Eliana and Carla, two Venezuelan sisters who came to Chile without legal documents through the border town of Colchane, complained about the lack of clear procedures to regularize their immigration status. The lack of papers causes problems when it comes to accessing healthcare and social security and to bringing children and siblings to Chile for family reunification. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

By Orlando Milesi
SANTIAGO, Mar 27 2023 (IPS)

The Chilean government tightened controls on the northern border to curtail the influx of migrants, especially Venezuelans, along a 1,030-km stretch of border with Bolivia and Peru.

Some 600 military personnel joined the police force to reinforce control, initially for a period of three months.

Left-wing President Gabriel Boric, in office for a year, visited Colchane, a small town in the Andean highlands, on Mar. 15 to talk with the 1,800 local residents, most of whom are Aymara indigenous people."It was very hard. I wouldn't want to go through that ever again. The border is very dangerous, there is tremendous insecurity. You experience hunger, cold, thirst and many other things on the journey.” -- Carla

Undocumented migrants coming to this country enter mainly through that town, triggering social tension and growing expressions of xenophobia, although also drawing shows of solidarity and support from society.

“We have decided to take responsibility for the neglect and lack of equipment and have launched a plan to improve infrastructure and living conditions on the northern border,” said the president.

He said the area was receiving “absolutely uncontrolled migration” that brought the total number of immigrants to 1.4 million, equivalent to seven percent of the current population of this long, narrow Andean country.

The military will have adequate accommodation and will be equipped with thermal cameras and satellite communication systems to double the detection capacity and monitor uncontrolled areas.

The aim, said Boric, is “to contain and reduce irregular migration, but in particular to combat criminal organizations that take advantage of these flows and of people’s needs, to commit crimes such as human, drug and arms trafficking.”

Chile’s border with Peru is 169 kilometers, and with Bolivia 861.

Boric said it was important to “not open the door to hate speech,” just days after a 22-year-old Venezuelan who was proven to be drunk was arrested and charged for allegedly running over and killing a police officer, sparking a wave of xenophobia.

The president also announced that in the next six months he would present a “national migration policy in accordance with the new challenges facing the country,” which in recent decades has become a growing destination for migrants from Bolivia, Peru and Colombia, and in the last decade for Haitians and especially Venezuelans.

Hundreds of Venezuelans gather early every day in front of the Venezuelan consulate in the municipality of Providencia, in Santiago, to apply for the documents that would allow them to move forward in the regularization of their migration status and that of their family, and make it possible for them to to legally bring in relatives. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

According to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), since 2013 more than 7.13 million people have fled Venezuela, the majority to other Latin American countries, in one of the largest international displacement crises in the world.

Minister of the Interior and Public Security Carolina Tohá confirmed that there was a list of more than 20,000 reportedly undocumented migrants to be deported.

“When President Boric took office, there were already 20,000 people facing pending deportation orders,” she said.

Two draft laws are making their way through the legislature aimed at expediting deportations for immigrants convicted of drug crimes.

The National Migration Service informed IPS that “in 2022, 1,070 people were deported, which represented a 19 percent increase from the 913 deportations carried out in 2021.”

It also stated that “of the almost 500,000 pending applications (for regularization of immigration status), in the entire year of 2022 until January 2023, more than 365,000 have received a favorable response.”

“About 265,000 involved Temporary Residence applications, which will gradually become applications for Permanent Residence,” the National Migration Service added.

Erika Vargas and José González are Venezuelan immigrants who came to Chile legally and only have to regularize their children’s citizenship status to complete the process and gain peace of mind. They said they have only suffered sporadic misunderstandings because of the use of different idioms or vocabulary. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

Marginal conditions for undocumented migrants

A survey of “campamentos”, the term given to slums in Chile, found 39,567 migrant families living in them, representing 34.7 percent of the total.

The number of migrants coming in through unauthorized border crossings has mushroomed from 2,905 in 2017, to 56,586 in 2021 and to 13,928 in the first quarter alone of 2022 – figures that do not take into account migrants under 18 years of age, according to the Catholic Jesuit Service for Migrants (SJM).

Macarena Rodriguez, chair of the SJM board of directors, told IPS that the influx of migrants through unauthorized border crossings “is not synonymous with people fleeing from justice,” but with people escaping poor life opportunities in other countries.

That is the case of two Venezuelan sisters, Eliana, 36, and Carla, 33, who have traumatic memories of their entry through Colchane, on separate trips, coming by land from Venezuela.

“I came with a ‘travel advisor’ (smuggler or coyote). In Bolivia it was complicated because of many groups that operate there. They kidnapped us in a border area. We were locked up for six or seven days waiting for that person to pay to get us released,” said Eliana.

She came to Chile in September 2021 after living in Peru for almost three years.

“We paid that person to take us to Santiago on a trip without complications. The normal journey is three to four days from Peru, but it took me 15,” she told IPS.

Carla traveled with her eight-year-old son Eduardo and arrived in Chile 15 months ago.

“It was very hard. I wouldn’t want to go through that ever again. The border is very dangerous, there is tremendous insecurity. You experience hunger, cold, thirst and many other things on the journey,” she said.

Immigrants of various nationalities go daily to the offices of the National Migration Service, on San Antonio street in Santiago, where they are attended if they have made an online appointment. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

The sisters both work in Santiago and live in a small rented room in the municipality of Quinta Normal, on the west side of the Chilean capital, for which they pay 312 dollars a month.

“It was difficult to find a school. I thought it was like in Venezuela where you just register your child with his birth certificate. But here they ask for an identity document and educational records,” said Carla, who, like her sister, only wanted to be identified by her first name.

They have both adapted, but they complain about the lack of a protocol to regularize their situation.

“I would like to stay. I am in the process of bringing my daughter, who stayed in Venezuela, but it has become very difficult because I don’t have papers,” Carla said.

“I miss my family and the beaches. I am from the East, where it’s all coastline. There are beaches and islands there, it’s spectacular,” she added.

Eliana said “Chile is a country that opens its doors. There is a lot of work. We have never experienced hunger here, or gone without a place to sleep.”

She wants to bring another sister and her three children to Chile.

“I would like to make a life here, but it is difficult without papers,” she said. “With papers it would be easier to get health coverage, for example. I tried to legalize my status, but there are many hurdles. There is no set procedure with clear steps to follow.”

Another Venezuelan Erika Vargas, 42, originally from the western Andean state of Táchira in that country, lives with her husband and four children in Rancagua, 90 kilometers south of Santiago. She came to Chile five years ago.

“My husband came a year earlier and sent me a permit to travel with the children,” she told IPS.

“We’re doing fine…the children have documents and now we are in the process of getting permanent residency,” she explained while lining up at the Venezuelan consulate in the capital.

