Immigration policy halted by Texas judge

NYT

According to the New York Times, a federal judge in Texas suspended  President Obama's recent executive action on immigration.

In an order filed on Monday, the judge, Andrew S. Hanen of Federal District Court in Brownsville, prohibited the Obama administration from carrying out programs the president announced in November that would offer protection from deportation and work permits to as many as five million undocumented immigrants.

...

Some legal scholars said any order by Judge Hanen to halt the president’s actions would be quickly suspended by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans.

“Federal supremacy with respect to immigration matters makes the states a kind of interloper in disputes between the president and Congress,” said Laurence H. Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard. “They don’t have any right of their own.”

It's disappointing, of course, but this is how our system works. I'm hopeful that the Court of Appeals will rule in favor of the president's recent executive actions and that the country can then take additional steps towards enacting humane and comprehensive immigration policies.

When Mothers and Fathers Migrate North

I just finished reading "When Mothers and Fathers Migrate North: Caretakers, Children, and Child Rearing in Guatemala" by Michelle J. Moran-Taylor (gated, ungated).

A substantial portion of Guatemala's population—about 10—15 percent of a population of 12 million—emigrates to the United States. Although this northward movement has produced significant social change, few studies have examined it from the perspective of the increasing involvement of household structures in transnational migration processes. Ethnographic research focused on transnational families reveals the social relationships that develop between caregivers and children and between parents and caregivers because of the necessity for transnational migration and identifies the emotional costs of these arrangements.

While violence and economic stress are clearly contributors to the recent surge in unaccompanied minors to the US, so too is family reunification. In this article, Moran-Taylor looks at what happens when one or both parents leave their children in Guatemala to seek out a better life in the US. In many ways, it isn't pretty.

Extended family, particularly grandmother and aunt caretakers, often watch the children of those who have left for the US. The caretakers raise the kids as their own. However, the parents who have traveled to the US often don't appreciate the sacrifice that their relatives are making in caring for the children. The children, while they appreciate the caretaker immensely, still have that unbreakable bond with their parent or parents in the US.

Over time, lots of negative effects are seen. The children left behind in Guatemala become almost single-mindedly obsessed with the remittances that they receive from the US. They get upset if they are interrupted or decreased. It often becomes the only thing that they care about.

The caretakers often have trouble when the parents send for the kids that had been left in their care. They've raised them as their own for years. The caretakers often do not want to expose the children that they have cared for to the dangers of the journey north through Mexico. That has led to conflict between the relatives. Sometimes they have paid their own way to accompany the children to the border.

They wanted me to send her [the niece] illegally. But I didn’t want to because I knew the mishaps she could potentially endure along the way. Because you hear of so many despicable things that happen, right? When we spoke on the telephone my brother-in-law would even insult me. He would say that I didn’t want to send their child because I was taking the money, the U.S. dollars they sent. But I never took any of the money for myself. I did, however, lump it together with mine to use for the household expenses, but even that wasn’t enough. They would send me $75 each month. And with these funds, I placed my niece in a private school. My youngest son, who just turned twenty, was very distressed about this whole situation. He then decided to go there [the United States] to accompany my niece along the way and drop her off at her parents’ house in Arizona. So now, there she is.

Since her arrival over there [Phoenix], my sister and her husband don’t even write to me—and they don’t even want my niece to have anything to do with us. My husband now tells me: ‘you see… since you raised her, they don’t even want anything to do with you now.’ But my little niece still keeps in touch—she calls me when they [the parents] are not around. Her father, though, always tells her that she needs to forget about us altogether. After children who have been cared for leave for the US, the remittances to the caretaker (the grandmother or grandmother-in-law, sister, sometimes friend) end abruptly. They might have sent a few hundred dollars a month to an aunt to take care of their nieces and nephews but once the kids are no longer in their care, the relationship ends. 

There are a great number of actual family scenarios described in this 2008 article, most of them negative.

Catching up with Central America

Pablo Lastra has a good post on Who Counts as a Refugee in US Immigration Policy—and Who Doesn’t for The Nation. He surveys some of the keys changes to US immigration law over the last thirty years as well as the multiple reasons why people from Central America are fleeing the region for the US and elsewhere.

Recent commentary on the border crisis has tended to caricature the reasons people migrate—It’s the violence. It’s jobs. It’s the permisos. In reality, people’s reasons are complex and multiple. Maria, for instance, was seeking economic opportunity, but she was also fleeing her partner’s abuse, and the looming threat of retribution by the gang if she couldn’t keep up with her “rent” payments. In Giovani’s case, he needed protection that his government and his father could not provide, but he also missed his mom; they hadn’t seen each other in almost half a decade.

And here are a few other articles held up in draft form these last few weeks.

