CMSC Newsletter 13, Vol. 3, July 3, 2014

CMSC
California-Mexico Studies Center
“El Magonista”
Vol.3 No.13
July 3, 2014

 

The California-Mexico Studies Center
Armando Vazquez-Ramos President & CEO
1551 N. Studebaker Road, Long Beach, CA 90815
Phone: (562) 430-5541 Cell: (562) 972-0986
 
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ACTIVIST GROUPS REBUKE OBAMA ON ADMINISTRATION’S ‘BORDER SOLUTION’

Hispanic Link (Column No. 5549) July 3, 2014

 

http://hispaniclinkdc.org/2014/07/03/activist-groups-rebuke-obama-on-administrations-response-to-50000-central-american-children-pressing-against-u-s-border/

WASHINGTON, D.C., July 3 — The influential National Coordinating Committee for Fair and Humane Immigration Reform 2014, a coalition of more than 50 organizations, is sending the following rebuke to President Barack Obama for his administration’s handling of the surge of women and unaccompanied minors along our nation’s borders.

Among key signatories are Protect Our Families and Save the Children Campaign; Hermandad Mexicana; Mexican American Political Association; the California-Mexico Studies Center; Southern California Immigration Coalition; Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, Sacramento; Alliance for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, Chicago; United Front for Immigrants, Chicago; El Comite de Washington, WA and the Willie C. Velázquez Institute.

OPEN LETTER TO THE CONGRESSIONAL HISPANIC CAUCUS

Honorable Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus:

We write you with grave concerns regarding the refugee crisis of unaccompanied minors besetting our southern border with Mexico and the public posture and proposed actions articulated by President Barack Obama for his administration and the country.

Prior to enumerating these concerns, however, we wish to express our full support of the CHC’s April memorandum addressed to President Obama in relation to the types of executive action immigration relief urgently needed by our communities. In many ways this is central to our concerns.

While we believe that appropriate immediate attention must be paid to the current crisis—most particularly the human factor, this in no way should be an occasion or pretext not to address the pending matter before the nation: fair and humane immigration reform. Short of that, executive action in the form of broad and generous relief would be in order.

While President Obama held out in a taunting manner the prospect of executive action by the end of summer if House Republicans don’t find their way towards immigration legislative reform, we are not convinced of his sincerity for the following reasons.

1. President Obama’s request for $2 billion for additional border enforcement by moving more interior enforcement elements to the southern border to demonstrate his willingness to secure the perceived border sieve does not address the underlying causes of the humanitarian crisis. Further militarization of the border will not stop children in search of safe refuge from the violence that assails them in their countries of origin. Expedited deportation of the children, as proposed by the president, flatly contradicts existing statutory and constitutional protections in place to safeguard the well-being of the unaccompanied minors.

2. President Obama has made clear his intention to seek to undermine and undercut the statutory due process rights, protections and procedures codified into law by President George W. Bush’s signature of the 2008 bipartisan legislation to address the growing challenge of unaccompanied minors arriving on U.S. territory. You are certainly aware that once a person touches U.S. soil s/he is immediately accorded both constitutional and statutory protections no different than any other U.S. citizen. In this particular case, there is special consideration accorded to children due to the tenuousness of their situation. The 2008 statute clearly delineates the procedure whereby these children refugees are to be treated and protected by the Office of Refugee Resettlement under the Department of Health and Human Services. More importantly, they are to be availed the opportunity to have legal counsel of their choosing and a hearing before a federal immigration court to address appropriately their legal status.

3. We are very concerned that the CHC has not vigorously opposed any effort to undermine existing constitutional and statutory protections as referenced above. Any effort to ignore or undermine these protections, either legislatively or through executive action, will have ominous consequences and implications for the rights of all U.S. citizens and permanent residents.