Her husband José González, 40, came from the eastern Venezuelan state of Anzoátegui thanks to a “democracy visa” created by former President Sebastián Piñera (2018-2022).

“I’m a civil engineer and I have a degree in public accounting, and I work in logistics in a mining company,” he said. “My wife came a year ago, she works in education. We all came legally.”

González lamented that he could not practice his profession because “to get my degrees recognized I would have to pay about six million pesos (7,500 dollars).”

What the experts say

The SJM’s Macarena Rodríguez said the presence of the military in the north “is aimed at preventing or reducing the influx of people with criminal records and the entry of weapons.”

“It’s a temporary measure that will be in place as long as the military is there, but it doesn’t address the root of the problem, which is providing care for these people,” she told IPS.

According to Rodríguez, the movement of troops is designed to attack the security crisis rather than forming part of a public policy regarding mobility.

“If you came in by means of an unauthorized crossing, which is the case with the majority, you have no way to regularize your situation… it doesn’t matter if you have a work contract or ties to Chile,” she said.

Located in front of the Venezuelan consulate, in the Santiago municipality of Providencia, Rincón Venezolano offers a popular menu of typical products from that country. Venezuelan food businesses and restaurants are making their way into the landscape of the capital and other Chilean cities. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

Germán Campos-Herrera, an academic at the Diego Portales University, said the deployment of military troops forms part of “an institutional framework that guarantees that the use of firearms is restricted to cases where people’s lives are endangered.”
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He believes, however, that elements such as “a much stricter control of those who enter and leave and knowing who are the migrants who commit crimes and are in an irregular situation” are missing.

Rodríguez said “We had not experienced these levels of exodus in the region. None of the countries of the Southern Cone (of South America) have experienced this before.”

That is why Boric wants to talk with Bolivia and Venezuela and raised the issue at the 28th Ibero-American Summit, held in Santo Domingo on Mar. 24.

“There have been positive signals, from both Bolivian and Venezuelan authorities. They are willing to talk and it is an opportunity that we have to take advantage of,” said Foreign Minister Alberto van Klaveren.

“It was not a central theme of the Summit, but it was an opportunity to have contact with the authorities of both countries, express concern and make progress in a forum, towards contact and dialogue,” he added.

Thousands of undocumented immigrants await a solution to their lack of papers, and they praise positive examples, such as the Temporary Work Residence granted by Colombia.

“We could regularize ours status and contribute to the State,” commented Eliana, one of the Venezuelan sisters.

The National Migration Service told IPS that it is developing a project to connect visa applications with the National Employment Service.

“Every year there are unfilled vacancies available in agriculture, transportation or construction. With this project we not only seek to make the flow of migration more orderly but to regulate it and make our migration policy more economically rational,” the National Migration Service said.

When U.S lawmakers departed Washington for a month-long recess, they left behind a simmering debate over what to do about the tens of thousands of Central American children and adults that continue to cross the U.S. southern border.

Many potential solutions have been tabled as to how the federal government should handle the unprecedented influx. Yet these strategies, which include two proposals pending in Congress, are built on starkly differing views over why these migrants are leaving their homes in the first place.

“The question is simple,” Manuel Orozco, a senior fellow at the Inter-American Dialogue, a think tank here, told IPS. “Are people migrating because of security and opportunity, or are people migrating from danger and violence?”

Many in the Latino community are disappointed by U.S. President Barack Obama’s failure to push through comprehensive immigration reform. Credit: Valeria Fernandez/IPS

Orzoco’s field research, released this week, seems to point to the latter.

“[I]ntentional homicides emerge as a more powerful driver of international migration than human development,” his report notes, cautioning that “migrants are primarily coming from some of the most populous violent municipalities in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala.”

“They’re actually, for the most part, escaping for fear for their life,” he says, clarifying that these threats apply to both minors and adults in Central America.

Yet despite the fact that Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras – collectively known as the Northern Triangle – produce higher homicide rates than war zones such as Afghanistan or Iraq, some U.S. lawmakers doubt that this phenomenon is responsible for recent months’ mass Central American migration.

Instead, sceptics attribute the inflow of tens of thousands of migrants to President Barack Obama’s immigration policies.

For these lawmakers, then, the answer is more security at the southern border.

Indeed, this is precisely what the Republican-led House of Representatives has prioritised in its current bill worth some 700 million dollars, more than half of which would be allocated to tighten security along the southern U.S. border. The remainder would be used to accelerate deportations.

President Obama has said he would veto the bill, calling it “extreme” and “unworkable”.

Orzoco, too, considers the security-focused approach to be “myopic”. Instead, he and others say that lawmakers must focus on increasing assistance to Central America – dealing directly with the poverty and violence that appear to be spurring much of the recent influx.

“It’s good not to look just under security lines, and that we invest in real economic development while also addressing the security situation,” Adriana Beltran, a senior associate at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), a watchdog group here, told IPS.

1.3 percent

U.S. aid to Central America has historically been weak. In 2013, the region received just 1.3 percent of U.S. foreign assistance, according to a new fact sheet from the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition (USGLC), a Washington-based network of businesses and NGOs.

But the White House has put forward a proposal that would bolster Central American assistance by some 300 million dollars. Larry Knowles, a consultant with the USGLC, informed IPS of the bill’s relative breakdown.

While one third of this aid would go towards improving governance standards, including fiscal and judicial reform, another third would go towards economic development, and the remainder would be earmarked for crime-prevention efforts, youth-at-risk programmes and reintegration initiatives.

The fate of that bill remains unclear, however, as it is unlikely to pass the House of Representatives. Unlike the Senate, the House has not declared Central America’s internal strife worthy of “emergency aid appropriations”.

Still, the general thrust has received significant applause in certain quarters. The Inter-American Dialogue’s Orzoco is enthusiastic, suggesting the assistance could be used to improve Central America’s education, strengthen its labour force’s skills, and aid small businesses.

“There needs to be a much more inclusive strategy to address all of these problems,” Orzoco said.

Such analysis is also supported by Oscar Calvo-Gonzalez, chief economist for Central America at the World Bank, though he cautions that violence is “one of the many causes that drive people to move.”

Calvo-Gonzalez says that municipal-level programmes that can help the situation.

“Crime is a highly localised phenomenon, so you want to have highly localised intervention,” Calvo-Gonzales told IPS.

Economic growth in Central America must be shared, Calvo-Gonzalez emphasises, citing high inequality and “limited opportunities for advancement” as his primary concerns.

“Central America stands out as poverty has not declined consistently,” he says, “though [poverty in] the rest of Latin America has declined, Central America’s poverty is stagnant.”

He says the World Bank has been working in Central America to mobilise additional tax revenues and build the capacity of domestic governments in the region.

