In violation of child protection and immigration regulations, French police are expelling dozens of unaccompanied migrant children to Italy every month, Human Rights Watch denounced on May 5.
Continue reading “ARGOS condemns expulsion of migrant children in France and urges a halt to this illegal practice”News
Geneva, April 30, 2021 (ARGOS).- The analysis of the book “Asylum for sale: Profit and Protest in the Migration Industry” served as a generator of debate so that this Thursday its editors Siobhán McGuirk and Adrienne Pine, together with Honduran journalist Bartolo Fuentes and Argentinean cultural manager, Florencia Mazzadi, unmask the perverse mechanisms and the emerging industry that enriches itself from the growing global need for human mobility.
Continue reading “ARGOS unveils perverse mechanism of profit and discrimination behind the migration industry”
Geneva, April 22, 2021 (ARGOS) – On the basis of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which establishes as an obligation of the States that have signed it the respect and guarantee of the right to personal freedom and integrity, the International Observatory on Migration and Human Rights ARGOS urges the implementation of protection measures for the child migrant population at the southern border of the United States.
In the last quarter, according to The New York Times, the number of unaccompanied migrant children detained along the southern border has multiplied, filling federal detention centers, similar to prisons, where they are exposed to disease, hunger and overcrowding.
“We consider the arbitrary detentions and inhumane treatment of Central American migrant children at the southern border of the United States this year to be a serious and urgent matter,” said Maria Hernandez, director of ARGOS.
The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden reopened last February a detention center for child migrants who arrive at the border with Mexico unaccompanied by a family member.
The U.S. Border Patrol keeps in its custody hundreds of children who crossed the border crossing alone; many of those in a detention center under the control of Customs and Border Protection say they have barely seen “heaven”.
The director of ARGOS explains that this situation violates the right to personal freedom and integrity of migrant children, and therefore urges the cessation of any action or omission by officials that entails discriminatory and xenophobic practices and, in particular, those that imply the rejection of unaccompanied child migrants, due to their origin or nationality.
The number of migrant children in Mexico rises in 2021
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reported this March 20 an exponential increase in the number of child migration in Mexico since the beginning of 2021, from 380 to almost 3,500 in one quarter.
“These children arrive after dangerous journeys of up to two months, alone, exhausted and afraid. At every step they run the risk of becoming victims of violence and exploitation, recruitment by gangs and trafficking, which has tripled in the last 15 years,” denounced UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore, during a briefing on the humanitarian situation in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.
Mexico, according to the UN, has become a country of origin, transit and return for this migrant population that comes mostly from the countries of the Northern Triangle of Central America.
The International Observatory on Migration and Human Rights ARGOS, a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) that aims to investigate, with plurality of perspectives, the phenomena that motivates human migration on the world, in order to defend and promote the universality of human rights, was officially inaugurated this Friday with a discussion and poetry recital “Human Mobility: Voices, Views and Actions”.
The discussion was moderated by Taroa Zúñiga Silva, a Venezuelan-Chilean member of the Mecha Cooperative and the Secretariat of Immigrant Women in Chile, with the spokesperson, on behalf of ARGOS, of the researcher Micòl Savia, Italian lawyer, secretary of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers.
The ARGOS launch honored women as the most vulnerable gender during the phenomena of human mobility and their contribution to culture, with a recital by a group of migrant poets of different nationalities: Violeta Orozco, Mexican translator and researcher living in the United States; Chana Mamani, teacher and cultural activist of Aymara origin who migrated to Argentina as a child; Fatma Galia, journalist, poet and activist for the human rights of the Saharawi people; Vanessa González Peña, Venezuelan immigrant in Chile, feminist activist and president of the National Coordinator of Immigrants of Chile, and Carolina Dávila, writer and feminist lawyer of Colombian nationality living in the United States.
In addition to reciting their poems, the writers shared, in interaction with moderator Zúñiga, their experience as migrants and how starting a new life far from their homeland has influenced their poetry.
The jurist Micòl Savia indicated that part of the work carried out by the Observatory’s research team is available at www.argosob.org, where articles and reports on human mobility processes in South America, Central America and Europe, as well as general data on global migration, can be found.
He announced that they are preparing reports on the impact of COVID-19, the fundamental rights of people in mobility, Venezuelan migration and hot returns, which will be the central theme of the next report of the UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of migrants.
The International Observatory on Migration and Human Rights uses the methodology of action-research with the objective of accompanying and defending migrant populations whose human rights may be being violated, by generating inputs for concrete advocacy actions, as well as tools that can be useful to social, academic, civil and multilateral organizations.
