Migrations From the Viewpoint of the Receiving Country / Miriam Celaya

Migrants protest on the Mexico-US border (AFP)

Miriam Celaya, Cubanet, West Palm Beach, 1 June 2018 – The moving images of dozens of Central American children held in federal facilities in the United States, after being forcibly separated from their parents when they were detained as illegal immigrants by the National Guard after crossing the Mexican-American border, have been overwhelming media and social networks these days, stirring emotions and promoting bitter debates.

According to what the US government has acknowledged, from mid-April until the end of May, around 2,000 minors have suffered family division in this way, a trauma that adds to the hardships experienced in their countries of origin and the dangers and shocks typical of the journey through Central America and Mexico in pursuit of the tempting American dream.

The zero-tolerance policy for illegal immigration, applied to the letter by the current resident of the White House, is causing a flood of opinions that tend to be located in two diametrically opposed poles: at one extreme, those who support the high-profile leader in this and all positions, in an absolute and uncritical way; and in the opposite extreme, those that are ready to launch an attack against any initiative of the current administration.  There are no gradations in any of these two sides, neither in the Trump supporters nor in the Trump critics. Their common denominator is the field of emotions.

And in the midst of government politics, debates and emotions, are the plight of migrant families and the tensions that irregular migration creates within the receiving countries; a phenomenon that has become a crisis and is affecting internal policies in the main developed hubs of the western world: Europe and the United States.

There is no doubt about the solidarity aroused by the helplessness of migrants. But, what if we momentarily situate ourselves on the other side of the spectrum, that is, the receiving part of all that migratory avalanche? Who will assume the social costs of uncontrollable and massive entry into their territory? And, looking at the details, who is directly responsible for the fate of those minors held at the US border?

Demonization of migrants in the Trump era?

It is known that the problem of illegal immigrants – (“irregulars”), to avoid hurting susceptibilities – that penetrate the porous US borders is a long-standing issue of such complexity that it exceeds the simple political confrontation between presidents of one party or another, or the political interests of either Democrats or Republicans.

In fact, the fundamental cause of migration from Latin America to the US lies in the economic, political and social crises of the countries of departures, and not – or at least not directly – in the “pro-immigrant” or “anti-immigrant” actions of successive US administrations. And this is precisely why the solution of the evil begins with the respective countries of origin of the migrants, regardless of the migratory policies of the White House.

In any case, no nation, however developed and rich it may be, and no matter how much or how little territory it encompasses, can allow the unstoppable entry of irregular immigrants that has been going on at the US borders, subjected to a virtual hounding.

On the other hand, while a powerful and rich nation such as the United States is capable of absorbing a huge number of immigrants from all over the world, it is no less true that the much-needed “right to emigrate” ends where the sovereign right of each country becomes vulnerable to accept or reject the entry of a flood of immigrants whose cultures and customs are dissimilar to theirs. And this is the reverse logic that reluctant governments employ to refuse the entry of an infinite flow of immigrants.

To the rhythm of wars, gang wars, economic and political crises, epidemics, famines and all the infinite litany of calamities that loom over poor nations – previously called “third world” and now, euphemistically, “underdeveloped or developing countries” – hundreds of thousands of human beings face the dangers of exodus each year and illegally cross or pile up at the borders of countries that are almost always called “interfering enemies” when they intervene in the internal policies of “motherlands” of the migrants, though many of the migrants consider themselves political refugees and place the responsibility for their national misfortunes on Europe and the US, without taking into consideration the burden they create on the economies of those countries they wish to enter.

Another point is the irresponsibility that’s involved in enlisting minor children in an adventure as dangerous as it is uncertain, practically using them as currency or emotional blackmail in order to achieve the regularization of their immigration status. This is what is happening on the US border. Curiously, no media scandal or waves of protests over the situation of these children took place in any of the intermediate borders or nations. Neither did the army of quasi-indigent families of migrants seem to have queued to request asylum before the embassies of proletarian paradises such as Cuba, Venezuela or Bolivia, countries that presume to be societies where equality and social justice prevail. No. They march straight towards the abominable empire of xenophobia, discrimination, racism and social exclusion… The dispossessed of our Latin American nations are such masochists!

For the record, I am absolutely in no way a supporter or a sympathizer of Trump or of his policies, but rather the opposite. Only that the extreme polarization of the migratory crisis in the US borders that is simplified as an image of the (always) good migrant and the (always) bad government is too schematic, plots against the complexities that characterize the reality of the current world and does not allow for a reasonable solution to the problem of the millions of migrants who are forced to seek, far from their home nations, the opportunities for the life and prosperity they aspire to as an elementary right.

True, Trump does not verbalize or carry it out in the best way, but it is indisputable that the United States as a nation – and not just Obama, Trump, or the next president – has the right to regulate the entry of migrants into his territory, beyond the national tragedies of our respective countries, be they an emporium of dictatorships or cardboard democracies.

Translated by Norma Whiting