Amnesty International has published a revealing report on immigration detention centers, while Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano has ordered all raids and detentions to be stopped.
Days before U.S. president Barack Obama first visit to Mexico to negotiate for a united strategy facing common threads in both nations, while vice president Biden told Latin American leaders yesterday in Chile
"The time of the United States dictating unilaterally, the time where we only talk and don't listen is over," giving signs of a different approach of the US towards the region.
This new approach should include an immigration reform in the United States, in order to promote freedom and civil rights within this country. A humanitarian crisis among the undocumented population in the US has reached alarming levels never seeing before, and urgent actions are needed. But it also needs
a direct participation of all Latin American countries involved in this crisis.
Undocumented detained in Arizona. Photo by Hugo Polanco. February 2009.Between 12 and 15 million people in the U.S. live without access to basic human rights as true second class citizens, facing a deep crisis on health care, jobs, and housing, education and labor rights, because they lack of proper documentation.
This crisis has worsened by the current economic crisis and the anti immigrant campaigns including hate crimes, incarcerations, and deportations by the millions in the last years.
"This month I only worked twice, and I spent all my savings already. I live with four friends in this little room and I am embarrassed to ask for help. Sometimes I want to return to my country, but I don’t even have the money for a plain ticket” said to me an Indigenous worker from Peru. “Now days even to work cutting grass they ask you for legal documents, and I don’t even want to stay in the street corners because the immigration would come for me. The worst part is that my family in Peru is doing worse than me, they don’t even have food to eat."
Immigrants in the US who lack of proper documentation to work, live in a permanent state of fear, they are objects of abuse and are often underpaid in their jobs, or face human trafficking scams, while their human rights are abused even by American authorities – with the accomplice silence of the governments of their countries of origin.
The Bush legacyThe current situation of undocumented people in the US has been deteriorated tremendously by the policies of the Bush administration, which has been motivated by racism, xenophobia, and savage capitalism.
The Bush administration created a business scam for the repression, incarceration and deportation of workers – financed by billions of tax payers dollars- with the excuse of protecting national security. This has caused the destruction of thousands of families, the deportation of millions and the psychological torture and abuse of millions of people, especially from Latin America. Meanwhile, there are some people making money out of this failed immigration system, both in the US and in Latin America.
The most bizarre and brutal expression of this trend, is the anti immigrant approach of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, a racist radical from Arizona who has created special jails that are concentration camps, keeping detained immigrants as war prisoners, chained and wearing delinquents uniforms. These abuses have caused a national uproar and the US House will hold a hearing to investigate Arpaio, next month.
The role of the Latin American governments in solving this crisis is very important to protect their citizens. Incredibly, most presidents of the region, especially Felipe Calderon (Mexico), Alvaro Uribe (Colombia), Antonio Saca (El Salvador) and Alan Garcia (Peru) among others, have traveled constantly to Washington, DC to express their support to Bush and to request him for military funds and economic policies that benefit the rich elites of those countries – including failed free trade agreements.
None of those presidents have spoken out against the abuses that their fellow countrymen are facing by American authorities. This is not surprising, considering that most of Latin American governments are promoting policies that exploit their workers and keep societies are racist and abusive. Therefore, undocumented people coming to the US are escaping from their own governments policies too.
Signs of changeDifferent grass roots organizations, members of the US Congress, churches of many denominations, unions, non-profits, and community leaders from across the country are requesting the new Obama government –which faces so many problems today- in order to take action and to stop the current crisis of the undocumented population,
most of whom are Indigenous and Afro descendants of Latin America.
President Obama has shown signs that he is intending to promote a reform of the obsolete and failed immigration policy, and he has met with immigrant advocate groups and leaders. Also he has appointed people who support a reform, including
Tom Perez, who would lead the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.
Initially president Obama made a mistake by appointing
Janet Napolitano – a former Arizona governor who is known by her militarist approach to immigration- as the Homeland Security secretary. But actions from the community pushed Napolitano to recently order to
stop all planned raids against workers.