Tim Johnson goes back to U.S. export: Central America’s gang problem began in Los Angeles. I'd say that the only thing that he left out was that California began deporting Central Americans en masse following the Rodney King riots. It's not clear that the federal government would have adopted this approach a few years later had it not been for those riots.

Gabriel Stargardter has another really good piece on E-coyotes use Facebook to track the people they’re smuggling into U.S.

Carlos Rosales looks at El Salvador's gang problem: the truth behind the truce.

Deborah Levenson writes about The Little Veins of Central America 

The untold history of unaccompanied minors

Fusion has an interesting video collection of The untold history of unaccompanied minors.

We talked to 11 scholars and activists who think the United States, a self-professed nation of immigrants, does have a moral obligation to provide asylum to Central American minors, many of whom — experts argue — are fleeing violence that resulted from U.S. foreign policy.

The clips include opinions from Leisy Abrego and Dana Frank as well as several non-academics.

A busy few weeks to cover Central America

Good morning everybody. I'm still trying to catch up on all the news as I was down in New York and at the Bronx Zoo this weekend. I know I connected with a number of new followers on Twitter within the last few weeks (thanks @incakolanews!). If you'd like to know more about me, you can read this post from last year as well as the links above to my scholarship and public writing. And now to some links.

NPR's Carrie Kahn takes a look at what is being done to tackle coffee rust which is devastating Central American coffee production. US AID as well as Starbucks and other private companies are spending millions of dollars to help Central American producers to save the coffee crops and to overcome the fungus. As of right now, there's no solid evidence that the migrant surge is connected to coffee rust (we don't really know) but it sure seems to be affecting the decisions of some rural inhabitants to head north. In a potentially positive development, Guatemala's national coffee industry announced the existence of a coffee plant that seems to be resistant to the fungus. It's been around since 1984.

Tim has two good links. The first includes a 20-minute video on what life is like in El Salvador for young children. The second includes a variety of links to recent stories and op-eds on the surge in unaccompanied minors including the letter from those who study Central America that I posted last week. I'm with George Will - we can handle the challenge of "eight-year-old criminals with their teddy bears" without deporting them en masse back to Central America although I'm hoping that the 20 kids in each US county statement was just for dramatic effect. More trade between the US and the region and less drug consumption in the US are parts of any potential solution.

President Otto Perez Molina wants $2 billion from the US to help deal with the region's challenges. I'm not sure where he gets the $2 billion from again (unless it was just the US should spend 10% of the $20 billion that it spends on the border in Central America). OPM and Honduran President Hernandez are looking for a plan Colombia for themselves. I think that someone needs to tell OPM that he already has a bit of Plan Colombia in Guatemala. 

Colombian trainers are there working with his security forces as is Colombian Iván Velásquez Gómez who is in charge of the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG). Velásquez helped to strengthen Colombia's judicial institutions which is one of the main reasons why his country has improved so much in recent years. While in Colombia, Velásquez carried out "high-profile investigations into links between paramilitary groups and public officials." And how are he and CICIG doing in Guatemala? OPM said that his government will not extend CICIG's mandate and it is not clear at all that they have been supportive of CICIG's work to investigate the connections between organized crime and Guatemalan public officials. How about the US offer to fund CICIG for five-to-ten more years? What say you, Mr. President?

 You should also jump through to read OPM's statements about the Cold war - they are pretty laughable. 

And just a few more...Homicides are up approximately 70 percent in El Salvador...It's been a bad week for mayors (El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras)...A Nicaraguan bus driver was arrested for having possibly been involved in the recent bus attack that killed several Sandinista supporters...Some thoughts from me in this recent Washington Post article.

And what are you going to do when you go home Mr. President?

Jose Miguel Cruz has an op-ed in today's Miami Herald on The real failure in Central America while Michael Shifter has one in Politico on Central America’s Apology Tour: Latin leaders have a lot of explaining to do. Michael and Jose Miguel don't want the failure of the US to pass immigration reform or to reduce its demand for illicit drugs to distract every one's attention away from the failure of Central American political and economic elites to clean up their own houses.

Here's Dr. Cruz

In the early 1990s, far-reaching political transitions, wrought by successful peace agreements, created expectations that these poverty-stricken countries would somehow flourish as vibrant democracies and thriving market economies.

Since then, the international community and, especially, the United States have spent billions of dollars trying to strengthen national and regional institutions in Central America in an effort to create the conditions for rule of law and democracy. Data collected by the Washington Office on Latin America show that, since 2003, international cooperation in citizen security programs in Central America has amounted to over $1.7 billion, with the United States providing the lion’s share, more than 36 percent of the assistance.

But, as it has turned out, things have gone hopelessly awry. Part of the problem centers on how these reforms were implemented, as local elites maneuvered to promote old-regime security operators at the helm of law-enforcement institutions. Many of those officials were already implicated in abuses and illegal activities.

