Moving Beyond Immigration Reform: A Call for Social Inclusion and to Change U.S. Foreign Policy

Abstract

Moving Beyond Immigration Reform:A Call for Social Inclusion and to Change U.S. Foreign Policy Esther Portillo-Gonzales1 (bio) During the Summer of 2014 we witnessed the dramatic and heartbreaking images of unaccompanied children and entire families from Central America turning themselves in to the U.S. Border Patrol. Most did so citing persecution by criminal organizations, which are a product of the U.S. Drug War in Mexico and Central America, as well as inhumane immigration policies, and decades of U.S. intervention in those countries. These migrants are pleading for asylum from the U.S. government and rightly so. Violence has rapidly spread in Mexico since 2008: over 100,000 people have been murdered and 25,000 disappeared.2 In Honduras between 2008 and 2012, the homicide rate went from 58 to 85 murders per 100,000 residents, making it the country with the highest murder rate in the world. And since the 2009 coup, femicides, the targeted killing of women, have increased by 62%.3 In Guatemala, femicides went from 213 reported in 2000 to 707 in 2012.4 The highest rate of femicide in the world is in El Salvador, where 12 women out of 100,000 are murdered.5 The increase in femicides in Central America explains why migrant women are making the journey to the U.S. alone or with their children. Despite mounting evidence that its policies fuel migration, the U.S. denies over 90% of asylum claims from Mexicans and Central Americans.6 Violence in Mexico and Central America is directly linked to the U.S.-led war on drugs and the logic of neoliberalism.7 The U.S. is directly implicated in this violence. Since 2008, it has spent $800 million on the Central America Regional Security Initiative (CARSI) and $2.4 billion on the security cooperation agreement, Plan Mérida.8 As a result of this aid, violence has only escalated and criminal organizations have become more powerful, better organized, and linked to corrupt government forces. Recently at a Central American regional forum, U.S. Vice President Joe (Joseph) Biden announced more support for military and public security forces and called for the consolidation of trade pacts such as the trade agreement DR-CAFTA to address development.9 While experts contend that corrupt security forces have eroded the human rights of its citizens, the U.S. continues to support military and security forces. The recent disappearance of 43 students in Ayotzinapa, Mexico and the bodies of many others discovered in mass graves are further evidence of indiscriminate repression against civilians at the hands of criminal organizations that collaborate with U.S. funded state forces. Despite the vast evidence of state violence in Mexico and Central America, the U.S. government has continued to systematically deport noncitizens to countries plagued by such organized violence. Under President Obama’s tenure, over two million people have been deported, including many parents of U.S. citizen children, throwing more than 5,000 children into the foster care system.10 The U.S. government incarcerates 34,000 people in privately managed immigration detention on any given day. Green card holders are mandatorily detained for past criminal convictions, deported, and barred from reentering the U.S. for at least ten years and often for life. In 2014, the practice of family detention returned to the U.S. immigration detention system, after being eliminated in 2007, and has grown by over 1,200% in the last six months.11 After hundreds of marches, sit-ins, and demands from grassroots groups, President Obama announced executive action on immigration in November 2014. The President’s executive action will not provide any form of permanent status for migrants, just temporary relief from being deported and only after taxes and fees are paid, and background checks come back clean. Executive action also calls for 20,000 more border patrol agents. There are still over six million undocumented residents who will be completely left out from any form of relief, and most of the migrants coming to the border seeking asylum will likely face mandatory detention. But most importantly, the immigration detention and deportation system will remain intact; there are...