WOLA’s Beltran echoed the effectiveness of such a localised approach, calling in particular for greater investment in violence prevention.

“There is evidence of programmes working at the community level to address youth violence and security,” she says, citing a 40 percent  reduction in Honduras’ Santa Tecla as one such example. “Social services, the police, the church and other local bodies can come together to find a solution.”

Shared responsibility

For the Inter-American Dialogue’s Orzoco, fixing such problems is beyond the domain of the Northern Triangle and its governments. “These issues require responsibility of both Central American governments and the United States’ government,” he says.

Orzoco justifies strengthened U.S. development assistance for the region by first pointing to the shortcomings of Central American efforts, listing an ongoing lack of legislation and inadequate initiatives to “prevent the continuing outflow of kids” as examples.

“Central American governments, so far, have not been very accountable,” he says.

Orzoco also says the U.S. government has generally refused to share responsibility for Central America’s problems, despite Washington’s history of economic and political hegemony and interventions in the region. He points, for instance, to a “complete neglect” of organised crime.

“What organised crime has done is create an ecosystem of irregular economic activity that presents itself as a profitable one, given the context of property,” Orzoco says.

Other analysts have gone further, suggesting that the United States has contributed to the region’s growth in organised crime through its “war on drugs” and fostering of influential gangs in U.S. prisons.

But Orzoco cautions that despite the United States’ qualified intention to assist Central America, some lawmakers may be doing so for political purposes – a factor that will only continuing to strengthen as the November elections here draw closer.

Edited by: Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at hotzj@union.edu

The presidents of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador speak at the Organisation of American States on Jul. 24, 2014 in Washington, DC. Credit: Juan Manuel Herrera/OAS

By Julia Hotz
WASHINGTON, Jul 25 2014 (IPS)

As the presidents of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala prepare to meet with President Barack Obama Friday, more than 40 organisations issued a petition urging U.S. lawmakers to meet their “moral and legal obligations” by providing emergency aid to Central American children and families.

The petition, spearheaded by the Washington Office of Latin America (WOLA), an advocacy group here, insists that “more border security will not help,” and is instead calling for the U.S. to provide children and families with “all due [legal] protections” and “face the root causes of violence at the community level.”“What we’d like to see [from Friday’s meeting] is a package of assistance to Central America that is focused entirely on the civilian side of what it takes to protect.” -- Adam Isacson

In the last nine months, more than 50,000 unaccompanied children have crossed the U.S. southern border, and the wave shows no signs of abating. Many are now facing deportation.

Less than 24 hours after WOLA released their petition, a separate batch of legal groups accused the U.S. government of violating both international and domestic law, based on its inspection of the New Mexico-based Artesia Family Detention Facility.

After representatives from 22 organisations interviewed families detained at Artesia, the groups concluded that the U.S. government is violating both their moral responsibility to provide the refugees with physical and mental health support, as well as their legal obligation to guarantee them due process.

“Family detention is always an awful and damaging process, but the conditions at the Artesia Family Detention facility in New Mexico should make every American hang their head in shame,” the groups said in a statement.

“The Administration’s intent to deport everyone as quickly as possible for optics is sacrificing critical due process procedures and sending families – mothers, babies, and children – back despite clear concerns for their safety in violation of US and international law.”

Fixing the roots

While such humanitarian concerns surrounding the Central American migration crisis persist from a variety of sources, top officials from both the U.S. and Central America are considering both long-term and short-term intervention from the top-down.

As a pre-cursor for Friday’s meeting between U.S. President Obama and the Central American presidents, foreign ministers from the three respective nations – collectively known as the “Northern Triangle” – convened on Thursday at the Wilson Center, a think tank here, to discuss the crisis’ roots and debate its solutions.

While all three of the Northern Triangle’s representatives agreed that there was not one cause behind the current crisis, they collectively cited the drug smuggling network, the prevalence of organised crime, and lack of taxpayer dollars as their biggest problems.

As such, the three ministers advocated for “all-encompassing” reform, both to stop the short-term crisis at the border, and to provide economic and educational opportunities- such as universal secondary school coverage- for children and adults alike.

Call for legal protections

While Michelle Brané , director of migrant rights & justice at the Women’s Refugee Commission (WRC), a New York-based advocacy group that participated in Artesia’s inspection, agrees with the Northern Triangle’s conclusion that such a “holistic response…addressing root causes” is necessary, her central issue is with U.S. justice system.

“The problem is that our court system is woefully under-funded,”Brané told IPS, hopefully adding that “we can create a due process system that works,” even if it takes years.

Clarifying that she is “not saying everyone should stay, [but rather] that everyone should have a fair shot at presenting their case,” Brané believes that providing attorneys to represent these migrants and using alternative detention centres, such as shelters and community support programs,  are both more humane and “cost-effective” solutions than the status quo.

Asked about the desired outcome of Friday’s presidential meeting, Brané informed IPS that she would like to see “[the U.S.] take a leadership role in protection, as opposed to a ‘close the borders’ stance and lack of respect for human rights law.”

“This is more than just something that requires them to stem the flow to stop up the borders,” Brané told IPS. ‘It really requires…strengthening protections systems, as opposed to interception.”

Adam Isacson, senior associate for regional security policy at WOLA, echoed Brané’s call for more protections.

“What we’d like to see [from Friday’s meeting] is a package of assistance to Central America that is focused entirely on the civilian side of what it takes to protect,” Isacson told IPS.

While his list of desired protections included “getting police to respect people”, “a much stronger justice system,” and “more emphasis on creating opportunities,” Isacson added that such requests be “combined with Central American presidents’ commitment to raise more taxes from their wealthiest.”

Isacson further agrees with WRC’s Brané in that there is a need for systematic reform of the U.S legal system, calling for “more capacity” and a reduction in the average trial’s wait time, which he believes can be up to two or three years.

Yet others, including the Virginia-based Negative Population Growth (NPG) nonprofits, have expressed different legal concerns.

“Asylum and refugee status is something for specific persecution, and it’s not intended to be a relief measure for general societal strife,” Dave Simcox, senior adviser of NPG, told IPS.

Simcox also told IPS that there is a distinction between being trafficked and being smuggled, and while “a few [migrants] will be able to make the case that they were taken against their will for exploitation,” he ultimately agrees with NPG President Don McCann, who argued in a statement that “granting refugee or temporary protected status on the current wave from Central America would be a disastrous precedent,” and that U.S leaders should instead apply “strong deterrent measures” by “supplementing border forces” with additional personnel and fencing.

But Isacson thinks “judges will get it right much more than border patrol agents on the spot will get it right,” and believes that that providing due process to such migrants is the best way for the U.S. to “enforce its own laws.”