And Mr. Shifter

Still, Central American leaders are hardly blameless. The Obama administration is right to urge them to more seriously tackle domestic challenges, including corruption, which is pervasive and shows few signs of abating. Central Americans in positions of power have not done nearly enough to advance the rule of law, promote economic opportunities and help construct a decent life for their poorest citizens. Guatemala’s notably low tax burden, at just over 11 percent, is often cited to illustrate the failure of the country’s most well-to-do to assume their responsibility to finance basic public services. Some voices in the private sector are calling for higher income taxes, but progress has been disappointing and resistance remains enormous. With few exceptions, political figures and public officials have stood in the way of dealing with the spreading criminality, proliferation of gangs and penetration of organized crime in all institutions. Gangs are more common in El Salvador and Honduras; corruption stemming from the drug trade paralyzes Honduras and Guatemala. Since 2012, more than 200 police officers in Guatemala have been purged and are awaiting trial for their collusion with criminal organizations.

While the presidents of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala travel to the White House today to lobby President Obama for greater assistance in dealing with the exodus and forced return of their region's youth, the US should not be afraid to ask - "What are you going to do yourselves?"

Here are some of the issues that President Obama might discuss with Guatemalan President Perez Molina that I came up with somewhat tongue-in-cheek last month.

Scholars of Central America reach out to White House on unaccompanied minors

I am one of 650+ Central Americanists who signed this letter to President Obama regarding our treatment of unaccompanied minors. Here is the letter. You can follow the link to see the signatures.

July 22, 2014

Dear Mr. President:

As scholars of Central America and migration who are familiar with the conditions that cause so many children to flee their homelands, and mindful of the historical relationship between the United States and this region, we call on your administration to treat the “unaccompanied minors” at the border as refugees who are deserving of protection, due process, and humane treatment. We ask that they have access to legal representation by volunteer or government­ funded lawyers, in order for them to be reunited with relatives. Young migrants arriving from the Northern Triangle—Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras—face real and credible threats to their lives and safety in their hometowns. Further, many of them already have parents or other relatives living and working in the United States. Both the conditions of extreme insecurity in their homelands and the hardships of family separation dictate that these youth should be reunited with family members in the U.S. as swiftly as possible.

The extreme violence and economic insecurity in Central America, as well as the role of migration as a survival strategy, have deep and well­ documented roots. The migration of children and youth from Central America is not new. Extortion and death threats from street gangs (some of which have their roots in Los Angeles) or organized criminals with ties to security forces have caused internal displacement and international migration for more than a decade. The local police cannot be trusted to protect these vulnerable communities and, indeed, are often part of the problem. While U.S. politicians apparently see this as a security problem for the U.S., to be resolved with more walls and detention centers, those who are truly living in insecurity and vulnerability are Salvadorans, Hondurans and Guatemalans.

Young people whose parents migrated earlier in search of economic survival are especially vulnerable. Public schools, which should provide safety and opportunity for local youth, are often avenues of gang recruitment. In El Salvador, our research shows, youth gangs within the public high schools are connected to one of the larger street gangs, either the 18th Street (Calle 18) or Mara Salvatrucha (or MS­13). Students who graduate from these institutes are regularly expected to join their respective gangs; those who refuse are threatened and some killed. In Guatemala, we have seen that those with migrant relatives are frequently targets for extortion. Indeed, migration often begins internally, as young people flee their homes to escape such threats. But it can be nearly impossible to escape the threats and assaults. The extortionists and gangs are present throughout all three countries, and local gang cliques can be linked to national and sometimes even transnational criminal networks; frequently, finding a job or even working as a vendor involves paying “rent” to the gangs. Without economic options, police protection, or basic public services, eventually many people see migration beyond national borders as the only option. While Costa Rica and México have also received an increase of asylum ­seekers from this region, the vast majority has come to the United States, where family ties and historical geopolitical relationships have made migration trajectories all but inevitable. Child testimonies reported recently in the media echo our long ­term research findings: these young people fear violence and hope to reunite with family members. Deportation would send many of them back to almost certain death and further destabilize the region, ultimately triggering more migration.

We want to emphasize that the United States is complicit in the conditions that cause so many to migrate. The reasons are many: U.S. historical support for military dictatorships and regimes of violence in the region; its promotion of free trade agreements and economic policies that have undermined subsistence agriculture and eroded public services, and its increasingly harsh immigration policies and practices that have separated families and deported too many whose livelihoods and security were in the United States. We have an opportunity and a responsibility now to make up for some past mistakes by offering humane treatment and consideration to the new arrivals and swiftly reuniting them with their family members.

SIGNED (Friday, July 18, 2014­ - Tuesday, July 22, 2014)

How did I miss the unaccompanied minors story?