The name of the NGO alludes to the Greek myth Argos Panoptes, a giant with 100 eyes that had extraordinary capacities as a guardian on Olympus, which inspires the institution to observe, with a plurality of perspectives, the migratory processes, addressing their structural causes, the vulnerable populations, the actors involved and the possible strategies of alarm, denunciation, monitoring and resolution of cases.
In the United States of America (USA), hate crimes due to racial and ethnic discrimination are on the rise. The Latino population has been the most affected. The anti-immigrant discourse of former President Donald Trump was the driving force and co-responsible for the growing xenophobia towards the migrant population in general and towards migrants of Latino origin in particular. However, the anti-Latino discourse in the U.S. is of long standing and is related to the founding racialized policies of the U.S. nation, which paradoxically is formed in its origin by migrants.
Early U.S. immigration laws gave priority to migrants from northern Europe. In 1790, the Naturalization Act granted U.S. citizenship exclusively to “free white persons,” a situation ratified by the U.S. Congress for almost a century. Since then, migration policies have been based on a segregationist perspective, which established “acceptable” migration quotas (from Northern Europe), to the detriment of other populations. In addition, there was a deep racism towards Afro-descendant and indigenous populations, which was influenced by colonialism and its sequels of slavery and genocide.
In the 20th century, migration to the U.S. from Latin America was encouraged by programs to attract cheap labor, such as the Bracero Program, which involved the hiring of thousands of Mexican agricultural and railroad workers, mostly from the poorest rural regions of the region. This program was later denounced as a violation of the human rights of the migrant workers, who were exploited and overcrowded in deplorable conditions.
Approximately 12 million Mexicans currently live in the United States. A large part of this population is dedicated, in most cases, to various service jobs such as cleaning, caring for children, the elderly and the sick, food preparation, security and construction. Trump’s anti-immigrant discourse attacked the Mexican population with particular viciousness, going so far as to state that from Mexico “they send rapists” or people with “the lowest IQ”, making it necessary to “protect our families from those who seek to harm us”, thus justifying the construction of the multi-billion dollar wall on the U.S.-Mexico border and the tightening of immigration policies on the southern border.
Trump’s extremist nationalism fueled the already installed xenophobia against Mexicans and Latin Americans in general, including anyone who speaks Spanish. Anti-immigrant hate groups with supremacist affiliations and advocating the use of violence began to appear more strongly in border cities.
In August 2019, in the city of El Paso (Texas), a white man murdered 22 people in a Walmart supermarket, most of them were Latin Americans. The killer published a statement online where he claimed his intention to fight the “Hispanic invasion in Texas”. This type of slogans are frequently issued by philo-Nazi hate groups whose main driver is ethnic cleansing. In the states bordering the Aztec nation alone, where the largest population of Latino origin is concentrated, more than 150 hate groups have been identified: California (72 groups), Florida (68 groups) and Texas (54 groups)1. In the rest of the country, anti-immigrant hate groups also exist in the states of Arizona, Virginia, Alabama, North Carolina, Colorado, Nevada, Michigan, New York, Oregon, Washington, Mississippi and Colorado2.
The xenophobia in the U.S. towards Latinos is only comparable to that suffered also by Muslim populations, victims of the “crusade against terrorism”, installed since the events of September 11 and encouraged by the then President George W. Bush. Violence due to xenophobia and discrimination has become a regrettable characteristic of recent times in the USA, both by the security forces, which have been systematically committing police abuses such as the one that led to the murder of the African-American citizen George Floyd and the consequent protests and mass mobilizations throughout the country, and by civilians and hate groups that are strangely allowed without major restrictions.
The proliferation of guns in the national territory is part of this social scourge that has become commonplace. The free bearing of arms has been in force in the U.S. since 1791, according to the second amendment of the Constitution: “A well ordered militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
For their part, governments do not seem to understand the magnitude of the problem. In December 2020, the United Nations met to discuss the approval of a resolution “Combating glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other practices that contribute to fuelling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance”, to which only the United States and Ukraine were against it3.
The recently elected Biden-Harris administration has expressed intentions to improve the situation of migrants, at least this has been expressed publicly, but the fear among migrants remains latent since under the Democratic Party administrations the problem has continued. An example of this happened during the Obama administration, when more than three million undocumented migrants were deported, to the point that several leaders of the Latino community referred to Obama as the “Deporter in Chief”. The largest number of people deported at that time were from Mexico, followed by the Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
The Covid-19 pandemic has deepened situations of xenophobia against the migrant population. From expressions such as “the yellow virus” against Asians in general, to the tightening of border security measures with the excuse of not “letting in” the virus from the south (despite the fact that the U.S. is the country with the most cases of infection and deaths). In this regard, in December 2020, Dana Graber Ladek, Head of Mission of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Mexico, emphasized the need not to use the Covid-19 pandemic to stir up xenophobia and the importance of ensuring compliance with commitments made in this regard and protecting the human rights of migrants4.