4. The current humanitarian crisis of the explosive number of unaccompanied minors on the U.S. southern border is no mere accident. Over the past two years the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has tracked the incremental increase of minors attempting to cross the border, more than two-thirds of them from Central American countries and the remaining one-third from Mexico.

For example, DHS was aware that more than 25,000 minors arrived unaccompanied at the U.S. border seeking entry in 2013. Aside from doing nothing to address the underlying causes of this refugee exodus — failing states and collapsing economies in a region where the United States has historically meddled economically and militarily — it is a crisis that could easily have been anticipated and prepared for and not presented by the corporate media and the administration to the public as a sudden unexpected occurrence. And, yet, without seeming insensitive to the plight of tens of thousands of children and youngsters, this situation is symptomatic of a deeper systematic catastrophe.

5. Record deportations, now exceeding 2 million, have resulted in devastating and near unprecedented separation of families; 25 percent of the deported are reported to have U.S.-born children; and an estimated 500,000 U.S.-citizen minors find themselves in Mexico as undocumented Americans obliged to accompany their deported undocumented Mexican parents. In effect, these children find themselves exiled from their birthright to a land foreign to them. The number of similarly exiled youngsters to Central American countries are unavailable, but undoubtedly also large. Additionally, 36,000 privatized jail beds are permanently filled by the migrant adult wards of the state because they are arbitrarily budgeted to be so by Congress with the complicity of the president.

6. The mutual acrimonious rhetoric and foot-dragging between the Democrats and Republicans related to “comprehensive immigration reform” has come to naught as the country moves closer to November’s midterm elections. Even the proposed legislation passed by the Senate last year, numbered S.744, is primarily enforcement laden and defers preferentially to the cheap labor demands of industry and agriculture. The brokered provisional legal status offered to the 11 million undocumented looks nothing like the generous amnesty signed into law by Republican President Ronald Reagan in 1986. Reputable legal experts estimate that fewer than 60 percent of the potential applicants would qualify for the tenuous status. Minimum wage earning female heads of household with children, for example, would not qualify and therefore be held deportable.

7. For all the reasons enumerated above, we appeal to you to oppose the enforcement measures proposed by President Obama, most especially his penchant toward expedited removals of the minors by undoing constitutional and statutory protections. The current crisis along the border is truly humanitarian and of a refugee character. Therefore, it is imperative that this administration recognize the minors as refugees as defined in U.S. legal statutes and United Nation declarations and conventions related to the treatment of refugees of which the U.S. is a signatory.

This, we expect nothing less from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus as the representative body that aspires to represent the legitimate interests of all U.S. Latinos irrespective of their legal status or whether they just arrived and touched U.S. soil seeking safe haven and refuge.

We stand ready to work with the Caucus to assure that the most basic constitutional and statutory protections accorded all persons in the United States are not weakened or ignored.

Respectfully,

National Coordinating Committee for Fair and Humane Immigration Reform 2014

Protect Our Families and Save the Children Campaign

Hermandad Mexicana

Mexican American Political Association

California-Mexico Studies Center

Southern California Immigration Coalition

Labor Council for Latin American Advancement- Sacramento, California

Alliance for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, Chicago, Ill.

United Front for Immigrants, Chicago, Ill.

El Comite de Washington, Seattle, WA

Willie C. Velazquez Institute

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Obama’s Chickens Coming Home to Roost

By: Nativo Vigil Lopez© nativolopez@gmail.com

July 1, 2014 – Los Angeles, California

James Russell Lowell wrote in 1870, “All our mistakes sooner or later surely come home to roost.” The older fuller form was curses are like chickens; they always come home to roost, meaning that your offensive words or actions are likely at some point to rebound on you. And, the offensive actions of President Barack Obama over the past six years in terms of mass deportations, prolonged incarcerations, streamlined removals, and border and interior immigration enforcement, have certainly come back to haunt him, his administration, and the U.S. Congress.