One of the many things that has bothered me about the crisis of unaccompanied minors on the border is that I totally missed the story as the number of young people from Central America exploded over the last two-plus years. President Obama was warned over a year ago and frankly others have been warning about the number of children and Central Americans for quite some time yet the story wasn't on my radar.

One of the reasons is that I don't focus on immigration and the border very often. When I do write about immigration, I tend to focus on Temporary Protected Status for Guatemalans, support for comprehensive immigration reform, and the record number of undocumented immigrants that the US have been deported under President Obama.

Overall immigration apprehensions have been down and even some of the estimates from El Salvador that I would hear showed the same trend. People used to say that 800 people were leaving each day but more recently I would hear that only 500 people were leaving each day.

Second, while the Northern Triangle remains a very violent region, homicides rates have decreased in each country the last two years, four in Guatemala. It is possible that Guatemala finishes 2014 with a rate of 30 per 100,000 which would put its rate on a level with every one's success story - Colombia.

But there's a lack of trust in homicide rates and an understanding that violence is much more than homicides. So I decided to look through LAPOP's survey results from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. These are from 2012 surveys so we don't have 2013 or 2014 here.

Salvadorans have high levels of insecurity but perceptions of insecurity improved from 2010 to 2012. El Salvador has intermediate levels of crime victimization for the entire region. Seventeen percent of Salvadorans surveyed were direct victims of crime, while 28.5% of households reported some person who was victimized within the past year - about the regional average. Self-reported levels of personal victimization also improved between 2010 and 2012.

Self-reported crime victimization also decreased in Guatemala over the same two-year period - 23% to 21% for personal victimization - although the change is not statistically significant. Even optimism about the economy improved from 41.6 to 45.3!

In Honduras, perceptions of insecurity improved perceptions of insecurity improved from 34 to 32.1 between 2010 and 2012 - at exactly the same time that the murder rate was taking off.

What can explain the reduction in the perception of insecurity in spite of the increase of crime in the country? A possible reason is reflected in the changes in principal problems of the country identified by Hondurans. In Figure 66 we can see that between 2008 and 2010 the economic crisis dominated the perceptions of Hondurans as the most serious problem facing the country. The political crisis of 2009 and the political and institutional problems that were the root of the crisis are what received most mentions in 2012. Therefore, despite the elevated levels of crime, political and economic problems are those that were emphasized with most frequency by Hondurans. We think that this distribution of problems can explain why levels of perception of insecurity has decreased and is below countries with lower levels of violence. 

However, unlike Guatemala and El Salvador, crime victimization worsened in Honduras between 2010 and 2012 from 14% to 18.9%. It is interesting to note that self-reported crime victimization is still below its height in 2006 when it reached 19.2% (probably no statistical difference but...).

Crime and the economy are motivating people from Central America to leave the region and, in most cases, go to the US. However, the link is not straightforward. And at the same time that murder rates and self-reported victims of crime improved except for Honduras.

It gets even more interesting when you factor in that fewer people stated an intention to leave their country and migrate between 2010 and 2012. If intentions were decreasing into 2012, why did larger numbers of unaccompanied minors and families increase so dramatically later that year and the next one and into 2014? That seems to be where US policy comes into play.

How could family reunification feed youth into gangs, even if both immigrant parents are working?

Middlebury's David Stoll published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on the costs and benefits of immigration between Guatemala and the United States last week which I commented on here. He brought up some good points on the downside to remittances and family reunification that often go unmentioned in the press but that are part of the academic conversation that has been taking place. He sent along some comments to my questions which he has generously allowed me to share with you.

Mike, thanks for your observations.  You ask, how could family reunification feed youth into gangs, even if both immigrant parents are working?

My reference to downward mobility could have used a bit more explanation.

The best ethnography I’ve seen on this point is Robert Smith's Mexican New York.  It’s about a Mexican migration stream, from Puebla to the Bronx, with far more legal status than the Guatemalans with whom I work.

While a stateside working couple’s son is still in Mexico, being cared for by his grandparents and receiving remittances in Mexico, he’s at the top of the consumption pyramid for the small town where he lives.  Once reunited with his parents in the Bronx, he’s living in a leaky basement with parents who are too busy working to make ends meet for anything else.  And of course their meager wages-even two wages in New York's heavily informalized service economy- have very little purchasing power.  So that’s downward mobility in terms of what his parents’ wages can buy. Then there's the problem of how the little guy makes it down the street without being challenged by other young neighborhood males.

As for humanitarian advocacy, my objection is that it can be extended to most of the population of the Third World.  If "57,000 helpless children" (to quote the NYT editorial board yesterday) each deserve a lawyer, a court hearing, time to prepare their case, and therefore provisional legal status in the U.S., then so does every other under-18er in Central America whose parents can pay to get him to the U.S. border.   This amounts to a humanitarian rationale for opening the U.S. labor market to any family who is sufficiently desperate or bold to borrow the money needed to pay human smugglers.

