The Trump administration doesn’t believe in the global refugee crisis
"Inside Trump’s Disastrous ‘Secret’ Drug War Plans for Central America "The Border Patrol Was Monstrous Under Obama. Imagine How Bad It Is Under Trump.""
Ever since the Holocaust, the US has been a global leader in welcoming refugees. Now, it’s withdrawing from the global community on the issue entirely.
By Dara Linddara@vox.com Updated Dec 4, 2017, 11:47am EST
[...]
The Trump administration rejects the 70-year-old moral framework behind resettling refugees in the US
When the US and other nations were confronted with the tragic consequences of their refusals to take European Jews fleeing Nazi Germany, they turned the sentiment of “never again” into a bedrock humanitarian principle: Individual nations have a moral obligation to the world’s most vulnerable — no matter where those vulnerable people are from.
[...]
At the same time, though, it’s not that the administration is soberly tallying up monetary costs and benefits of refugee resettlement and clucking its tongue because the balance ends up in the negative. It’s rejected evidence produced by the Department of Health and Human Services showing a net benefit to the economy from resettling refugees. And no one in the Trump administration has acknowledged that the stop-and-start refugee resettlement of the past several months has caused several nonprofit organizations to have to lay off American workers — and that cutting the refugee program so drastically in 2018 will likely cause many more Americans at resettlement organizations to lose their jobs.
That’s because when the Trump administration thinks about the costs to Americans imposed by refugees, it’s thinking about culture too. The discomfort felt by native-born citizens (implicitly white native-born citizens) who interact with, or even simply see, people of visibly different cultures — speaking another language or wearing distinctive clothing like the hijab — in their communities is a cost that the administration takes very seriously.
For a substantial portion of Americans, whether immigrants are “desirable” depends much less on legal status or economic qualifications than on whether they are judged culturally similar to Americans already — Christians, Europeans, English speakers — or able to assimilate easily, e.g., by being highly educated.
"Inside Trump’s Disastrous ‘Secret’ Drug War Plans for Central America "The Border Patrol Was Monstrous Under Obama. Imagine How Bad It Is Under Trump.""
June 20, 2018 7.49am AEST Updated June 21, 2018 8.50pm AEST
Donald Trump’s Central America strategy is both cruel and incompetent
"Inside Trump’s Disastrous ‘Secret’ Drug War Plans for Central America "The Border Patrol Was Monstrous Under Obama. Imagine How Bad It Is Under Trump.""
May 29, 2018 6.39pm AEST
Author Paul J. Angelo PhD Candidate, Institute of the Americas, UCL
Disclosure statement Paul J. Angelo worked as U.S. naval officer and as a political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Honduras. He is a member of the U.S. Naval Reserve. The views expressed in the piece are those of the author alone and do not represent the views of the U.S. government.
Partners University College London University College London provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation UK.
Protesting Trump in Tijuana, Mexico. EPA/Joebeth Terriquez
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.
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.
Hondurans protest the TPS suspension outside the US embassy in Tegucigalpa. EPA/Gustavo Amador
Trump has long railed against the Mexican and Central American migrant population as a breeding ground for gang activity. Last year the Justice Department declared the notorious MS-13 gang .. https://theconversation.com/ms-13-is-a-street-gang-not-a-drug-cartel-and-the-difference-matters-92702 .. a “priority” target after a spate of gruesome murders in northern Virginia and Long Island. But Washington’s efforts to reduce the threat posed by criminals from Central America will have been for naught unless it backs down from a decision to cut foreign aid to the beleaguered region.
Assistance to Mexico and Central America surged during the Obama administration, which worked hard to strengthen its neighbours’ judiciaries and reform their police forces. But things have changed. The State Department’s 2019 budget request cuts economic and security aid to Latin America by around 40% .. https://www.wola.org/analysis/white-house-budget-reveals-priorities-latin-america-massive-cutbacks-increased-deportations/ .., which would bring US assistance to the region to its lowest level since 2001.
Bad neighbour
All in all, the Trump administration’s approach to the region hearkens back to the Cold War, when the US supported Central American dictators and intervened callously in their countries’ domestic affairs.
In December 2017, Trump was among the first world leaders to recognise the re-election of Honduras’s president, Juan Orlando Hernández, which a majority of Hondurans and the Secretary General of the Organisation of American States regarded as illegitimate .. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/18/honduras-election-president-juan-orlando-hernandez-declared-winner-amid-unrest . Hernández’s conservative bent and authoritarian style have probably convinced Trump that he’ll be a reliable if undemocratic guardian of US interests, and specifically that he’ll help crack down on northbound migration. But again, the approach is clearly backfiring.
Migrants in the caravan from Central America wait to apply for asylum in the US. EPA/Joebeth Terriquez
In response, the Trump administration mobilised National Guard troops – in turn sparking outrage in Mexico. Mexican voters are historically sensitive to perceived US threats to the country’s sovereignty, and they’re also revving up for a hotly contested presidential election this July. The US’s apparent militarisation of the border has ignited a nationalist fervour, driving any number of voters to the camp of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a left-wing populist candidate who’s been leading the pack in recent polls.
An Obrador victory would almost surely result in heightened confrontation between the US and Mexico at a time when a great deal is at stake, especially the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement .. https://theconversation.com/what-if-trump-kills-nafta-remedies-for-canada-and-mexico-91129 . But whether Obrador wins or not, there’s plenty the Trump administration can do to right the ship. And high up the list is a real effort to stop arms trafficking.
Stray bullets
The US’s lax gun laws, particularly in border states, feed the very violence that migrants head northward to escape. Many critics have singled out the 2004 expiration of the US’s assault weapons ban, arguing that the subsequent resurgence in assault weapons sales has contributed to the grisly massacres and cartel brutality that spiked in Mexico and Central America over the past decade.
Under these circumstances, it’s hard to see the situation improving. Regardless of the implications of Trump’s hypothetical (and probably impossible) border wall .. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-d60acebe-2076-4bab-90b4-0e9a5f62ab12 , the illegal flow of drugs, arms, and people across the border will continue. The US’s neighbours will become ever less willing to work with Washington on pressing transnational issues. And most consequentially of all, the animosity and fear Trump has engendered on both sides of the border will continue to shape politics across the Americas long after Trump himself leaves office.