The United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is clear on the importance of race/ethnicity as a positive value to leverage the development of countries of origin, transit and destination of migrants and strongly urges respect for the human rights of migrants – whatever their migration status – refugees and displaced persons.
References
1 Available at: https://www.splcenter.org/hate-map
2 Available at: https://www.celag.org/cambio-de-gobierno-y-ascenso-de-la-ultraderecha-en-ee-uu/
3 Available at: https://www.axency.com/se-niegan-a-combatir-nazismo-discriminacion-y-xenofobia-espana-estados-unidos-y-la-mancomunidad-britanica/17/12/2020/
4 Available at: https://www.onu.org.mx/respetar-y-garantizar-los-derechos-de-las-personas-migrantes-en-tiempos-de-covid-19/
According to the World Migration Report published in 2020 by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), Mexico constitutes “the main country-to-country migration corridor in the world”.1 Mexican territory has become the main transit area for migrants from Central American countries -among others-, especially from the so-called Northern Triangle: El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. Likewise, according to data from the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Central America and Mexico constitute the largest migratory corridor on the planet: “fifteen million people have followed this path, stimulated by the enormous productivity and salary gaps existing between the countries”2.
Undocumented migrants suffer all kinds of human rights violations both in transit to a better destination – if they manage to get there – or on the return journey for deportation. The situation of “clandestinity” makes them prey to police abuses ranging from harassment, persecution and violence, to the separation of family members (even children from their families) and deprivation of liberty in immigration detention centers at the border of the United States of America (USA): the so-called “hieleras (freezers)”, cells with very low temperatures, or the “perreras (doghouses)”, overcrowded cages. In 2019, there was a 456 % increase in the number of families detained at the southern border of the United States3.
In recent years, the phenomenon of migration from Central America to the North has been characterized by the modality of mass mobilization through “caravans” of migrants that occur by land in large groups and are usually convened through social networks. In January 2021, more than 7500 people mobilized in a caravan, mostly from Honduras, who were repressed by Guatemalan police forces. The violent dispersal of the caravan resulted in the return of more than 3,000 migrants, mainly to Honduras, while another group of migrants arrived in the border area between Guatemala and Mexico. The caravan included children, 80% of whom, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef), were unaccompanied4.
The construction of a negative image of the migrant is part of the process of securitization of both internal and external US policies, which have deployed an engineering of control over the borders by means of a narrative that legitimizes the use of greater police force, the construction of walls, the installation of cameras, deportation, etc. This perspective on migration was not brought to the fore by Donald Trump; it has been part of a systematic policy of militarization and consensus-building by the various White House administrations, which place issues such as organized crime, terrorism, drug trafficking and migration on the same level, in an exercise of criminalization of migrants.
The U.S. government’s pressure on the countries of the sub-region has materialized in treaties, pacts and agreements that oblige the countries to reinforce security and repression mechanisms without bilaterally addressing the structural problems that generate forced migration. By stating the agreements as part of the fight against terrorism and drug trafficking, the U.S. has created security financing programs with Mexico and the Northern Triangle countries, which have resulted in more deaths, detentions and fiscal spending that could have been invested in other areas such as education or health. Such is the case of the Merida Initiative and the Central American Initiative for Regional Security.
The Southern Border Plan, implemented by the Mexican government in 2014 at the behest of the U.S. administration (presided by Barack Obama), and as a continuation of the Merida Initiative, meant the militarization of the Mexican border as far as Guatemala, in addition to the criminalization of undocumented migration. The Plan contemplated the hiring of private security teams, surveillance by drones and cameras installed in trains and geolocation systems. Under this system, migrants suffered increased persecution, detention and deportation. Between 2014 and 2015, deportations increased from 47.36 % to 96.61 %.
After the Trump administration’s strident pressure mode and the intensification of anti-immigrant measures, newly elected President Joe Biden inaugurated his administration with a clear move to distance himself from his predecessor, declaring the suspension of some of Trump’s most extreme measures, such as the Asylum Cooperation Agreements (“ACAs”), which allowed the deportation of those requesting asylum from the Northern Triangle, or the construction of a cinematic wall between Mexico and the U.S. Biden is familiar with the issue, as during the Obama administration he was in charge of the Plan Alliance for Prosperity initiative, whose objective was to organize, together with the governments of the Northern Triangle, a response to the immigration crisis in 2014, with a strong increase in security and defense mechanisms, without achieving major goals despite a multi-million dollar investment through the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB)5.