This is not to deny the existence of genuine refugees from gang violence who need our help. But how to pick them out of the surge of youth labor migration which, as far as I can see, probably constitute the bulk of the youth surge.

I'd like to thank David for the comments. 

Despite U.S. Efforts, Root Causes of Migration Prevail in Central America

I have a new briefing in the World Politics Review this morning entitled Despite U.S. Efforts, Root Causes of Migration Crisis Prevail in Central America (I would add U.S. and Central American Efforts). Here's the conclusion

While investing more resources in the region might reduce the number of individuals traveling to the U.S., it is unclear that this will be enough to significantly alter the pressures that are compelling people to leave. Approximately 4 million people of Salvadoran, Honduran and Guatemalan descent live in the U.S., and the remittances they send home comprise 15-20 percent of each country’s GDP and help millions avoid or survive poverty. Not too long ago, the goal of many of them was to earn enough money in the U.S. to be able to one day return home, buy a house, start a business and retire somewhat comfortably. It seems that might no longer be the case. The poor economic and security conditions have deterred many from returning. Instead, parents living in the U.S. are paying for their children and spouses to travel north for family reunification.

Economic and family reunification pressures are not going to become any less important over the coming years, as drug trafficking, gang violence and organized crime continue to overwhelm the already weak and corrupt police forces and governments in all three countries. Citizens can trust neither the criminals nor the state. Sending their children on the dangerous journey north might not be their first choice, but the alternatives are no less daunting.

The US and our Central American partners have been working for decades to improve conditions in the region. However, it is clear that the resources that we have committed have not been enough (money, people, high-level attention) and some have been counterproductive (mano dura, perhaps DR-CAFTA, an escalation of the drug war, failure to reverse the 2009 coup).

Some see improving conditions as a moral issue to make up for past US involvement; others to stem the flow of immigration; and and others to tackle the root causes of violence - but I am not sure that there are many people who are not interested in improving the region's conditions. Obviously, though, there is a lot of disagreement over how to improve those conditions.

We need to work together to strengthen democracy, emphasize job creation and sustainable development, increase investment in basic social needs, make illicit drug consumption less violent, and provide a reasonable, safe way for people to come and go between the US and the Northern Triangle for family and work reasons.

You can read the Briefing here.

Questionable Compassion for Child Immigrants - Colbert Report

From last night's Colbert Report - Questionable Compassion for Child Immigrants for child refugees from "Guatemala, Honduras, and El Diablo."

The Colbert Report
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Should the US deport unaccompanied minors?

I have a new post up at Al Jazeera on Should the US deport unaccompanied minors? Let's just say that I answer "no" and that we should look to big picture items to manage the flow of people between Central American and the United States. Here's the concluding paragraph:

The problems in Central America are immense. We need to consider deepening our already close economic relations, craft policies that facilitate migration between the US and the region, jointly invest billions of dollars in development projects, and enact drug policy reforms. I am afraid reforms short of these will probably just help at the margins. 

Basically, I went with more freedom. The US and Central America, as well as Mexico, should look to policies that give Central Americans more freedom to move in search of labor. We should design policies that allow people to move more freely in search of family. Approximately four million people of Salvadoran, Guatemalan and Honduran descent live in the US while only thirty million remain in the region. Economic and family reunification pressures are not going to become any less important over the coming years. Finally, we need to tackle regional drug policy and give people more freedom to access what is today an ultra-violent, multi-billion dollar corrosive industry.

I don't see all these reforms happening overnight but I do see the US, Mexico, and Central America becoming more fully integrated in the future, let's say by 2050 or 2100.

It was a difficult op-ed to write. There were so many ways to go addressing the current crisis. At one point, my submission was over 1,800 words before I managed to bring it back to 1,203. Obviously, there was a lot of material left on the cutting wrong floor.

Immigration and family reunification aren't all they are cracked up to be

David Stoll has a good contribution to the unaccompanied minors debate over at the Wall Street Journal (h/t @mdmcdonald) with The Economics Behind the Border Pile-Up. I don't think that the title accurately covers all David writes about in the piece but economic motivations/disruptions is certainly part of it. 

For the most part, David wants us to include a discussion of the negative consequences that the movement of people from Central America to the US causes back in the region. There is inflation as the remittances sent home really distort local economies and there is the break up of families as men often head north leaving wives and children behind. Even family reunification in the US runs its own risks.

In the Guatemalan town where I do research, approximately 20% of the working-age male population has departed for the U.S. Some men are paragons and send home every dollar they can. Thanks to their remittances, some children eat better, are better clothed and schooled. But remittances are never a secure income stream, and not merely because of U.S. deportation policies. Many migrants fail to find steady work. Some fall victim to cheap beer and other amusements. The longer they stay in the U.S., the more likely they are to start a second family.

