It’s Time to Adopt a Hemispheric Approach to Migration Part I
News about migration, migrants, and the troubles they face when they come to the U.S seem to be everywhere. Instead of welcoming them as members of larger family with a common future, the U.S government continues to treat migrants as criminals. This insistence on arresting and deporting migrants is based on a nationalist policy that has been practiced by past presidents regardless of political party. If we analyze the issues gripping the countries of the Western Hemisphere, we will see that they are not isolated national problems but issues that require a hemispheric approach. One of these issues is migration.
Current migration policies mark another violent chapter in the U.S government’s efforts to treat migration as a domestic, national issue. A recent report by the Washington Post indicates that arrests and deportations near the border have reached a new high. The mistreatment and abuse migrants face (in addition to the lack of leadership shown by the U.S and other governments in the Western Hemisphere) is evidence of the failure of national policies towards migration.
The Current Plight of Venezuelan and Central American Migrants
The problem is not migration but how migration is perceived.
Governments in the Western Hemisphere are currently limited by a nationalist focus and have yet to adopt a policy that view these migrants as members of a larger, hemispheric entity whose inhabitants share a common future. Instead, they continue to treat migrants as foreign enemies. And, to make matters worse, the U.S government and other countries use COVID-19 as a justification for acts of expulsion, cruelty, and border closures. Migrants are being blamed for socioeconomic issues such as unemployment, disruptions in the global supply chain, and inflation. This, in turn, stimulates feelings of xenophobia, especially in countries such as Chile, Argentina, and Colombia, that have, in recent years, seen a large increase in the number of migrants coming from Haiti and Venezuela. These migrant groups are currently being expelled en masse.
They are not alone. In the center of the continent, countries, such as El Salvador and Guatemala, are experiencing high rates of violence and environmental turmoil that have forced a large exodus of people out of these countries. These people do not want to live in a country that is oppressed by corrupt governments, the rule of drug lords, and drought induced by climate change. On their way to the U.S, they face many dangers from drug traffickers, gangs, police, xenophobes, among others only to be the victims of a broken and unjust U.S migration policy. Political leaders, whether it be as far north as Canada or as far south as Brazil, are only able to see migration as a domestic issue and not as an issue that demands a reevaluation of values and a new hemispheric approach.
There are many groups that experience discrimination and hardship due to their migrant status. Two groups in particular are migrants from Venezuela and Central American countries. Government repression, lack of services, inflation, and other problems have compelled millions of Venezuelans to leave their home country. According to experts, several countries in South America and the Caribbean have received Venezuelan migrants. These include Peru (1 million), Chile (500,000), Ecuador (500,000), Brazil (300,000), Argentina (200,000), and the Dominican Republic (120,000). The largest number have gone to Colombia. Until now, 80% of all Venezuelan migrants have gone to Colombia with the country receiving more than 6 million people. This is due to the fact that Colombia shares the most passable border with Venezuela and provides the nearest opportunities for employment for migrants fleeing a country in disarray.
In Colombia, most Venezuelans arrive without a passport and are forced to deal with an ambiguous legal status that affects their access to the country’s health care, employment, and education systems. In February 2021, Colombia’s president, Iván Duque, issued a decree that established a process whereby millions of Venezuelans can apply for a permiso de protección temporal or temporary protected status. This process is supposedly open to all Venezuelan migrants and is set to end in 2023. According to the decree, all registered Venezuelans will receive a permit that lasts for ten years as well as access to health care, financing, and education. While this initiative sounds promising, it presents several problems. There is concern that the sudden influx of migrants will put pressure on a Colombian health care system that has already been strained due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Other issues include the official registration website crashing, the long wait times to get registered, and the fact that only a fraction of Venezuelan migrants have completed the process.
However, the main issue seems to be the temporary protection status itself. There is concern that it might not survive the end of Duque’s government, especially since the position of Colombia’s recently elected president, Gustavo Petro, regarding Venezuelan migrants remains unclear. Due to their dubious legal status, these migrants are forced to live on the margins of Colombian society in an environment that is not dissimilar to how other migrants live in other countries such as the United States. Their status does not guarantee access to jobs and education that Venezuelan migrants need desperately. In addition, Venezuelan migrants are usually blamed for inflation by right-wing politicians who seek to use them as scapegoats in an election year. Unfortunately, the challenges Venezuelan migrants face in Colombia are very much the same in every country they have arrived in with their legal status varying depending on the state in question (for example, Peru offers temporary residency permits to Venezuelan migrants for one year).