The migration of Central Americans responds to a set of historical conditions marked by colonization and domination, which has generated a permanent situation of asymmetries that cross the entire social and economic system of the sub-region. The absence of public policies that could offer development and stability conditions to families has been the breeding ground for migration, together with the idea of the “American dream” and the hope of achieving better living conditions in the face of a panorama of inequalities, unemployment and generalized precariousness.
Violence has become one of the most pressing problems, as the proliferation of weapons and gangs has not stopped, but rather has been growing in the context of the pandemic. The health emergency has in turn led to a deepening of poverty and precariousness, confinement has hindered informal work in countries where most of the labor force works in this way, along with the decline in the receipt of remittances and their consequent impact on the economy of these countries. Another cause of migration in Central America is climate change. At the end of 2020, hundreds of families lost their homes, land and crops as a result of hurricanes Eta and Iota.
In short, lack of economic prospects, food and health insecurity, systemic violence and natural disasters are the main motivations for those who are forced to migrate to the North. The treaties, pacts and programs historically promoted by the U.S. have mostly benefited the elites of the sub-region, without leveraging structural transformations in the social sphere, which deepens poverty and the lack of alternatives for the majorities.
The great challenge remains in overcoming the logic of securitization that prevails over development and solidarity strategies. The tendency to respond to migratory crises with more restrictive and repressive measures should be reoriented to a structural understanding of the causes of forced migration, as well as to the assumption of migration in general as a human right that also brings cultural and social wealth to the destination countries.
References
1 Available at: https://publications.iom.int/system/files/pdf/wmr_2020.pdf
2 Available at: https://www.cepal.org/es/publicaciones/44649-desarrollo-migracion-desafios-oportunidades-paises-norte-centroamerica
3 Available at: https://nuso.org/articulo/las-politicas-migratorias-de-donald-trump
4 Available at: https://news.un.org/es/story/2021/01/1486952
5 Available at: http://rdd.undav.edu.ar/pdfs/pr74/pr74.pdf
For many women in Central America migrating has become more of a duty than an option. Violence (within families and on the streets), inequality in jobs opportunities and economic inequality in general, and natural disasters affect day-to-day life to the point of becoming unbearable, and are exacerbated today by the Covid-19 pandemic and its sanitary consequences.
According to the last report by the United Nations (UN),1 for 2019, out of 272 million migrants worldwide, 48% were women; a number equivalent to the total populations of Italy and the UK combined.
The United States of America (USA) is the main principal destination of Latin American migrants; Central American communities in the USA are growing in number, and one of the reasons for migration is family reunification. Migrant caravans reflect the daily situation of countries such as Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador (the Northern Triangle) and some regions of Mexico where violence has become systemic: crossfire between gangs, death threats, forced recruitment of minors to join criminal structures,2 coupled with unequal economic opportunities.
The burden of managing and caring for the households and children of men who migrate falls on women, which implies the duplication of domestic and care work, already subject to gender discrimination and invisibility within the care and remuneration policies of both the State and the private sector, in addition to the paid work shifts that women must also perform in order to subsist. This has led to an increasing number of women migrating together with their children, including young women and minors.
In the countries of origin, especially in Mexico and the Northern Triangle of Central America, many women emigrate to flee organized crime. Young people and children from low-income sectors are at risk of being kidnapped and recruited by gangs that, in turn, harass and threaten mothers, sisters and other women in the family.
At each stage of the migration cycle, the risks for women multiply. In the country of origin, as well as in the countries of transit, destination and return, the first burden that women carry is gender discrimination and sexual vulnerability, as they are subjected to rape, kidnapping for the purpose of human trafficking, extortion and even murder.
Alicia Bárcena, Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), affirmed the need to consider the conditions of vulnerability of women throughout the migration route: “In the study of migration, the role of women must be analyzed in its own right, since they are subject to various vulnerabilities, not only in their communities of origin, but also in the migration process itself”.3
In addition to the panorama of extreme poverty, there is also domestic violence, with a total of 1,555 women murdered in these four countries in 2019.4 Honduras is the nation with the highest rate of femicides (6.2 per 100,000 inhabitants) in Latin America, with 983 fatal cases, is the second -after Brazil- in the continent.