A 16-year-old Guatemalan migrant heading to the U.S. Credit: Wilfredo Díaz/IPS

By Bryant Harris
WASHINGTON, Feb 4 2014 (IPS)

Pro-immigration reform advocates here are seeking to capitalise on new federal momentum on the issue after conservative lawmakers ended months of dithering late last week and released an initial set of principles that they would be interested in pursuing in broader negotiations.

FWD.us, an immigration reform advocacy group funded by the technology industry, declared Monday a “day of action”, in which it encouraged the U.S. public to contact key Republican representatives and ask them to support immigration reform proposals. “Until we create a functioning immigration system with a pathway to citizenship, ruthless employers will continue to exploit low wage workers, pulling down wages for all." -- Richard Trumka

With 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S., exploitation of undocumented workers runs rampant, and families have been torn apart with two million deportations by the Barack Obama administration within the past five years.

Faith-based advocacy groups, one of the conservative cornerstones pushing for immigration reform, have likewise stepped up their efforts. Evangelical Christians emphasise the damaging effect that current immigration laws have on undocumented families.

“More than security and economic reasons, I think [reform] needed for the health of families,” Alex Cosio, a pastor from North Carolina, said during a press call Monday. “Families suffer a lot when they fear someone from their family being caught and deported. [Deportation] tears families apart.”

Cosio also points to the adverse effects that the current immigration system has on undocumented youths who were brought to the United States at a very young age.

“It’s very hard for a parent to tell a kid that they can’t have a driver’s license because they’re not here legally,” he said.

The new Republican guidelines call for increased border security and a “zero tolerance” policy for migrants who have illegally crossed into the United States.

While the guidelines rule out a path to citizenship, a means by which undocumented workers could become fully naturalised U.S. citizens, they permit legalisation for law-abiding undocumented workers provided that they “pay significant fines and back taxes, develop proficiency in English and American civics, and be able to support themselves and their families (without access to public benefits).”

Cautious optimism

Last year, the U.S. Senate passed a massive bill to overhaul all aspects of the country’s immigration system. That proposal would have provided a path to citizenship for many of the country’s 11 million undocumented immigrants, yet House Republicans oppose it on the grounds that a path to citizenship amounted to “amnesty” for wrongdoing – an option they have long opposed.

This proposal has since languished as conservatives in the House of Representatives have been unable to decide how – or whether – they wanted to progress on the issue.

Unlike their counterparts in the Senate, Republican leaders in the House of Representatives have now indicated that they do not wish to address the issue of immigration in a single, comprehensive bill. Instead they prefer to address various issues related to the broad topic through piecemeal legislation, potentially setting up conflict later on.

Still, the fact that House Republicans are now actively discussing the issue has given many proponents of immigration reform a renewed sense of optimism. Indeed, on some issues, the new Republican principles offer clear-cut ideological about-faces.

The new principles support, for instance, a path to legal residence and citizenship for undocumented youth who receive a college degree or serve in the military. This would closely align with provisions laid out in the earlier Democratic-proposed legislation – known as the DREAM Act – that some Republican legislators opposed.

Congress’s failed attempts to pass the DREAM Act multiple times since 2001 prompted President Obama to issue an executive order that halted the deportation of undocumented youths who met certain requirements.

“I do think that for those who qualify under laws and rules laid out for DREAM students, we can be assured that they’ll become a great asset to our nation,” Noel Castellanos, the head of the Christian Community Development Association, a faith-based community development group, told IPS. “Not every one of these young people will end up going to school, but some will serve in our military and contribute great works to serve our country.”

In addition to the Christian right, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the country’s largest business lobby group, welcomed the Republican reform principles.

“Immigration reform is an essential element of economic growth and it will create American jobs,” Thomas J. Donahue, the head of the Chamber of Commerce, said in a statement. “The time is now, and the Chamber is determined to make 2014 the year that immigration reform is finally enacted.”

Liberal ambivalence

While conservative advocacy groups warmly embraced the Republican guidelines, some liberal advocates have been less thrilled.

America’s Voice, a Washington-based immigrant advocacy group, is pointing out that Republicans are insisting on strengthening security along the U.S.-Mexico border before allowing any legalisation for undocumented migrants to go forward.

Such a stance, the group warns, obscures the fact that spending on border security is already incredibly high.

“The U.S. government spends 18 billion dollars a year on immigration enforcement, more than all other federal law enforcement agencies combined,” the group states in analysis sent to IPS. “The Border Patrol has doubled in recent years to a record high of 21,000 agents, and net unauthorised immigration into the U.S. is zero.”

“Nevertheless, Republicans are dusting off the old ‘enforcement-first’ talking points, pretending that immigration enforcement is currently lacking,” the groups says.

Labour rights advocates have also condemned House Republicans’ refusal to create a valid path to citizenship on the grounds that it will depress wages for everyone residing in the United States.

“Until we create a functioning immigration system with a pathway to citizenship, ruthless employers will continue to exploit low wage workers, pulling down wages for all,” Richard Trumka, the head of the AFL-CIO, a lobbying group representing multiple labour unions, noted Monday.

“All workers, immigrant or not, will see workplaces become safer and wages grow higher when we create a real roadmap to citizenship. And yet Republicans not only reject citizenship but embrace a broken guest worker model that will bring down wages and increase income inequality.”

It is unclear exactly how, or even if, the congressional discussion will now progress, with Republicans still unsure as to whether they will unite behind the new principles.

On Sunday, Representative Paul Ryan, a leading intellectual in the Republican party, told the media it was “clearly in doubt” whether Congress would pass any immigration reform legislation this year. National elections, after all, are scheduled for late this year, and immigration remains a hot-button issue for many in the Republican base.

Still, others see a possible window for action after Republican candidates have been chosen for the election in primary campaigns.

Maricopa County, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio used chain gangs and a "tent city" in his crusade against undocumented immigrants in the state. He has been sued more than 2,000 times and is now is overseen by a federal monitor. Credit:Valeria Fernandez/IPS

By Ramy Srour
WASHINGTON, Oct 29 2013 (IPS)

Saul Merlos is an undocumented migrant from El Salvador. About two years ago, he was living and working in the southern U.S. city of New Orleans.

“One day, our employers told us we were going to get paid, but instead they sent immigration,” he told IPS. “I was a witness to the raid, where they got 55 of us.”"People are disappearing on their way to drop their children off to school." -- Jennifer Rosenbaum of the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice

Merlos said the raid was violent. “I was a witness that there was a pregnant woman with her daughter, but they didn’t care,” he said. “They yelled at her, and at all of us, that this was their country and asked us what we were doing in their country. They hit some of us, and didn’t even allow me to use the restroom.”

Speaking to IPS on the sidelines of a hearing at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) Monday, Merlos added that the immigration officers did not read the workers their rights or inform them of what to expect from the detention process.