Central American migrants face similar challenges to those of Venezuelans when they flee their unstable countries and pass through Mexico on their way to the U.S. In recent years, the Mexican government under López Obrador has pursued a policy of deterrence in its approach towards migrants. It uses social media networks to its advantage by showing Mexican soldiers near the border stopping migrants from crossing into the U.S. In reality, the situation is much darker. This show of force is meant to hide the detention and mistreatment of thousands of migrants. Even though Mexico closed its border with countries (such as Guatemala) in 2020 due to the pandemic, in that year alone more than 80,000 migrants came through Mexico with 90% of them coming from Central American countries. Of this number, 50,000 were deported and thousands more were detained. More than 41,000 migrants applied for asylum but only 28% of these requests were approved. The Mexican government seeks to distract its own population from the violent and repressive policies that it practices on its own border. It also wants to placate U.S officials in their desire for a “stronger” border.
The journey does not end for the Central American migrants that manage to cross the border into the United States. A darker fate awaits them as thousands are transported to detention facilities to await either processing or deportation. The stories coming from these facilities are nothing less than disturbing. There are reports of injustice, unsanitary conditions, illegal medical experiments, excessive use of force by authorities, just to name a few. The majority of the migrants unfortunate enough to be caught in this system are treated not as human beings that share a common destiny on this hemisphere but as undesirable prisoners. In these facilities, the goal is not to aid migrants in their quest for a better life but to break their will so they do not resist deportation. Those who resist risk their lives in a system rife with oversight. A recent IDP-CCR report suggests that this detention system is beyond reform and only adds to the anti-immigrant hate these migrants have to endure. They argue that the detention system itself is part of a larger problem that lies at the heart of U.S border policy. It is a system that is focused on “denying liberty, discouraging people from fighting to stay, deterring people from migrating and returning.” Their conclusion is that “ending the immigration detention, deportation, and border policing regimes is the only way forward.”
Government support for these institutions and the narrow, nationalist focus on the border transcends party lines. During the Trump administration there was heavy investment in an effort to construct and repair existing and new border walls. In the budget request for 2021, the Biden administration allocated $2.8 billion for border security and detention facilities. According to recent studies, it is estimated that up to 50,000 people are entering this system per day. With the recent wave in migration as of April 2022, this number is likely to increase exponentially.
A Path Forward
It is clear that something is very wrong with how countries in the Western Hemisphere address migration. They treat migration as a problem to be solved or as a national threat. Migration is going to occur regardless of the size of a country’s border wall, the strength of its military, or the negative, nationalist attitude of its government towards migrants. Migrants need to stop being treated as legal anomalies and undesirable foreigners. The problem is not migration but how migration is perceived. Whether it be efforts at regularization in Colombia, media spectacles in Mexico, or corrupt detention centers in the U.S, national policies dealing with migration across the hemisphere have done more harm than good. Not only have they failed to stop migration as they propose but they have also caused pain and anguish to an innumerable amount of people over the years. The unfortunate aspect to all of this is that this vicious cycle shows no signs of stopping anytime soon.
However, we can begin to end this cycle by imagining a future where migrants from the Western Hemisphere are treated as people with a common hemispheric future. Imagining a future free of the negative aspects of the present requires an approach that is not born of the same national circumstances that created it. In other words, if nationalist policies are responsible for creating the causes necessary for migration to occur as well as the negative policies relating to detention, deportation, and legal ambiguity that these migrants face, then it stands to reason that we need an approach that breaks with the past and avoids repeating the same mistakes. We have to think in hemispheric terms with a hemispheric approach that promotes a hemispheric identity.
To change this situation, it is not only the U.S government that needs a change of perspective. We need to see migration as a larger process that encompasses many different factors and situations. While migration can be a choice, it is becoming more and more apparent that it can also be a symptom of a larger process of national decline. Across the hemisphere, migration is an act of desperation but also hope for many people. We need a new hemispheric perspective that views migrants from declining nation-states (such as Guatemala and Haiti) as members of a larger hemispheric family that deserve the same treatment and respect as others from more prosperous ones (such as the U.S and Canada). If the nation-state is part of the problem, then it cannot be part of the solution.
Therefore, we need to think bigger. While the construction of a hemispheric entity will take some time, a hemispheric approach to migration is more feasible in the short term. I will cover this in more detail later in Part II.
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