One way to hold the original family together is for the mother and children to come north. But family reunification is no panacea even when it can be done legally. When an earner remits to his wife and children in Central America, the money goes much further than it does in the U.S. Once everyone reaches El Norte, even two parents working for the minimum wage may not be able to support a family. So their children get an education in downward mobility and relative deprivation, which is one reason immigrants brought here as boys run a high risk of being sucked into gangs.

David's work is mostly in Nebaj (here's an earlier post from David on Migration from Nebaj) where gang violence is less of a motivation for those leaving than economic necessity and family reunification. That is somewhat consistent with DHS reports of economic motivations causing people to flee from Guatemala and gang motivations causing people to flee from El Salvador and Honduras. Given that is the case, I'd be careful how much to generalize from Nebaj to the entire Central American experience.

It is important to add to the entire immigration narrative that successful (divided families, remittances that distort local economies) and unsuccessful (injury, death, crushing debt) migration to the US both cause problems back in Central America. Just like there are positive and negative consequences from documented and undocumented migration in the US, the same is true for the effect on the towns/countries from which the migrants came.

However, I'm not aware of the evidence that two working immigrant parents makes matters worse for the entire family in the US (see paragraph two above) - increased poverty in absolute and relative terms and a greater likelihood that your children will join gangs in the US. That is what he says, right? If he arguing that family reunification is worse than just having one family member in the US sending money back to Guatemala? It's plausible and it's not my research area but it just doesn't entirely sound right to me.

Was it really necessary to bash immigrant rights activists?

Immigrant-rights activists insist that unauthorized border-crossers are victims of human-rights abuses. If migrants have not been victimized by their countries of origin, the argument goes, they must have been victimized by U.S. border agents' attempt to stop them. Advocates also argue that migrants have been displaced by wrongheaded U.S. policies, such as supporting dictatorships or free trade, so the U.S. has a moral obligation to accept them.

Look, I don't always agree with the activist left but this seemed unnecessary to the overall theme of the op-ed. Immigration often causes problems that goes unnoticed in the media and family reunification might not be the panacea that some hope it to be. It seemed an unnecessary cheap shot (not that I haven't been guilty myself).

Anyway, it's another unique contribution to the public immigration debate.

Decreasing homicide rates lead to surge in unaccompanied minors?

Obviously, violence is one of the main causes of why so many unaccompanied minors and families are escaping the Northern Triangle to neighboring countries and the United States. However, I'm skeptical of those who have been citing homicide statistics to demonstrate their point.

Guatemala has seen four consecutive years of decreasing homicide rates. Last year's decrease, however, is the result of population growth (total homicides were higher). Last I read, murders are down nearly 10 percent this year.

El Salvador has had two consecutive years of lower murder rates bringing its rate down from ~70 to ~40 per 100,000. I get the increasing impression that the number for the last two years was higher than reported given the reported increase in disappearances but not enough disappearances to bring the number to higher than what it was in 2011 (when there were still disappearances but no one was paying much attention). And 2014 isn't looking too good.

Honduras' homicide rate is in another league compared to its neighbors as it is somewhere between 80 and 90. However, last year's rate seems to have been slightly lower than 2012 and this year is looking better than last.

en Honduras también está bajando la violencia homicida! pic.twitter.com/j0rIAg7IQj
— Carlos Mendoza (@camendoza72) July 7, 2014

The homicide rates are approximate. There is some discrepancy over how to determine what is a homicide versus some other type of violent death in each country. There are individuals who are disappeared and sometimes presumed murdered but are not included in statistics. And international and domestic institutions use different population estimates. These all affect the homicide rates. However, in none of the three countries does a recent spike in homicide rates explain the spike in unaccompanied minors.

I'd also say its better to look at homicide stats broken down geographically anyway. Seventy-nine out of El Salvador's 262 municipalities had experienced ZERO homicides as of a few weeks ago. That's 30% of the country's municipalities. And in Guatemala, 126 out of its 333 municipalities had experienced ZERO homicides as of the end of April. That's 38% of the country's municipalities (follow @camendoza72 who reports on crime trends). If homicides are causing people to flee, we would want to see a relationship at the municipal or departmental level rather than just compared to similarly poor Nicaragua.

And if a surge in homicides was causing the surge in unaccompanied minors, we would have expected the flood years ago (unless this is something of a lagged effect). Here is the regional homicide rate over time thanks to Carlos Mendoza. Murders increased following the adoption of mano dura policies and the increase in drug trafficking throughout the region.

Again, violence is a strong cause of the "surge" (don't you hate that word, I just think of Iraq). However, the correlation with increasing homicide rates doesn't work. I'd focus more on reported forced gang recruitment and extortion figures (these numbers are even shakier), crime victimization surveys, lost hope, family reunification pressures, rumors, and the list goes on and on.