The current humanitarian crisis of the explosive number of unaccompanied minors on the U.S. southern border, at last count 52,000, but increasing daily, is no mere accident. Over the past two years the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has tracked the incremental increase of minors attempting to cross the border, over two-thirds from Central American countries and the remaining one-third from Mexico.

For example, DHS was aware that more than 25,000 minors arrived unaccompanied at the U.S. border seeking entry in 2013.

Aside from doing nothing to address the underlying causes of this refugee exodus – failing states and collapsing economies in a region where the U.S. has historically meddled economically and militarily – it is a crisis that could easily have been anticipated and prepared for and not presented by the corporate media and the administration to the public as a sudden unexpected occurrence.

And, yet, without seeming insensitive to the plight of tens of thousands of children and youngsters, this situation is symptomatic of a deeper systematic catastrophe.

Record deportations, now exceeding 2 million, have resulted in devastating and near unprecedented separation of families; twenty-five percent of the deported are reported to have U.S.-born children; and an estimated 500,000 U.S. citizen minors find themselves in Mexico as undocumented Americans obliged to accompany their deported undocumented Mexican parents.

In effect, these children find themselves exiled from their birthright to a land foreign to them.

The number of similarly exiled youngsters to Central American countries are unavailable, but undoubtedly also large. Additionally, 36,000 privatized jail beds are permanently filled by the migrant adult wards of the state because they are arbitrarily budgeted to be so by Congress with the complicity of the president.

The mutual acrimonious rhetoric and foot-dragging between the Democrats and Republicans related to “comprehensive immigration reform” has come to naught, as the country moves closer to November’s mid-term elections.

Even the proposed legislation passed by the Senate last year, numbered S.744, is primarily enforcement laden and defers preferentially to the cheap labor demands of industry and agriculture.

The brokered provisional legal status offered to the 11 million undocumented looks nothing like the generous amnesty signed into law by Republican President Ronald Reagan in 1986. Reputable legal experts estimate that less than 60 percent of the potential applicants would qualify for the tenuous status. Minimum wage earning female heads of household with children, for example, would not qualify and therefore be held deportable.

In effect, America’s immigration system is in structural and social crisis as policy-makers and legislators seek to transition away from family reunification in deference to a labor skills- based point system to legally immigrate to the U.S. Under such an immigration regime most Mexicans and Central Americans would not pass muster, although they make up the bulk of today’s undocumented population.

But, back to the unaccompanied minors – President Obama’s press conference this past Monday sought to allay fears about his capacity to deal with the challenge, demonstrate his commitment to secure the border, declare another ultimatum to Republican House members to pass immigration reform by the end of summer, and threaten use of executive action to address the system’s inadequacies in absence of legislation. He will request $2 billion from Congress immediately upon their return from the Fourth of July break to further militarize the border.

Perhaps most important is what Obama did not share with the public. He feigned to his political left with yet another promise for executive action in a placating maneuver and once again delayed the moment to walk the walk. But, he steadfastly moved to the political right with his proposed emergency allocation to secure the border and his intention to seek expedited removal of the children refugees to their countries of origin, notwithstanding the 2008 bipartisan legislation approved under his predecessor, George W., to codify due process protections of unaccompanied minors – except for Mexicans and Canadians.

Obama, the much heralded constitutional law professor and first black president of the U.S., will first have to attack the due process rights of children refugees and undo current legal protections and procedures put into place to safeguard their well-being, even if only temporarily, in order to expedite their deportation. This is the equivalent of Mexicanizing the Central American minors in that Mexican minors, being from a contiguous country, do not enjoy the same protections under the 2008 statute.

The public little acknowledges that the U.S. Constitution, especially all of the inherent protections against government abuse and overreach, applies equally to the unaccompanied minors immediately upon setting foot on American soil, as it does to the most red-bloodied American amongst us.

Shamefully, Congressman Henry Cuellar of Texas (28th District) and Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, both Democrats, are working feverishly behind the scenes to clear the legislative path for President Obama to meet the humanitarian crisis with more stick and not much carrot. Removal of the Bush-era due process rights and protections is the task they have accepted.