Travel between the countries of origin and destination presents constant uncertainty for migrants. In addition to long days of walking exposed to the sun and with little or very little hydration, without sleep or sleeping outdoors, there are the cold fronts that have hit northern Mexico in recent weeks. Once at the border, immigration procedures entail a long wait, in addition to the possibility of being separated from family members (even children from their mothers) due to the security protocols imposed by the immigration policies of the Trump administration, which the new Biden administration, although it has announced reforms, has not completely repealed, as is the case of the detention centers for migrant children that are still operating, for example.
Likewise, violence in the border areas between Mexico and the U.S. is manifested both by the persecution and repression of migrants by the border guards of both countries, as well as by the more than 165 white supremacist paramilitary groups, who defend nationalism and call themselves “migrant hunters”, and who, as this moniker indicates, are dedicated to “hunting” migrants, kidnapping them and handing them over to the authorities or murdering them in cold blood and burying them in the desert. One way to evade these groups and the border guards is to hire the so-called “coyotes,” another mafia that operates on the border offering to be “guides” after charging considerable sums of money for facilitating this transit, which can sometimes mean crossing the river by boat or on foot, crossing wooded areas or long deserts. Coyotes often hold – literally – the lives of many migrants in their hands and in many cases, they end up leading migrants – especially women – to human trafficking mafias.
Once at their destination, the United States, most undocumented migrant women work as domestic workers, maintaining homes and buildings, preparing food, cleaning, caring for children, sick patients and the elderly. In this regard, it is important to consider the decisive role of women in the economy and social reproduction, since it is women who make the greatest contribution to their countries of origin through remittances:
Every year, some 100 million women migrants send remittances home. And while the gender wage gap persists, they tend to send a greater share of their wages than men, and do so more regularly. These contributions help sustain the economies of many countries and provide livelihoods for families and communities, which is especially important during times of crisis.5
The growing migration of women, as well as of unaccompanied children and adolescents, sets off alarms about the need to pay particular attention to this doubly vulnerable population, considering the gender discrimination that is deep-rooted and widespread in all the countries along the migrant corridor, and in the countries of origin and destination.
References
1 ONU – Organización Internacional para las Migraciones. Informe sobre las migraciones en el mundo 2020. Ginebra 2019, p. 12.
2 Available at: https://www.acnur.org/noticias/historia/2021/1/5ff51e7e4/familia-huye-de-su-hogar-para-salvar-su-vida-en-centroamerica.html
3 Available at: https://www.cepal.org/es/discursos/evento-mujeres-territorio-migracion-paises-norte-centroamerica
4 Available at: https://oig.cepal.org/es/indicadores/feminicidio
5 Declaración de ONU Mujeres: Día Internacional del Migrante 2020. Los derechos humanos y la igualdad de género como elementos centrales de los programas y las políticas de migración. 17 de diciembre de 2020.
Migration to the United States is caused primarily by unequal opportunities and lack of economic prospects in the migrants’ countries of origin. Every year, thousands of people depart from Mexico and Central America fleeing economic conditions, systemic violence, as well as climate change and its devastating effects. Since March 2020, the health crisis generated by the Covid-19 pandemic has been added to the already difficult situations that cause migration in the sub-region.
Migrants already move in precarious, vulnerable and uncertain conditions, and travel for long periods of time in the open, without the minimum conditions of food and shelter, in addition to being exposed to extremely high levels of stress due to the insecurity of the journey. The bodies of those who migrate suffer from exhaustion, wear and tear and disease, in addition to the high exposure to Covid-19.
The pandemic deepened the common scourges for people in situations of forced migration. Xenophobia, discrimination and criminalization have worsened towards migrants, who are often seen as “carriers of the virus”, which has triggered situations of physical and symbolic violence in both transit and destination countries.
Paradoxically, the most critical focus of Covid-19 in the world is currently in the United States of America (USA), since it is the country with the highest number of cases of infection and deaths. Large communities of Central Americans live in the most densely populated cities in the United States, and in recent decades they have formed multi-generational families and consolidated their roots. Many of the migrants from the Northern Triangle countries (Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala) and Mexico migrate with the conviction of reuniting with family members, so the Covid-19 pandemic has not been a deterrent.
For its part, the Trump administration’s extreme anti-immigrant policies led Mexico to become a border-nation, with most undocumented migrants stranded on Aztec soil. Between 2014 and 2019, the U.S. detained 2,960,500 migrants at the southern border, while in 2019 the U.S. held 977,509 people and Mexico held 298,211. 1. Duuring the month of October 2020, 11,336 refugee applications were received in Mexico from Hondurans and 3,103 from El Salvador, equivalent to 46% of the total.
