The Nation
(Opinion):
By Elizabeth Holtzman
February 11, 2016
As
the coauthor, with Senator Ted Kennedy, of the Refugee Act of 1980, I
am dismayed at the US government’s iron-fisted response to the refugee
crisis on our southwest
border. In the last couple of years, tens of thousands of unaccompanied
minors and women with their children have crossed our border with
Mexico. Coming from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, the so-called
Northern Triangle, these people are primarily
fleeing horrific gang violence—violence similar to that found in war
zones. In fact, Honduras has the highest homicide rate in the world,
with El Salvador not far behind. Failed government institutions,
hollowed out by decades of civil war, cannot or will
not address this violence—or the unremitting poverty that underlies it.
The
US Department of Homeland Security has responded to this crisis mostly
with harsh measures intended to deter future inflows. Initially, the DHS
jailed the Central
American refugees in immigration-detention facilities. The courts
halted that practice, since by law children must be turned over to the
Department of Health and Human Services after 72 hours for family
reunification or other arrangements. The DHS then fast-tracked
the migrants’ asylum proceedings, which provoked serious criticism from
the American Bar Association’s Commission on Immigration, among others.
Few of the migrants were represented by counsel, even though having a
lawyer makes an overwhelming difference in
the ability to obtain asylum. Just think of children and teenagers on
their own trying to master the legal intricacies of asylum
proceedings—and in a foreign language, to boot.
In
its latest move, the DHS rounded up and deported about 80 mothers and
their children, saying they were here illegally—although this
determination of “illegality” was
based on the much-criticized fast-track adjudications. The deportations
prompted protests from the Democratic presidential candidates, members
of Congress, immigration advocates, and the US Commission on Civil
Rights.
Meanwhile,
in order to keep Central American migrants as far away from the US
border as possible, the United States has pressured—as well as
paid—Mexico to close down
its own southern border and to deport any Central Americans found
making their way north. This action flies in the face of US treaty
obligations that prohibit sending refugees back to likely harm in the
countries they’ve fled. We are using Mexico to do our
dirty work.
The
pressure on Mexico did have an impact: The number of refugees seeking
admission to the United States dropped off dramatically for a while, but
late last year it began
to escalate again.
Our
asylum and refugee procedures are based on the 1980 Refugee Act. Its
background was the Vietnam War and the massive exodus of more than 1
million refugees from that
region. The law was designed to create a permanent commitment by the
United States to accept refugees for resettlement each year.
The
experience of that exodus is instructive. Hundreds of thousands of
Vietnamese refugees fled in small boats, risking their lives at sea. It
was a humanitarian crisis
of staggering proportions. The nations where these small boats
landed—countries of first asylum—were pushing the refugees back out to
sea. No long-term solution was in sight. The United States took a
leadership role in resolving the problem.
First,
we urged the countries where the boats had landed—nations like Malaysia
and Indonesia—to keep the refugees on a temporary basis, and assured
them that we’d broker
a permanent solution to resettle the refugees elsewhere. And we did.
Our success was due in part to the fact that the United States itself
accepted about a half-million refugees. I participated in that process
as chair of the House Immigration Subcommittee.
Ultimately, most of the “boat people” were resettled, in what was
probably the most successful such effort since World War II.
But
none of the lessons from this experience seem to have rubbed off.
Instead of asking the countries of first asylum to provide at least
temporary shelter for the Central
American refugees, we’re either getting Mexico to block their way or,
failing that, sending them back ourselves. Instead of seeking an
international commitment to secure this resettlement, the United States
is refusing to make any such commitment itself, much
less asking other countries to do the same. Instead of establishing the
sort of safe, orderly departure process (a process that I initiated)
that was developed to prevent Vietnamese refugees from taking to the
high seas in small boats, the United States created
a small-bore program for Central Americans that, until recently, was
absurdly limited to cases involving family reunification. Now,
thankfully, the program is being expanded, and the UN High Commissioner
for Refugees will be partially administering it.
The
mass exodus from the Northern Triangle should be one that nations of
the Western Hemisphere help to resolve—not only by accepting refugees
for resettlement, but also
by building effective government institutions in the Northern Triangle
and addressing the long-term issues of poverty there. But the United
States cannot help lead that process until we commit to doing our fair
share, not just in terms of funding but in refugee
resettlement as well.
One
ray of light is that the United States seems to have begun to
understand that the problem needs to be addressed at its source.
Congress has just provided about $750
million for programs in the Northern Triangle to halt the exodus. But
in recent years, the United States has had a very poor record of
nation-building. Our government needs to call on other governments,
particularly those in the region, to lend a hand in developing
effective institutions to control gangs and address poverty. We may
even need a kind of international “police force” to halt the violence.
The
United States has a particular responsibility here. After all, we
overthrew the democratically elected government of Guatemala in 1954,
which led to a cascading series
of despotic regimes, including ones that engaged in genocide against
their indigenous populations. And for decades, we propped up these
right-wing authoritarian regimes, which only perpetuated the bad
governance and grinding poverty. The United States cannot
pretend that the current conditions in the region, which have triggered
the refugee outflow, are unrelated to these long-standing policies and
practices.
After
its protracted involvement in the Vietnam War, the United States
understood that it could not turn its back on the Vietnamese refugees.
Now we need to accept that
our long and nefarious involvement in Central America has helped spawn
the present crisis—and, accordingly, that we are responsible for
extending a helping hand to the women and children who are its victims.
Turning our backs on them rejects everything that
the Refugee Act sought to accomplish, including the humanitarian values
that it enshrined in our law.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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