However, undermining the rights of these minors has ominous implications for the rights of all U.S. citizens. It is a fatal and futile attempt to plug the proverbial dam with a finger, which will only lead to greater crises. Yes, curses are like chickens; they always come home to roost.

#####

Copyright © 2014 – Nativo Vigil Lopez, Advisor to Hermandad Mexicana founded in 1951.

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Like those children, I too fled Central America

By Pablo Alvarado, CNN.com, Thu July 3, 2014

http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/03/opinion/alvarado-immigration-children/index.html?hpt=ju_mid

(CNN) — A few days after my little brother received death threats, he and I jumped on top of la Bestia — the Beast — the train heading north, to escape El Salvador. The country that financed the armed forces seeking to kill our friends and family would be our destination for safety. And like the millions of people forced into migration, I was compelled to leave my home for the uncertainty and waiting unwelcome of the United States.

I left on my last day of college before graduation and dedicated myself to guaranteeing the safety of my brother, still a teen not much older than the unaccompanied minors currently arriving en masse at the U.S.-Mexico border. Although I cannot pretend to know their situation, I can see the faces of those we traveled with in the photos of those children crowded into detention centers.

Right-wing conservatives have fully seized upon this latest turn in the immigration debate to harp upon border security and scoff at troops unable to stop little children. President Barack Obama, who seems to have made it his mission to appease them in his first six years, would now do better to ignore them completely than to continue to step on the gas of his deportation apparatus.

In a debate that has centered on criminalizing migrants and the act of migration, the faces of children, huddled and scared, hoping and vulnerable, defy vilification. Instead, they demonstrate what the President has declared but not yet acted on: Immigration is a humanitarian crisis. It is not to be met with soldiers, jails and handcuffs but with relief and aid.

Intractable nativists, unable when confronted by these children to demonize people crossing the border, will turn to their equally favorite target — demonizing the administration.

One of the mouthpieces of anti-immigrant initiatives in the House, Rep. Bob Goodlatte of Virginia, insists on repeating the rumor that it was actually the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and the misunderstanding of the prospect of immigration reform that caused the youths’ arrival. He would want us to believe that this Congress has made legalization look so promising that children who would have otherwise stayed put are making the journey across a continent to be one of its rumored beneficiaries.

But like any magnet theory, it misses the primary factor of displacement. The push is stronger than any pull. The White House initially tried to dispel the bluster from the right. But the debate has reverted to the most common pattern in immigration policy: hyperbolic denunciations from the right, appeasement from the administration and near silence from the rest of the Beltway.

To have a real conversation about children at the border requires understanding the humanitarian crisis, but it also requires addressing the dynamic among the United States and its neighbors.

We must examine the reason people are being pushed to the north. Exactly what is happening in their home countries? And what hand does the United States play in creating those problems?

My brother and I did not leave our parents behind, only to be assaulted on a monthlong journey north and witness the worst, including people dying, because we simply wanted to. We did not leave the work we had and the life we had started to build because we would be happier looking for jobs on the street and paying what we could to sleep in a living room.

We came because it was our opportunity to survive, because counterinsurgency forces, known now to have been financed by the Reagan administration, fought a dirty war in El Salvador. It claimed the lives of 70,000 people and displaced 1 million more.

I hope the plight of the children who have taken center stage in the immigration debate can shatter the myth that we can continue the conversation without considering our neighbors.

The children have shown that proposals and issues of the debate have been inadequate. When I return to El Salvador, as a citizen of the United States, and I interview those who were deported for a soon-to-be-released study, the most common refrain people share is “What choice do I have but to go north?”

The walls erected and the troops deployed and even the legislation that has been introduced do not answer that question and do not address people who desire to survive, harbor the hope for something better and see the possibility of neither.