As momentum builds for U.S. immigration reform after months of political deadlock, a group of NGOs and immigration lawyers are warning that the U.S. system is currently leading to widespread violations of immigrants’ human rights.

The accusations come as the IACHR, the region’s pre-eminent rights forum, began an investigation into the issue on Monday. At that hearing, held at the 35-member Organisation of American States (OAS) headquarters in Washington, advocates questioned the rights standards used by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers (ICE).

According to the witnesses, ICE officers may have violated immigrants’ basic human rights by indefinitely separating them from their U.S. citizen children, in addition to having detained them without appropriate constitutional protections.  

Family focus

At Monday’s hearing, multiple advocacy groups alleged that ICE detention practices have failed to account for the human rights of parties involved when officers use what is known as their prosecutorial discretion. This refers to a federal agency’s authority, in immigration cases, to decide whether to begin removal proceedings against undocumented migrants.

Saul Merlos has been in the United States for 18 years, and has a 13-year old daughter who is a U.S. citizen. A favourable exercise of prosecutorial discretion would avoid him being deported Dec. 17, 2013.

“All we want is for the U.S. government to stop this because they are separating our families,” Merlos said.

The place of human rights in immigration proceedings has emerged as a key point of discussion in recent months in situations in which the children are U.S. citizens but at least one of the parents is deported because of their illegal status. Most of the time, this means that families are separated for indefinite amounts of time.

“We need to realise the serious concerns raised by the way people are being arrested and the way the U.S. government is pursuing these prosecutions.” Jennifer Rosenbaum, the legal director at the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice (NOWCRJ), an advocacy group, told IPS.

“The government’s failure to use its prosecutorial discretion has led to families being separated and to children being separated from their parents,” she said.

NOWCRJ and several other groups are calling on U.S. ICE officers to consider rights norms when detaining illegal immigrants or considering initiating removal proceedings against them. According to data presented before the IACHR this week, U.S. immigration agencies have largely failed to use their prosecutorial discretion, choosing instead to deport thousands of illegal immigrants with no regard to their family ties.

Yet others raise separate concerns about the possible implications of more lenient behaviour on the part of ICE.

“We should remember that the government isn’t actually separating families, as the parent is choosing to leave his or her child behind,” Jon Feere, a legal policy analyst at the Centre for Immigration Studies (CIS), a non-profit organisation here, told IPS.

“Moreover, it probably shouldn’t be standard U.S. policy that people can’t be deported if they have children, because there’s the question of where exactly you’re going to draw the line. If the parent has engaged in criminal activity such as identity theft, or has broken serious laws, are we saying that the American victim is not going to receive any restitution just because that immigrant has a child?”

Rights advocates, on the other hand, suggest that in the majority of related cases, immigrants are stopped and detained unconstitutionally in the first place.

“In New Orleans and other communities across the country, people are disappearing on their way to drop their children off to school,” NOWCRJ’s Rosenbaum said. “Their apprehensions involve the inappropriate use of force and no due process protections. What is even more worrying is that most of them are the victims of outright racial profiling.”

In 2012, as many as 150,000 U.S. citizen children saw at least one of their parents get deported, according to information presented Monday at the IACHR.

The U.S. delegation to the OAS was not able to respond to the panel’s allegations.

“Unfortunately, the federal government shutdown prevented us from properly preparing for today’s hearings, as officers were not able to collect any evidence and witnesses,” Lawrence J. Gumbiner, the deputy U.S. permanent representative at the U.S. mission to the OAS said. Gumbiner later declined to comment further on the human rights implications of the allegations.

Washington gridlock

The hearing comes at a critical time, as Congress recently resumed its work on a proposal that would massively overhaul the United States’ sprawling immigration system. As the House of Representatives looks more closely at the comprehensive Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernisation Act approved by the Senate last June, President Obama urged all in Washington to come together and fix the country’s “broken immigration system”.

House Republicans oppose comprehensive immigration reform, which they worry would force them to accept some provisions that they dislike, particularly a contentious “path to citizenship” for the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants currently living in the United States. Instead, House conservatives have broken apart the many issues in play in the reform push and started passing piecemeal legislation.

“One of the major concerns is that yet another comprehensive immigration bill will only bring more illegal immigration in the country,” CIS’s Feere told IPS. “Right now, many Americans simply do not trust the president to actually go through with the bill’s enforcement provisions.”

A 16-year-old Guatemalan migrant heading to the U.S. Credit: Wilfredo Díaz/IPS

By Peter Costantini
SEATTLE, Washington, Jul 29 2013 (IPS)

Puzzled by the immigration debate in the United States? Remember the Maginot Line.

That formidable French system of fortifications was built in the 1930s by André Maginot, the French minister of war, to guard against invasion from the east. Unfortunately, the Nazi blitzkrieg did an end run around it and overran France in six weeks.

Poor Maginot has become shorthand for “fighting the last war”. But at least he was trying to confront an existential and imminent threat.

The dreaded invasion of “illegal aliens”, against which our own Maginots have built hundreds of miles of border walls, called out the National Guard and scrambled the drones, actually peaked in 2000 and has long since been over.

Since the onset of the Great Recession, slightly more Mexicans have gone home to Mexico than have come here, and currently net migration appears to be near zero. The total population of undocumented immigrants is down about eight percent from its 2007 peak.

And ultimately, rather than devastation, the influx has brought modest but widespread benefits to our economy and society.

This exodus began in the mid-1990s, driven by powerful push and pull forces. In Mexico, the North American Free Trade Agreement drove many poor farmers off their lands, and the Peso Crisis of 1994 slashed real wages by some 20 percent. Meanwhile, the U.S. economy’s technology-fuelled upswing raised wages even for low-income workers.

Such an economic convergence is unlikely to occur again. The ups and downs of the Mexican economy are now more tightly coupled with ours. And declining birth rates In Mexico along with increasing education and job opportunities suggest that factors pushing emigrants towards El Norte may continue to shrink in the medium to long term.

But our Maginots are still hunkered in their bunkers, demanding measures that were never cost-effective and often counter-productive against a phantom enemy.

The U.S.-Mexico border runs nearly 2,000 miles, much of it across the Sonora Desert, between a very rich country and a moderately poor one. It can never be completely secured against migration no matter how much it’s militarised. We long ago reached the point of diminishing returns for throwing money, technology and manpower at it.

Maginot-isation has made crossing more grueling and dangerous, but nearly all those willing to keep trying get across eventually. Meanwhile, an estimated 30 to 40 percent of the undocumented simply entered legally and overstayed their visas. The only things that effectively deter determined immigrants are tight job markets here or improved ones back home.

