Misión Verdad Migrants from South America who undertake the march to the United States go through an extremely perilous jungle route, the narrow Darien Gap between Colombia and Panama. How many of them are children, and to what risks are they exposed? UNICEF provided the following data: So far in 2021, more than 19,000 children…
Category: REFUGEES
In Targeting Haitians, Biden May Execute the Largest Mass Expulsion of Asylum-Seekers in Recent History
Ryan Devereaux Migrants, most from Haiti, are seen at an encampment along the Del Rio International Bridge in Del Rio, Tex., on Sept. 21, 2021. Less than a year after entering office with vows to bring a new humanitarian approach to the nation’s immigration system, the Biden administration is carrying out what could be the…
US: Asylum as a Tool of Exclusion
Daniel Melo Asylum, on its face, would seem to be a word of welcome to those fleeing violence. In the US, its connotation within immigration law is tied to the acquisition of legal status, of the ability to remain, sheltered from the harm one is fleeing from. The oft-quoted lines of Emma Lazarus’s The New…
Imperialism and Immigration: The Connections We Need to Make
Abraham Márquez “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it” was the tweet birthed by billionaire Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX and CEO of Tesla Motors, July 25, in reference to the right-wing coup forced upon the Bolivian people at the hands of Wall Street. The reason? Lithium. U.S. imperial history is vast, dating…
You Can’t Go Home Again: A Convergence of Calamities
Nick Turse Record Numbers of War-Displaced to Be Dwarfed by Those Driven From Their Homes by Climate Change. I saw them for only a few seconds. One glimpse and they were gone. The young woman wore a brown headwrap, a yellow short-sleeved shirt, and a long pink, red, and blue floral-patterned skirt. She held the…
The “Nobodies” with a Human Face
Sergio Ferrari Human beings without identity or coordinates. Hidden and phantasmagoric figures scattered in all regions of the planet. Unclassified, necessary, sometimes indispensable, almost always ‘disposable’. Second-class citizens, the 272 million migrants worldwide, fuel passions and stir up xenophobic discourses with electoral calculations in much of the planetary geography. They make up a sector highly…
Whitewashing the Destruction of Libya
Nu’man Abd al-Wahid The British, both left and right, simply do not want to acknowledge the role their government played in destroying Libya and the attendant migration crises. “The destruction of Libya caused the first migration flow across the Mediterranean into Europe.” Douglas Murray’s The Strange Death of Europe identifies three waves of migration to western Europe…
Imperialist Occupation and Wars Are the Driving Force Behind the Displacement of People
Abdul Rahman In its annual “Global Trends” report released on June 18, Thursday, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) noted that the total number of displaced persons globally rose by a record 9 million in 2019. Though most of them are internally displaced, the number of people forced out of their countries, or…
Central American Migration: Causes and Challenges
Pablo Jofre Leal What drives millions of human beings to travel long distances, to cross mountains, to ford rivers, to walk in the humid heat or endure torrential rains, to leave their homes, their families, the social environment in which they live, to seek new horizons, better prospects in life? When this question is asked…
Removing References to the Arab Spring Facilitates the International Narrative on Migration and Refugees
Ramona Wadi Foreign intervention – lauded by imperialism as a necessity for “bringing democracy” – has one aspect of so-called collateral damage which is abhorred and manipulated. The invasion of the Middle East and North Africa region, as decided by the White House early on in the “War on Terror” post September 11, has generated…
ICE Deploys Paramilitary Units Against Sanctuary Cities
Daniel G. Cardwell Border Patrol Tactical Units (BORTAC) are carrying M4 rifles with silencers. In the wake of plainclothes Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents shooting an unarmed tourist from Mexico, President Donald Trump deployed a hundred members of the Border Patrol Tactical Unit (BORTAC) — the Border Patrol’s equivalent to SWAT police — to…
Families Fleeing from Guatemala: A Case of Corporate and State Aggression
Marc Pilisuk, Jennifer Rountree and Rebecca Ferencik In its attempt to stem a spike in the number of Latin American men, women, and children traveling to the U.S., an unprecedented number of them seeking asylum, the Trump administration has pushed Guatemala and other countries in the region to sign “safe third country” agreements. The U.S….