###

Editor’s note: Pablo Alvarado is the executive director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the writer.

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Estados Unidos y México, Estados terroristas: Juntos hostigan y aniquilan a migrantes

En ocasión de los nueve Arieles que recibió el pasado martes La Jaula de oro, entre ellos, por mejor película, actor, coactuación masculina, guión y fotografía, les envío este correo esperando sea de su interés.

Por Primitivo Rodriguez ~ 30 de mayo, 2014

Las políticas y leyes migratorias de los gobiernos de México y de Estados Unidos alientan xenofobia y racismo, y a la vez causan directa e indirectamente abuso, explotación, desmembramiento familiar, extorsión, secuestro, violación, trata, desaparición, asesinato y muerte sin precedente de migrantes indocumentadas/os.Debido al “cierre” de su frontera con México, el cual comenzó en 1993, así como a la guerra sin cuartel que inició contra el terrorismo y la migración indocumentada después de los actos terroristas de 2001, guerra que en 2008 extendió a México a través de la Iniciativa Mérida, Estados Unidos se erigió como el principal responsable de las atroces violaciones a los derechos humanos, laborales y civiles, incluido el derecho a la vida, que padecen migrantes indocumentados en ambos lados de la frontera.

Por su parte, México se ha esmerado en hacerle el trabajo sucio a Washington en el terreno migratorio ejerciendo comedidamente su papel de enganchador, guarura, carcelero y sicario del Tío Sam.

Desde hace veinte años por lo menos, los territorios de la frontera sur norteamericana y el de México representan en el mundo el espacio donde más sufren, desaparecen, mueren y son asesinados migrantes sin documentos.

En consecuencia, tomando en consideración:• el poco o nulo respeto que Estados Unidos y México exhiben por leyes constitucionales que resguardan derechos básicos de toda persona, así como por documentos internacionales que han suscrito, por ejemplo, los concernientes al respeto a la vida y protección de la dignidad de niñas/os, mujeres y minorías raciales;

• el impulso que las restrictivas y contraproducentes políticas y leyes migratorias de ambos países han dado a grupos de la delincuencia organizada para lucrar con el tráfico de migrantes y la trata con fines de explotación sexual y laboral de niñas/os y mujeres;

• la masiva violación a derechos y la impunidad que propician tales políticas y leyes, dando como resultado el aumento sin precedente de la extorción, secuestro, desaparición, muerte y asesinato de migrantes,

Estados Unidos y México deben ser condenados por la ONU y la OEA, y ser declarados Estados terroristas.

Las mujeres y hombres que emigran al Norte sin documentos, ya sea solos o con familia, responden fundamental e históricamente a la demanda estadounidense de trabajadoras/es internacionales. Demanda que no ha querido satisfacer el gobierno norteamericano por medios legales y en conformidad con los derechos que corresponden a las trabajadoras/es de México y otros países de origen.

Estados Unidos se ha vuelto un adicto al suculento negocio de la migración indocumentada, en tanto que los gobernantes mexicanos disfrutan el alivio social y político que les ofrece la migración al extranjero, y felices dan la bienvenida al ingreso de millonarias remesas.

Sin embargo, pese a las infiernos que encaran, las/os migrantes continúan abriendo camino a un mejor futuro para todas y todos. Hoy como ayer, las mejores defensoras y defensores de migrantes son ellas y ellos mismos.

 

¡Migrantes somos y en el camino andamos!

Primitivo Rodríguez Oceguera

P.D. Para entender mejor la ingente desgracia migratoria que tiene lugar en México, me parece útil repasar brevemente la “nueva” –desastrosa- ley de migración y el papel que jugó su principal impulsor civil: el Movimiento Migrante Mesoamericano que dirigen José Jacques Medina, Marta Sánchez y Rubén Figueroa.

The California-Mexico Studies Center, Inc.1551 N. Studebaker Rd.

Long Beach, CA 90815

 

 

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