How many unaccompanied minors from Central America?

In December I wrote that over 50,000 Guatemalans were deported from the US in 2013. That was a 25% increase over 2012. Another ~30,000 were returned to Guatemala via land presumably after having been picked up somewhere in Mexico. However, that number was approximately  10,000 less than 2012. So if the numbers are correct, the number of Guatemalans sent back from Mexico and the US combined in 2013 was the same as 2012.

I do wonder whether some of the same accounting methods are in play when counting the number of unaccompanied minors picked up across the US border. The numbers are probably up but they are also up because the Mexican authorities did a poorer job stopping migrants from getting across its northern border.

It's still a crisis that needs to be managed in the short- and long-term but what do you think? Has anyone looked at the combined number of unaccompanied minors caught in the US and Mexico?

Center for American Progress' 5 Things You Need to Know About Unaccompanied Children

Philip E. Wolgin, a Senior Policy Analyst for Immigration at the Center for American Progress and Angela Maria Kelley, the Vice President for Immigration Policy at CAP as well, have a good overview on 5 Things You Need to Know About Unaccompanied Children. I put some comments in parentheses.

1. Violence is causing these children to flee: "Interviewing more than 400 unaccompanied minors, researchers found that many of them had fled forcible ‘join or die’ gang recruitment or gang threats against themselves and their families." (Of course. However, the increase in unaccompanied minors began in 2012 - another year in which the murder rate decreased in Guatemala and was cut nearly in half in El Salvador. I don't quite see a sharp increase in violence in 2011 or 2012 that would explain the sharp increase in unaccompanied minors.)

2. Smugglers and traffickers prey on these children, who are increasingly younger and female: "While some of these children do have relatives in the United States, reuniting with family was the primary goal for less than one-third according to researcher Elizabeth Kennedy." (Smugglers and human traffickers are encouraging the migration of the region's youth. Over 90 percent of the children have family members in the US. However, when asked only one-third or so say that family reunification is a reason for emigrating. The violence in Central America is bad and there is no need to minimize it. However, I wouldn't take the escaping violence number at face value compared to the family reunification. I don't think that there is much of a question that youth migrating to the US get treated differently if they say that they are escaping recruitment into gang violence (asylum worthy) versus family reunification.)

3. This is a regional crisis. "According to the UNHCR, asylum requests from Honduran, El Salvadoran, and Guatemalan nationals have increased 712 percent in the neighboring nations of Mexico, Panama, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Belize since 2009."

4. There are no free passes into the United States as unaccompanied minors can be deported. "...every child who arrives in the United States is put into deportation proceedings. They are not given a green card or granted any kind of legal status."

5. Some in Congress are playing politics with a humanitarian issue." The uptick in the number of children fleeing for their lives began well before DACA’s creation and has been due solely to their exodus from the violence-stricken countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras." (I don't think that there's too much evidence for this statement. The following chart from Mother Jones shows that the surge in unaccompanied minors from Central America was flat from 2008 through the end of 2010 before increasing in 2011. Yes, that was months before DACA's creation but the surge in unaccompanied minors seems to be relatively recent and not driven by a surge in violence.

The authors are correct in arguing that we need to work on both short- and long-term solutions although they really only focus on the short-term. As I said the other day, we need to be thinking in terms of decades. However, I'm not that optimistic (I'm still trying to be) that things are going to get too much better until the US reforms its immigration laws to facilitate the freer movement of people from the region and supports some form of drug reform and the Central American governments somehow surprise us with good governance and an economic plan.

Biden to travel to Guatemala to discuss humanitarian crisis

The White House has announced that Vice President Joe Biden will travel to Guatemala this week to discuss the recent drastic surge in unaccompanied minors traveling from the region to the United States. He will meet with presidents Otto Perez Molina and Salvador Sanchez Ceren (it appears) as well as a high-level representative from Honduras.

Vice President Joe Biden will head to Guatemala this week to make it clear that unaccompanied children flooding into the U.S. from Central America are not eligible for a path to citizenship and may be subject to deportation.

...

A senior White House official attributed the flood of children to violence and a lack of economic opportunity in the region. But the official acknowledged there also is a "misperception of US immigration policy."

The official, who spoke on a condition of anonymity to discuss Biden's upcoming trip, said the children are not subject to President Obama's decision in 2012 to allow some undocumented immigrants who came to America as minors to defer deportation. It only applies to children brought to the US as minors before June 2007 -- but critics have pointed to the policy as a lure for some immmigrants.

In a related story Shannon O'Neill argues that Immigration Reform Is Dead, Precisely When We Need It Most at Foreign Policy.

These children's desperation also comes in part from other aspects of our broken immigration system. The hardening of the border -- doubling the boots on the ground and the Border Patrol's budget over the last decade -- has made it both more expensive and more dangerous to cross into the United States. This has meant that many undocumented migrants in the United States instead stay, or stay longer, putting down roots rather than continuing a more traditional pattern of coming and going that scholars dub circular migration. Now here for the longer term, they want their loved ones beside them.