In the context of the pandemic, the migrant population in transit remains largely exposed because not only is it not attended in the already overcrowded health centers of the countries of the migratory corridor, but it is not included in the national vaccination plans. While some countries are opening their borders to vaccinated tourists, even more doors are closed to migrants. Both in Mexico and in Central American countries, migrants without documents are simply not contemplated to access vaccination plans, as they do not have documents in order. This situation not only deepens the vulnerability of the migrant population, but also accentuates the discrimination to which they may be subjected for supposedly being constant transmitters of the virus. 2 In Mexico, the vaccination plan is restricted to those who obtain the Unique Population Registry Code (CURP), a code that can only be obtained by Mexican citizens, permanent and temporary residents.
Although the borders remain closed, the need to migrate is a growing reality, which has generated an increase in organized crime that offers clandestine routes and means of transportation to move migrants without following any type of sanitary protocol, exposing them to all kinds of dangers. Likewise, scams have become increasingly frequent for migrants held in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers who are extorted or deceived through supposed bail payment plans.
For those who have been detained, the situation is aggravated by the legal uncertainty in which they find themselves because, although the Biden Administration announced reforms in immigration policies, these have not yet materialized. The review of asylum requests can take months, during which time the people awaiting the process are returned to Mexican territory where they are exposed to situations of vulnerability and discrimination. The expulsions of migrants from the border continue to occur despite the pandemic, even in cases of people sick with Covid-19 who are expelled without making the corresponding official notifications or following the appropriate protocols. 3
Likewise, the U.S. southern border remains closed and, in fact, the current U.S. administration reopened one of the detention centers for minors at the Texas border. The U.S. government claims that this will be a temporary measure due to the more than 6,000 unaccompanied minors who have arrived at the border so far this year.4 In a recent interview5, Roberta Jacobson, special assistant to President Joe Biden and coordinator for the border with Mexico, stated that in order to take adequate precautions against the pandemic “it is very important that people who do not have an appointment stay where they are and do not try to cross the border until they get the call”, He also asserted that even if the immigration policies of the previous administration are relaxed, especially the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) or “Stay in Mexico” program, most asylum seekers “are not going to qualify” for legal entry.
On February 22, the website of the U.S. Embassy and Consulate in Mexico published a communiqué from the Security Attaché, Edgar Ramirez, where the official is explicit about the protocol for people with open cases of the Stay in Mexico Program, saying: “Let it be clear: do not come to the border right now”, and urges migrants to wait for a call to make an appointment. 6
All indications are that Mexico will continue to be the border nation or “wall” for migration from the Northern Triangle and other South American countries, and even transcontinental (especially from Africa), which use the migration corridor as access to the US. After the repression and dispersal of the migrant caravan in Guatemala, the so-called “ant migration” has proliferated, small groups of migrants seeking to circumvent surveillance and repression by police forces, which does not exempt them from dealing with organized crime around human trafficking, extortion and swindling, as well as exposure and lack of attention in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.
References
1 Available at: https://www.anahuac.mx/mexico/noticias/Migracion-y-COVID-19
2 Available at: https://www.amnesty.org/es/latest/news/2021/02/mexico-registro-vacunacion-excluye-importantes-sectores-poblacion/
3 Available at: https://sinfronteras.org.mx/osc-presentan-informe-sobre-las-graves-afectaciones-del-covid-19-en-poblacion-migrante-y-refugiada-en-mexico/
4 Available at: https://www.voanoticias.com/estadosunidos/eeuu-abre-centro-menores-no-acompanados-llegan-frontera
5 Available at: https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-america-latina-56093388
6 Available at: https://mx.usembassy.gov/es/si-eres-migrante-y-tienes-caso-pendiente-bajo-el-protocolo-mpp-no-vengas-ahora-a-la-frontera/
Beyond the conflictive past between Christians and Muslims, as well as the most recent colonialist experience, the relationship between Europe and Islam is currently nourished by the conflicts between Muslim-majority countries and Western powers during the second half of the 20th century, in the first place. Then there is the phenomenon of migrations originating in these countries, with Europe as one of their main migratory destinations, as well as the growing stigmatization, since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, of Muslim people, or people coming from Muslim-majority countries without necessarily being practitioners of that religion.
The current chapter of Islamophobia in Europe accelerated substantially with the refugee crisis that started in 2015 as a result of the intensification of the civil war in Syria, a conflict ironically spurred by member countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and which by then intensified with the expansion of the so-called Islamic State.
In parallel, the terrorist attacks that took place in Paris also in 2015, one at the Bataclan theater and the other at the headquarters of the satirical weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo, as well as many other episodes of this nature that have been recorded in various countries of the European Union during the last two decades, have only reinforced the identification of the Muslim population with terrorism. The next step is the identification of these same people with immigration, despite the fact that a significant part of European Muslims were born in Europe.