The border enforcement surge has also had some nasty unintended consequences. The resulting tripling of the cost of a coyote (guide) has provided an effective subsidy to the drug cartels that control key areas of the border and prey on migrants. Heavy enforcement in populated areas has driven more crossings out into the desert wilderness, where outrageous numbers of people continue to perish.

The fortified border has also discouraged circular migration. Since the beginning, the dominant pattern has been to travel back and forth every year or two and eventually build a better life back home. Now growing costs and dangers have led more immigrants to stay longer in the U.S. or to settle here permanently and bring their families.

After over a century of rising and falling with the economic tides of both countries, unauthorised immigration is deeply embedded in both cultures and economies. It’s illegal in the same way that speeding or parking overtime is.

You can also look at it as a kind of international trespassing, and if you trespass for a benign purpose over a long enough time, U.S. common law allows you to acquire title through “adverse possession”.

As to economic effects, most labour economists have found overall benefits to U.S.-born workers, the broader economy and fiscal balances. Even for the six percent of native workers without a high-school diploma, most research shows close to a wash between negative and positive effects.

Most tellingly, organisations that actually represent low-wage workers, from labour unions to community groups, heavily favour bringing migrants out of the shadows into legality and working in solidarity with them, which would help raise the floor of the labour market.

So let’s see: if undocumented immigrants didn’t do anything wrong and they’re contributing to U.S. society, why is a pathway to citizenship an “amnesty”, as restrictionists often call it?

Rather than debating how many more miles of Maginot Line to build, we should be focusing on how best to integrate unauthorised immigrants into our economy while raising living standards for all low-income families.

Instead of lavishing corporate welfare on Boeing, Raytheon and Corrections Corporation of America to militarise the border and jail non-criminal immigrants, we would get far more bang for the buck by sending a small fraction of that money to immigrant-sending regions in Mexico and Central America for jobs, housing, education and health care. And if we wanted to be over-the-top sensible, we could spend the rest of it on the same things here at home.

Unauthorised immigration to the U.S. is very unlikely to reach the levels of 10 to 15 years ago again. But if it picks up once more in a genuine economic recovery, immigration reform must grant enough visas to unskilled workers to meet the demands of the economy for their labour without squeezing low-wage workers already here.

That will require continuous negotiation and adjustment. A good way to enable this would be to create a public commission of immigration stakeholders from labour, business, communities and academia, such as we already have in communications, trade, banking and other areas.

To deal with the real security issues at the border, we could do worse than to listen to former Arizona State Attorney General Terry Goddard. The detailed plan he has laid out would hit transnational criminal cartels where it hurts by attacking their ability to launder money, and to move it and product across the line.

As satirist Stephen Colbert said of the “border surge” proposed by anti-immigrant politicians, “It worked in Iraq. You hardly see any Mexicans sneaking into Baghdad.”

Peter Costantini covered migration issues from 2006 through 2009 for IPS. He has also written for many publications about Mexico, Haiti, Nicaragua and international economics.

Kazi Fouzia in the street where she had an accident in 2010. Her shoulder sustained multiple fractures, but the only treatment she received was painkillers as she was undocumented at the time. Credit: Silvia Romanelli/IPS

By Silvia Romanelli
NEW YORK, Jul 22 2013 (IPS)

Ataur was 18 when he left Bangladesh and arrived in the United States in 1991 as an undocumented migrant. He took two jobs at the same time, earning about 35 dollars a day in total.

Vincent was smuggled into the U.S. from China in 2001. Ten years after Ataur, his working conditions were even worse. He worked in several Chinese restaurants, for 60 to 70 hours a week, six days a week, for about 300 dollars a month, an average of one dollar per hour.“When you’re late, they fire you. When you’re sick, they fire you … When you complain [about] anything, they can fire you.” -- Vincent, an undocumented worker from China

Both asked that only their first names be used.

“In New York, if you go in the street … if you ask 10 people, I’m sure at least five or six are undocumented,” Vincent told IPS, while talking in a café in New York’s Chinatown.

The U.S. is home to more than 11 million undocumented workers, and there are an estimated two million migrants working in the city of New York.

They are taxi drivers, domestic workers, restaurant, retail and construction workers. They are paid far less than the 7.25 dollars per hour that is New York’s minimum wage, and they are often mistreated by their employers.

Their lives may undergo major changes if the U.S. House of Representatives approves an immigration bill, passed by the Senate at the end of June, which offers a 13-year path to citizenship for undocumented migrants, but also reinforces border security and enables businesses to check workers’ social security numbers, under the E-verify programme.

The programme would make “every single undocumented person one click away from being notified or deported,” according to Monami Maulik, executive director of Desis Rising Up and Moving (DRUM), an organisation of low-wage South Asian immigrants in Jackson Heights, Queens, which counts 2,000 members.

“Our members… and many others in immigrant communities are really disappointed with this legislation. It’s turning out to be more and more repressive, harsher measures,” she said. “So we are following it very closely.”

After Latinos, she added, South Asians are among the second largest undocumented population in New York.

Stolen wages, mental pressure and fear

Employers tend to say, “I hire you even if you’re illegal, so you should say ‘thank you’, no matter how much I pay you,” Vincent told IPS.

Because there are so many undocumented migrants ready to work for extremely low wages, other needy workers are pressured to accept the same conditions, no matter what their immigration status and nationality are.

Ataur’s sister, Amana, arrived legally in the U.S., but was still paid less than the minimum wage for eight years.

Mental pressure at the workplace is also huge. “When you’re late, they fire you. When you’re sick, they fire you … When you complain [about] anything, they can fire you,” said Vincent.

“Employers often don’t pay workers for a week or months at a time. There has been a case of a year at a time. They’ll do things like hold people’s passports, threaten to call immigration if they ask for the wages that they earned,” Maulik told IPS.

In 2009, DRUM launched monthly “workers’ rights clinics”, to help migrant workers reclaim their stolen wages and raise awareness of their own rights.

In a phone interview, Sayma Khun, a Bangladeshi national, told IPS how she managed to recover, with the help of DRUM, 5,000 dollars of unpaid wages from her previous employer.

Similarly, in 2008, Vincent, together with other 35 co-workers, filed a lawsuit against their employer, in this case with the help of the Chinatown-based Chinese Staff and Workers Association (CSWA).

But as soon as the lawsuit was filed, the restaurant was shut down. It re-opened some time later in a different location under a new name, a strategy widely used by Chinese employers to avoid lawsuits, according to Vincent.

“By federal law this is not supposed to happen. Even undocumented workers are protected under U.S. labour laws around minimum wage,” Maulik told IPS.

In order to launch a neighbourhood-wide investigation on workers’ rights respect, the Department of Labour needs a certain number of individual complaints. But workers often refrain from complaining because they fear employers’ retaliation and deportation.