Meanwhile,
Amnesty International USA has published a report last week titled “Jailed without Justice” where states that “over 300,000 people end up in an immigration detention center every year in the United States”
"Tens of thousands of people languish in U.S. immigration detention facilities every year — including a number of U.S. citizens — without receiving a hearing to determine whether their detention is warranted. Hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars are being used to hold these people for months—sometimes years—in detention. The people detained include lawful permanent residents, undocumented immigrants, asylum seekers and survivors of torture and human trafficking."
Read the complete report here (a PDF file)
Mexico in the frontlineThe secretary of State, Hillary Clinton –whose husband the former president promoted the failed NAFTA commercial agreement that increased undocumented immigration by 10 times- said last week in Mexico that “my country hasn’t done enough to fight violence and drugs trafficking,”
Mexico is the entering point for most undocumented workers to the US, but also is where most of illegal drugs go before entering the US market. In return, 90% of guns used by Mexicans drug mafias come from the US. This is a direct result of the failed policies run by right-wing governments of both countries, in the recent years.
President Obama will travel to Mexico in the following days and he will try to create new plans with president Calderon, in order to solve the brutal violence in that country, as well as the undocumented migration and other problems that affect both nations. Many say that the US might consider a military action in Mexico in the future, something that would be very hard to achieve.
Dream ActAlso last week, the US Congress has finally accepted a bill initiative called the
DREAM Act, which would allow undocumented high school students to apply for collage education in public funded universities in the US.
Currently there are millions of undocumented students -most of them successful achievers- who can’t continue their studies for lack of proper documents. Most of them were brought to the US by their parents from Latin American countries, and have been attending American public schools.
Anyone who supports this initiative should contact your Congress member and tell them to approve this bill, which is good for the future of this country.
The odds of having successful professionals coming out of working class families, instead of delinquents or under trained workers gaining low incomes, is a win win situation for the nation.
All of these actions suggest that it’s possible that a reform of the immigration reform might occur in 2009 and perhaps passed by 2010 in the United States. These measures would include also actions to reinforce the borders security.
But the immigration reform policies should also include policies that would reduce poverty in Latin America, especially ending the neoliberal economic recipes of the Bush administration, which was supported by some allies in the region.
Mutual responsibilityYesterday I was talking to a family whose members are all undocumented –except one son that was born in the US- and who are facing deportation. They have been living in this country for over 12 years, which they consider home now. But the parents brought their children from Central America without documents, escaping poverty and violence.
The father of the family showed me a monitoring device attached to his leg by ICE as he is forbidden to leave Maryland.
"I was lucky because la Migra had me in jail only for three days" he said with tears in his eyes, "Now I can’t go anywhere until they take me to court again for a final deportation order,"
The mother is the only one working to support the whole family; the children have finished high school but can’t work nor study. “I’m afraid they join gangs” said her, before they walked into a local immigration advocate organization.
"This is a nightmare that I wish it would end, we don’t know how we are surviving, it helps a lot the support of our neighbors and organizations like this that are helping us, but we are struggling, we still have hope,"
Hope in America, is what is left for these immigrants from Latin America. If the Obama administration does what it has promised -- and helps the undocumented- once again this nation would be meeting its shared responsibility in promoting social justice in the world.
But when will be the time for
Latin American governments to do something to avoid this kind of tragedies?
The countries of the hemisphere must face their shared responsibility to stop human trafficking and illegal immigration of their population towards the US and other developed countries. It is time to ask them to take charge before this crisis gets worse, as the economy of the region slows down.
Otherwise, there will be more millions waiting for the chance to come to the US, hoping that one day a legalization process will give them a chance to become citizens of this country. They will risk their lives crossing a desert border, walking towards a country that is not the land of opportunities for all anymore.
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Kambale Musavuli is an advocate leader from Congo, the spokesperson and student coordinator for the advocacy group Friends of Congo and currently an Engineering student at North Carolina A & T University.