Most worryingly, this whole process goes hand in hand with the growing popularity of extreme right-wing parties and movements in countries throughout the Western world, including northern, southern and eastern European countries. Numerous extreme right-wing groups throughout Europe are united in their rejection of immigrants of the Islamic religion, such as the Identitarian Movement and Generation Identity, among other groups, and they tend to spread to various countries in the region.
Likewise, the emergence and strengthening of political parties with access to spaces of power, such as Alternative für Deutschland in Germany, Vox in Spain, Rassemblement National in France, the Lega in Italy, etc., is observed with concern.
The case of Vox is very transparent in identifying Islam with terrorism. In the recent Catalan election campaign of 2021, the party published a video in which images of construction of mosques and Islamic religion classes in schools follow one after the other with images of the August 2017 attack that occurred on the Ramblas in Barcelona. Thus, the full identification between religion, childhood and criminal behavior that seeks to alarm the population and predispose it against a particular human group is transmitted1.
More worrying is when extremist and Islamophobic political parties actually form governments, and push their reform agendas. Viktor Orban in Hungary is one case. His government had no problem expelling refugees from Syria, and penalizing with imprisonment anyone who helped undocumented people to apply for asylum. Regarding refugees from Muslim-majority countries, they were considered by the Executive as invaders, and claim the right as a country to refuse to receive Muslims.
However, expressions compatible with Islamophobia, sometimes camouflaged as security policies, are not exclusive to extreme right-wing movements. On the contrary, parties considered democratic have certainly taken actions to try to contain or control the daily life of Islamic communities where immigrants live.
The control, supervision and closure of mosques are not considered outrageous actions when taken by governments of indisputably democratic parties, even though this could be a clear violation of the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, established in Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. A recent case of mosque closures occurred in France following the murder of Professor Samuel Paty in October 2020, but since 2015 about thirty mosques have been closed already2. On these actions, the question always arises as to whether this type of collective punishment is appropriate and just, or whether it is simply retaliation incompatible with the rule of law.
Particularly symptomatic of a conflictive relationship with Islam in Europe is the banning of the full-face veil, with varying degrees of severity, in a dozen countries of the continent, but led by France and Belgium, which imposed their respective legislation in this regard since 2010. Likewise, we have the prohibition of wearing religious symbols in certain public spaces, which, although affecting practitioners of any religion, was specifically motivated by the political agenda aimed at controlling the behavior of members of Islamic communities.
More recently, the discussion on Islamic separatism in France highlights a potential source of discord between social groups belonging to the same national body, where the Muslim profession of faith, present in about six million people in that country, is intimately related to immigration, as well as to the real difficulties for their social integration. The fight against Islamic separatism, promoted by President Macron, meets with resistance among spokesmen of the Muslim community. In such a way that the French government has been promoting regulations to exercise strict control over the financing of mosques, as well as greater surveillance of sports or cultural organizations of Muslim communities, which does not seem to indicate that there is a harmonious coexistence. It is also true that President Macron himself recognizes a share of responsibility of the State in the isolation of certain communities3.
Specifically in relation to the stigmatization of Muslims, it is striking that often members of the resident Islamic communities or citizens of European countries are compelled to apologize for crimes committed by their terrorist co-religionists, whereas criminal responsibilities are supposed to be individual. This treatment is not usually applied to terrorists when they profess some variant of Christianity, and whose attacks have also been recorded in recent years.
To a large extent, what is reflected here is an uneasy relationship between Europe and Muslim people, whether they are migrants or not, but this debate has consequences for the reception and integration of new migrants or refugees from Muslim-majority countries.
This conflictive situation is not on the verge of a solution in the short term. To a large extent, the difficulties in integrating the immigrant population, whatever their origin, could be at the root of this situation. In the end, what is at stake is the full enjoyment of human rights for everyone, and more specifically, guaranteeing the enjoyment of civil and political rights, as well as economic, social and cultural rights of immigrant communities in the European Union.
Finally, it would be advisable to treat terrorist actions in a more balanced way, making it clear at all times that they are the responsibility of individuals who must be tried and sentenced according to the law, just as manifestations of terrorism coming from other social groups or other political orientations are usually treated, and to avoid stigmatizing entire communities that generally comply with the law of the countries in which they live.
