Tornado Alley (PROG)

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Tearex, Donald Trump’s Central America strategy is both cruel and incompetent

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Donald Trump’s antagonism toward Latin America might be gratifying to the more racist and isolationist elements of his political base, but it isn’t serving his presidency well. His administration’s policy in the region is both uncharitable and poorly co-ordinated, particularly in Mexico and Central America – and the various crackdowns it’s instigating are already having unintended consequences.

The administration’s latest victims are beneficiaries of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) coverage. TPS grants legal permission to live and work in the US, and is awarded to eligible nationals from designated countries afflicted by natural disaster and conflict. The US government first selected Central American beneficiaries of this programme in 1999, just after Hurricane Mitch .. https://www.britannica.com/event/Hurricane-Mitch .. left nearly 20,000 Central Americans dead and more than 1.5m homeless.

The Trump administration’s attitude to Central America means that thousands of people are set to lose their TPS status. Most recently, the Department of Homeland Security decided to remove Hondurans from the TPS scheme .. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/04/us/honduras-temporary-protected-status.html , meaning 86,000 Honduran nationals currently living in the US will no longer be eligible to work there. El Salvador .. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/04/intipuca-town-relies-remittances-braces-tps-180415081217131.html .. was also removed from the programme in February, meaning 200,000 Salvadorans are expected to leave the US by September 2019.

Honduras and El Salvador are among the most violent countries in the world, and their inadequate public infrastructures and faltering economies are ill-equipped to cope with hundreds of thousands of returnees. To make matters worse, 17-18% of each country’s GDP is made up of remittances .. http://www.pewhispanic.org/2017/12/07/rise-in-u-s-immigrants-from-el-salvador-guatemala-and-honduras-outpaces-growth-from-elsewhere/ .. from people working in the US. Rescinding those people’s TPS eligibility won’t help tackle the region’s instability and grinding poverty, and it certainly won’t deter Central Americans from attempting the journey north.

https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=141713823

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Why sanctuary cities must exist

By Elizabeth Allen
Sep 17, 2015 | 5:00 AM

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In the 1980s, a new sanctuary movement offered safe harbor to hundreds of people fleeing from Central American violence. La Placita, the Roman Catholic church at Olvera Street in L.A., was a major participant. A lawsuit brought by sanctuary advocates, American Baptist Churches vs. Richard Thornburgh, made it more difficult for the U.S. to base asylum decisions on foreign policy concerns rather than individuals' circumstances.

The sanctuary cities of the 2000s are part of this American tradition. Some municipalities deliberately lay claim to the title explicitly to protect immigrants. Others simply wish to avoid potential legal problems that might stem from detaining people without full authority. Many, including Los Angeles, cite the difficulty of policing the city when the undocumented are afraid any contact with the authorities could end in deportation.

Instead of attacking sanctuary cities, Congress should be listening to their message. Sanctuary cities recognize that that in most cases, deportation is the wrong punishment for illegal immigration, which is a breach of civil, not criminal, law. They understand that our laws do not adequately protect the needs of the strangers who, for the most part, have crossed the border to take work that is eagerly offered them. The sanctuary movement considers a purely bureaucratic enforcement system, which can include long detainment and judgment without jury or even a judge, as an arbitrary arm of prejudicial policy instead of just law.

No legal system can perfectly implement justice in every circumstance. Sanctuary serves now as it has in the past as a corrective and a challenge to such imperfection. We should remember that it was once a part of the law, and it remains an effective way to reform and strengthen it.

Elizabeth Allen is an associate professor of English at UC Irvine. She is at work on a book on the idea of sanctuary in medieval literature.

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-allen-sanctuary-cities-20150917-story.html