The husband of Nadera Kashem, a Bangladeshi DRUM member, is at risk of being deported, after he was caught, last year, during a police raid in the perfume shop he worked in. Because he was undocumented, he was sent to an immigration detention centre. He’s been there for 17 months now.

In these cases, “The employer is supposed to be punished, but it always means the worker is punished,” said Maulik.

At the local level, immigration is being enforced by police officers, often accused by migrants’ rights organisations of profiling and discrimination.

“The biggest fear an undocumented person has is the local police officer, because that’s the person who’s going to stop you, ask you for identification, possibly deport you,” Maulik said.

In June, the New York City Council passed two bills of the Community Safety Act establishing accountability mechanisms for the New York Police Department (NYPD) and allowing citizens to file claims against NYPD’s misbehaviour.

Finding the courage to speak up

“We see no future, why are we still working like slaves? So that’s why I organised my co-workers, we wanted to improve the working conditions, and not just for ourselves,” Vincent told IPS.

Before joining CSWA, he said, he didn’t even know that there was a minimum wage or what “overtime” meant.

“Organising protects you, never puts you in trouble,” is what Kazi Fouzia, a Bangladeshi community organiser who joined DRUM in 2010, says to other migrant workers to encourage them to speak up.

Fouzia used to work in a retail sari shop in Jackson Heights, Queens. Her employer owned three stores; one day he asked her to go get some clothes from another shop across the street. While she was crossing, she was hit by a car and thrown 13 feet.

Fouzia’s employer didn’t allow her to call 911 because she was undocumented. She had multiple fractures in her shoulder, but she didn’t have insurance so the only medical care she received were painkillers. The next day she discovered she had been fired.

This is not only her personal story, she told IPS, “This is every undocumented worker’s story, every one.”

Advocates for the African diaspora in the United States have stepped up a campaign to urge the U.S. Congress not to end a longstanding visa programme aimed at boosting immigration from “underrepresented countries”.

The programme, known as the diversity visa lottery, has in recent years been sharply tilted towards African immigration. Since 2008, immigrants from African countries have made up nearly half of the 55,000 randomly awarded U.S. work visas annually awarded."People worry that if we insist on the lottery, the Republicans will back out." -- Yves Bouele of the Cameroon American Council

Yet under a landmark bipartisan proposal to overhaul the U.S. immigration system, released in mid-April and currently being debated in the U.S. Senate, the so-called DV lottery would be eliminated (see Section 2303 of the draft bill). Instead, it would be replaced with “merit-based” visas aimed at opening U.S doors to higher-skilled workers, particularly in the science, technology and engineering fields.

If passed, the provisions on the DV lottery would take effect in October 2014.

“We are concerned that the Senate’s plan to eliminate the DV lottery will stem the future flow of immigration from African countries and negatively impact the future make-up of America,” the Cameroon American Council (CAC), a Washington-based advocacy group, said Monday in a statement.

“The DV lottery is built upon foundational, democratic and egalitarian principles that strengthen America. These principles advance equal opportunity, attracts entrepreneurs and visionaries who contribute immensely to the American small business sector, and improves the quality of our social, economic, political and cultural life.”

The DV programme was created in 1990 with the aim of rectifying a bias within U.S. immigration laws against certain countries. The lottery is open to citizens of countries where immigration to the United States totalled less than 50,000 over the preceding half-decade, and it closes again once those levels hit a certain level.

As such, while high-immigration countries such as Mexico, the Philippines or China have never been allowed to enter the DV lottery, the programme has allowed in a broad spectrum of immigrants from smaller or lesser-represented countries. The representation from Africa has been particularly significant.

Since 2010, for instance, just three percent of Asians became U.S. permanent residents through the DV lottery, while more than 20 percent of Africans did so. The lottery thus became the third most important avenue to U.S. residency for Africans, behind asylum claims and family reunification.

Indeed, family reunification made up nearly half of U.S. residency routes for Africans in the past three years, yet this route too is not included in the current Senate bill. Instead, the current bill focuses on bringing in higher-skilled workers.

“Lawmakers say the new proposal won’t put various communities at a disadvantage, because new visas will be made for them – but they’ve left Africans out,” Yves Bouele, an advocate with the Cameroon American Council, told IPS.

“They say everybody is going to be well served with these new provisions, and that might be true, but that definitely doesn’t look to be the case for Africans. If the DV lottery is eliminated, we need to ensure that new provisions will continue to serve these African communities, which are really underserved.”

Conservative target

“The DV lottery has had the effect of lifting families out of poverty; provided opportunities to the affected families; and provided a talent pool for the U.S. economy,” the CAC suggests. “It has been a very successful foreign policy, civil rights achievement and national security tool.”

Such claims notwithstanding, Republican members of Congress have been aiming at dismantling the diversity visa programme for years. Indeed, Bouele says that the DV lottery has become a make-or-break issue for the Senate’s proposal.

“Basically, the DV lottery had to go in order to make sure the Republicans supported the bill,” he notes.

“And now people worry that if we insist on the lottery the Republicans will back out. Why exactly they want to take this out so bad, I’m not sure. We have a lot of data to prove how good the African immigrant population has been for the United States.”

Most recently, the Republican-held House of Representatives passed a bill in November that would have increased the number of high-skilled immigrant visas while eliminating the DV lottery – exactly as the new Senate proposal would do.

At the time, President Barack Obama threatened to veto the bill, calling it a “narrowly tailored proposal”. While the president has not discussed the DV lottery since the Senate unveiled the new proposal, other Congressional democrats have expressed their concerns.

“I am truly disappointed that the bipartisan proposal eliminates the Diversity Visa Program that provides for the future flow of diverse immigrant groups from underrepresented countries to have a real chance of obtaining the American Dream,” Yvette Clarke, a member of both the House of Representatives and the Congressional Black Caucus, said in a statement.

“Although assurances have been made that the new ‘Merit Based Point System’ would account for diversity, my concern is that it isn’t robust or sustainable enough to adequately protect the future flow of racially and socioeconomically diverse immigrant populations.”

Diversity compromise

Still, the new immigration reform proposal is a massive piece of legislation, and if it were to pass it would be the largest such overhaul since the mid-1980s. Further, while the bill is coming under increased fire from conservatives, it has received notably strong bipartisan support from both lawmakers and the U.S. public.

Given the polarised and politicised nature of immigration policy in the United States, the Senate’s bill has been widely referred to as strong though compromise legislation. In this context, many appear willing to offer concessions in order to get the legislation through to become law.

“This isn’t one of our favourite elements of the new proposal, as we think there’s real value in the diversity visa system – it has brought in people who otherwise wouldn’t have been able to access the U.S.,” Crystal Williams, the executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, told IPS.