References
1 Available at: https://elpais.com/espana/2021-01-28/twitter-cierra-la-cuenta-de-vox-por-incitar-al-odio-contra-los-musulmanes.html
2 Available at: https://elpais.com/internacional/2020-10-24/francia-pone-las-mezquitas-bajo-la-lupa.html
3 Available at: https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-54621839
Looking at human mobility towards Europe involves the exercise of looking at the big picture, and then zooming in on very particular realities and the very concrete dynamics that affect day-to-day life. First of all, Europe, and especially its western part, has become a privileged migratory destination in the world since the middle of the 20th century, once the post-war crisis was overcome. More recently, the countries of southern Europe have also become migratory destinations, as well as obligatory transit points for those moving from Africa and also from the Middle East, Central and East Asia to the more advanced economies of the north of the continent.
Beyond how the different waves of migration have been able to reach Europe, settle and integrate into the host communities, a particular concern is the extent to which the increasing restrictions and controls on entry to European countries increase the risks of migratory displacement to levels that jeopardize the human rights of migrants, with a deterrent intention of debatable results. This excess of restrictions and controls may be forcing more and more people to cross the Mediterranean Sea in fragile boats, to cross European roads in trucks not suitable for transporting people, and even to board containers of goods, in all cases at great risk.
Within the drama of human mobility in Europe, the situation of refugees and the European Union’s migration policies stand out. A good part of the people who enter Europe seeking refuge do so by fleeing situations that have been spurred or directly provoked by military interventions by countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Such are the cases of Libya, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as other complex political situations.
While it is true that most European Union countries have accepted the implementation of a quota mechanism for refugees, the blocking of this policy by the governments of countries such as Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary only aggravates the situation of people who are confined in refugee camps that do not have the minimum conditions for a life with dignity and respect for human rights, particularly in Greece.
Likewise, the COVID-19 pandemic has only aggravated the situation of refugees and migrants in several ways. On the one hand, many shelters became centers for the spread of the virus, refugees and migrants have been stigmatized as carriers of the disease, and on top of that, the confinement measures, as well as their economic impact, have led to a decrease in the receipt of remittances in the countries of origin of migrants, which may have prompted many people from those nations to take the road to Europe towards the end of 2020, as suggested by the recent migrant crisis in the Canary Islands.
The restrictions adopted to contain the pandemic also meant the closure of ports, which is why many migrant rescue boats chartered by various European NGOs have been forced to wait weeks to be accepted in some Mediterranean port, with all that this entails in terms of supplies, exhaustion, conflicts among the rescued people, etc.
Another pressing problem is that of people who can be considered climate migrants, or those who leave their homes when they realize that climate change does not allow them to continue with their traditional economic activities, particularly agriculture, and who are forced to seek their livelihoods in better-off economies, but which are also usually the countries that contribute most to climate change itself, due to their high levels of consumption of energy and resources of all kinds.
A particularly worrying aspect of migrations in general, and those heading for Europe in particular, is the lack of knowledge we have of the true number of migrants whose movements go undetected by the authorities, and who possibly fall into the hands of mafias that set in motion processes marked by exploitation, violence and abuse, with the human rights violations that all this entails. It is currently assumed that some 110 thousand people cross the Mediterranean Sea every year to reach the coasts of the European Union, at least until 2019, but we do not know how many pass through without being quantified.
The World Organization for Migration has denounced the use of violence and practices such as mass expulsions that violate international law and human rights. Although they do not refer to any country in particular, many denunciations point to the serious situation that has been occurring along the Balkan route.
It has also been denounced that certain countries establish subtle mechanisms to avoid receiving refugees and migrants from Muslim-majority countries, which can only be described as a discriminatory policy based on religion or national origin.
A particularly dramatic situation, which should appeal to the consciences of European rulers, is the type of agreements, including funding, to the Libyan authorities to contain migration across the Mediterranean Sea. As volunteers on NGO rescue ships operating in the area have been denouncing, returning refugees to a country at war is a violation of international maritime law, and is completely unacceptable from a humanitarian point of view. The conditions in which migrants and refugees survive in Libya are completely unacceptable for democratic countries. Yet human rights violations are condoned as the price to be paid to prevent illegal migrations to Europe.
Despite this picture, there is also room for optimism. Numerous non-governmental organizations are making great efforts to rescue migrants on the high seas, the populations of many countries are aware of the need to assist those arriving in their countries, and justice systems often make decisions in favor of migrants, taking into account their fundamental rights. In the context of the pandemic, some countries have chosen to take measures in favor of illegal migrants, such as suspending deportations or issuing temporary general permits. It is also true that these measures have been taken in the context of a growing concern about the possible shortage of foreign workers for all kinds of jobs, but particularly for those considered essential.
The challenges of migration and refugee in Europe are numerous and require a consensual, coherent approach based on international humanitarian law and human rights, but above all a commitment by institutions, non-governmental organizations and citizens in general to solidarity and humanitarian assistance.