aníbal Hurtado,
de 32 años, acudió por primera vez a arreglar sus documentos el 2 de octubre
pasado, después de haber estado trabajando inicialmente como obrero en
proyectos de construcción y luego como barman por dos años al margen de la ley.
Aseguró que dejó a su mujer y dos hijos en el municipio de Bluefields, en el
atlántico sur de Nicaragua, de donde es oriundo y trabajaba ocasionalmente como
albañil. Jugaba también al béisbol.
“En Nicaragua no hay nada que hacer, la cosa está dura”, dijo a la AP. “Vine a
Panamá a buscar un futuro mejor. Aquí hay dinero”.
Juan Zamorano está en Twitter en http://twitter.com/Juan_Zamorano
[colombiamigra]
==========================
O Estado de São Paulo,
12/01/13:
http://www.estadao.com.br/noticias/impresso,haiti-tem-347-mil-refugiados-apos-tremor-que-matou-200-mil-pessoas,983311,0.htm
Haiti tem 347 mil refugiados
após tremor que matou 200 mil pessoas
Segundo o presidente Michel
Martelly, três anos depois de terremoto de desabrigou 1,5 milhão de haitianos,
1/3 da ajuda em dinheiro chegou ao governo
Guilherme Russo, enviado
especial/Porto Príncipe - O Estado de S. Paulo
Três anos depois do terremoto
que devastou a capital haitiana, Porto Príncipe, matou 220 mil pessoas e
desabrigou 1,5 milhão, cerca de 347 mil haitianos ainda vivem em moradias
provisórias. A reconstrução do país, financiada principalmente por acordos
bilaterais, é considerada lenta por representantes da ONU, diplomatas,
analistas políticos, pela população e pelo próprio presidente, Michel Martelly.
"Muitas nações mandam dinheiro para o Haiti - e o Haiti parece cada vez
pior. Isso significa que algo não está funcionando. Não há resultados, não
somos cegos", disse Martelly em entrevista coletiva concedida ontem em
Porto Príncipe.
"Esse sistema é utilizado há anos e os objetivos têm sido fracassos atrás
de fracassos. Parem de mandar dinheiro! Vamos consertar isso. Não queremos
caridade, queremos investimentos", afirmou. Segundo o presidente,
"apenas" um terço do dinheiro destinado à reconstrução, de acordo com
o líder, cerca de US$ 2 bilhões, acabou nos cofres públicos haitianos. "A
grande maioria foi para as ONGs". Martelly evitou opinar se a situação
estaria melhor se o dinheiro gasto no Haiti após o terremoto tivesse sido
entregue diretamente a seu governo.
Em Porto Príncipe e seus arredores, aproximadamente 500 campos abrigam os
refugiados que perderam suas casas e não têm para onde ir. Em Jean-Marie
Vincent, onde vivem 54 mil haitianos que perderam suas casas no terremoto de 12
de janeiro 2010, a
grande maioria dos abrigos ainda é composta por barracas de lona.
Grávida de 6 meses e mãe de duas crianças, de 5 e de 3 anos, Yolande Antoine,
de 24 anos, afirmou que o principal problema do acampamento é a criminalidade.
"Antes, eu era comerciante, vendia bacias, bolachas, balas. Mas roubaram
minhas mercadorias há 7 meses e não consegui mais me recuperar. Não tenho uma
vida boa. Aqui não tem segurança, não tem comida, não tem banheiro",
disse. De acordo com ela, a violência sexual atinge muitas mulheres no local.
O desempregado Pablo Estefil, de 19 anos, que limpa carros com uma flanela nas
ruas de Porto Príncipe, reclama das condições de vida nos campos de refugiados.
"Moramos em barracas. A vida é muito ruim aqui. Quando não faz calor
demais, é porque chove dentro (dos abrigos). Gente de fora e de dentro vem
roubar aqui", afirmou em português o haitiano, que ainda se comunica em
espanhol, inglês, árabe e creole. Estefil não fala francês porque não
frequentou os colégios do país, nos quais a língua da ex-metrópole é ensinada.
Reconstrução. Segundo as Nações Unidas, 80% dos escombros que tomaram conta da
capital em razão do sismo já foram removidos, mas edifícios parcialmente ou
totalmente destruídos continuam compondo o cenário do centro da cidade.
Ainda de acordo com a ONU, US$ 6,43 bilhões de doadores internacionais já foram
investidos na reconstrução do Haiti. A entidade estima que, até 2020, US$ 13,34
bilhões sejam arrecadados e aplicados em ajuda humanitária e em reformas de
infraestrutura.
No Bulevar Jean-Jacques Dessalines, avenida que concentra o comércio informal
na região central da capital haitiana, a destruição é evidente. "Nada
mudou aqui depois do terremoto. Tudo continua igual. Para mim, não chegou
nenhuma ajuda", afirmou o ambulante Guilouse Richard, de 30 anos, que após
o sismo passou a buscar a vida no centro de Porto Príncipe
Segundo o chileno Mariano Fernández, chefe da Missão de Estabilização das
Nações Unidas no Haiti (Minustah), a morte de um terço dos funcionários
públicos haitianos e dos os principais integrantes da cúpula das Nações Unidas
no terremoto causou um retrocesso na instauração do estado de direito no país.
De saída do cargo, Fernández relaciona a lentidão na estabilização à retirada
de boa parte da ajuda emergencial que inúmeras organizações não governamentais
ofereceram após o sismo. Ele atribui o fato à crise econômica, principalmente
na Europa. "As nações de onde vinha o sustento dessas entidades
suspenderam o financiamento. O Haiti deixou de ser o país das ONGs para ser o
país dos desempregados", disse o chileno. Dos 4,2 milhões de haitianos
considerados ativos enquanto força de trabalho, apenas 200 mil têm emprego
formal atualmente. Para o embaixador brasileiro no Haiti, José Luiz Machado e
Costa,
as ONGs não são a principal fonte de financiamento para a reconstrução do país.
"Não se sabe quantas entidades estão por aqui", disse.
--
[mensagem organizada por Helion Póvoa Neto]
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