Fox News Latino also has a story on Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez blaming the US for the crisis because of its weak immigration laws, weak drug laws, and lack of assistance to Honduras and Central America - you know, Honduras is fighting the good fight all on its own. At least, that's the content of the entire story.

I'm not sure how effective Biden is going to be at changing peoples' perceptions about what will happen to unaccompanied minors should they reach the US. All that I read is that it is nearly impossible to reverse such misconceptions.

Central American youth migrants

Tim has a good overview of what we think is happening surrounding the flood of Central American youth migrants northward.

Youth minors from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras are increasingly being apprehended at the US southern border. Obviously, unaccompanied minors are heading north for a variety of reasons - little economic opportunity in the region, violence and the threat of violence, one or more parents already live in the US, and the perception that the minors will receive preferential treatment if/when captured in the US.

One related reason that I heard on TV the other night was that coyotes were making a sales pitch to their potential customers. They were telling Central Americans that now might be their last best time to send their children to the US. Even though the minors won't be able to take advantage of last year's Senate immigration bill or from Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, coyotes might be telling Central Americans the opposite.

Here's what President Salvador Sanchez Ceren said during his inauguration:

Quoting Pope Francis on his recent trip to Brazil, he urged El Salvador’s youth, “not to be afraid to dream big.” Young adults are one of the country’s largest demographics; nearly 50% of the population is under the age of 24, due in part to high migration rates out of El Salvador. “To the youth: I invite you to be participants in this government. Not only because you are the present and the future but because you should be the dynamic force in the work of public policy. The well-being of the children and the youth is the well-being of all of society, ” said Sánchez Cerén.

And just the other day, Sanchez Ceren said that his government will prosecute coyotes involved in taking Salvadorans north and provide opportunities so that they do not feel that they will have to leave the country.

We are nearly twenty-five years into the end of the region's Cold War conflicts and thousands of Central Americans still need to leave their homes each day in search of safety, opportunity and family in the US. Some minor reforms might make things better but until the US seriously reforms its immigration laws to facilitate the freer movement of people from Mexico and Central America to the US and supports some form of drug decriminalization and/or regulation and the Central American governments somehow surprise us with good governance and an economic plan, I'm just not optimistic that things are going to get much better anytime soon. Ask me again in ten or twenty years.

“If you gave a false name in the U.S., please try to remember what it was.”

Want to know what happens to the 50,000 Guatemalans deported from the US? Plaza Publica's Alejandro Perez has had his article Bittersweet Welcome: The Ceaseless Cycle of Deportations from the US to Guatemala translated to English.

The tide of Guatemalan deportations from the United States is not dropping. What choices do returnees have? What attention do they receive? Public agencies, businesses and migrant organizations search jointly for alternatives but nothing seems enough to change the situation that made them first risk their lives in search of work.

While the number of Guatemalans repatriated from the US increased by 25% in 2013, it doesn't look like the total repatriated from Mexico and the US combined changed at all. See my post from December on Guatemalan deportees exceed 50,000 in 2013.

Sacrificing Families: Navigating Laws, Labor, and Love Across Borders

I'd like to bring your attention to a new book by Leisy J. Abrego, assistant professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies at UCLA.

Soon to be released by Stanford University Press, Sacrificing Families: Navigating Laws, Labor, and Love Across Borders, is about the experiences and well-being of Salvadoran transnational families. The author, Leisy Abrego, an assistant professor at UCLA, interviewed 130 members of these families -- including immigrant mothers and fathers in Los Angeles and young adult children of migrants in El Salvador. Relying heavily on the voices of her respondents, she compares their experiences to reveal the hardships and inequalities they live through. Contrary to popular assumptions about transnational families, she demonstrates that not all are doing well financially and most suffer emotionally through the separation to different degrees. Her analysis highlights the powerful role of U.S. foreign and immigration policies in creating the need for migration and shaping migrants' well-being. 

The chapters explore the reasons people left El Salvador, tying individual experiences to broader military, political, and economic policies supported by the United States government. They provide details about the difficulty of getting a U.S. visa and the increasing violence that unauthorized migrants face while in transit. Chapters also explore the different social expectations and legal possibilities that frame migrants' remitting behaviors. 

Trained as a sociologist, the author is a member of the 1.5 generation -- born in El Salvador, but raised in the United States. She is deeply familiar with the lived realities of the Salvadoran community in Los Angeles and in El Salvador and therefore brings a level of sensitivity to the topic, to balance out the numbers and figures that predominate in public discourse about transnational families.

You can purchase the book here and here.

You can also follow Leisy on Twitter at @AbregoLeisy.