“But taken holistically, the number of things that the bill does that are of great benefit has to be weighed against the sacrifice of the DV lottery. Right now, we’re willing to accept that trade-off, although reluctantly.”

Further, Williams notes that some of the context around the discussion of diversity in the United States has evolved over the past two decades.

“One of the reasons that this is a politically viable bill is because diversity has become a driving factor right now,” she says. “Today, there is a recognition that any party that wants to stay politically viable has to understand that diversity.”

Many in the crowd of San Francisco May Day marchers wore butterfly wings; the Monarch butterfly migrates to Mexico and then back to the U.S. every year. Credit: Judith Scherr/IPS

By Judith Scherr
SAN FRANCISCO, California, May 2 2013 (IPS)

More than 1,000 people marched under the brilliant San Francisco sun on May Day. Their signs, such as “Work in America/Live in America/Dream in America. Immigration reform now,” their songs, chants and speeches wove together the twin themes of the day: worker justice and immigrant justice.

Alphonso Pines of the hotel and restaurant workers union Unite HERE put it this way, speaking to the crowd before the march: “We’re marching for our families; we’re marching to honour the sweat and the contributions of each and every working person. We’re marching to honour the beauty of each and every family – queer or straight, immigrant or born here. We’re marching because together we can make history.“People are getting separated from their families every day. We want a stop to that immediately." -- Kitzia Esteva of Causa Justa

“Together we can win immigration reform that includes all workers and all families. Together we can stop the pain of deportation.”

In all, there were some 85 marches calling for worker and immigrant rights around the U.S., including a march of 700 in Oakland, California, 2,000 in Los Angeles and several thousand in New York.

Seattle-based journalist Mark Taylor Canfield told IPS that unions brought large numbers of people out to a peaceful march of several thousand in Seattle. A break-off group broke windows and damaged property. Police reacted with “large amounts of pepper spray and flash-bang grenades,” he said. There were 13 arrests.

In San Francisco, Tessa Levine was getting ready to march with Mujeres Unidas. Like many in the crowd, she wore butterfly wings. The Monarch butterfly flies to Mexico then back to the U.S. every year, she said, explaining, “It’s really a symbol that migration is beautiful, that migration is natural.”

Still, migration is regulated by law. And at this point, no one knows exactly what the new immigration law will look like – or if one will actually make it through both houses of Congress and on to the president’s desk.

A number of demonstrators told IPS they had serious questions about the bill known as the Bipartisan Framework for Comprehensive Immigration Reform scheduled for consideration by the Senate Judiciary Committee on May 9.

A primary concern with the bill is the 13 years it would take most immigrants in the U.S. without documents to become citizens. The positive aspect is that, during the waiting period, they would be able to work legally. However, during that time, they would be excluded from social services, including the right to purchase health insurance under the Affordable Care Act.

“We want a fast and just path to citizenship,” said Kitzia Esteva, of the advocacy organisation Causa Justa.Just Cause, noting that immigrants’ taxes pay for these services.

Emily Lee, with the Chinese Progressive Association, expressed similar concerns. Noting that one million out of the 11 million undocumented persons living in the U.S. are Asian-Pacific Islanders, she asked, “What does that mean when you’re paying back taxes, and you’re expected to contribute to the society, but you’re not receiving the benefits?”

But even getting onto the path for citizenship under the Senate bill under discussion could be impossible for people who have worked informally as day labourers or domestic workers, since the applicant is expected to show proof of having worked in the U.S.

“These are men who are working every day,” said Emiliano Bourgois-Chacon, with the San Francisco Day Labor Program and Women’s Collective. But because they are undocumented, they don’t have paperwork to prove they have been working, Bourgois-Chacon said.

Keeping the family together was another concern of May Day demonstrators.

The bill in the Senate would make it more difficult for families to sponsor siblings. “Family reunification has been a cornerstone of immigration in the U.S.,” Lee, of the Chinese Progressive Association, said. “And to start chipping away at that…is very problematic.”

Many people in the Chinese community wouldn’t otherwise have been able to come to the U.S., she added.

Deportations that rip families apart are of great concern to a number of demonstrators IPS interviewed. There have been some 800 deportations from San Francisco since 2009, with the introduction of Secure Communities or “S-Comm”, the programme where local police share arrest information with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to Estava of Causa Justa.

Across the Bay in Alameda County, the Oakland-Berkeley area, there have been 2,000 deportations since 2009.

“People are getting separated from their families every day,” Estava said. “We want a stop to that immediately. We are fighting to get local police to stop the collaboration between police and ICE, and we have that same demand on the national level with immigration reform.”

Deportation has also heavily impacted the Arab immigrant community, said Lara Kiswani of the Arab Resource and Organizing Center. “There’s obviously racial discrimination and systemic criminalisation of Arabs and Muslims here in the United States, which leads oftentimes to deportation,” she said.

Like Estava, Kiswani said the high number of deportations comes from collaboration between local and federal law enforcement. “There should be an end to S-Comm so that there’s more accountability to local law enforcement and so that people aren’t unjustly targeted and deported for various misdemeanors,” she said.

Another problem with the current and proposed law is the E-verify programme through which an employer can verify a person’s social security number. ICE can request an employer perform an E-verify audit.

Olga Miranda, president of Service Employees International Union Local 87, said a few years ago several hundred of her union janitors were targeted by an E-verify audit, fired, and “lost everything overnight”.

Esteva pointed to another problem with the proposed law: putting resources into enhanced law enforcement on the border.

ICE and the border patrol have the most law enforcement money in the country, Esteva said. “Instead of putting that money into border enforcement, we could see a lot more social services and resources for the community. We think that money would not be well invested in protecting the border.”

Nancy Mackowsky marched the two-mile route holding an American Federation of Teachers banner. She teaches English as a second language at San Francisco City College and said some of her students work from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., then come to her class in the evening four days a week.

“They have goals, they have dreams and they deserve to be able to fulfill them,” she said.

The TRUST Act would allow local police to detain individuals for ICE only if they are convicted of a serious crime. Credit: photostock

By Charlotte Silver
SAN FRANCISCO, California, Apr 23 2013 (IPS)

Challenges are mounting to a key U.S. immigration enforcement programme that requires local police to share the fingerprints of individuals they arrest, triggering a federal investigation into the immigration status of the detainee.

Introduced in 2008, the Secure Communities programme (S-Comm) rapidly expanded over the next four years utilising approximately 750 million dollars allotted to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for the programme."Immigrant communities are more fearful of going to the police, to report crimes they are victims of." -- ALC's Tim Huey

This month, the Asian Law Caucus (ALC) sued ICE and the Department of Homeland Security for information related to the agencies’ communications with California government officials about the California TRUST Act and S-Comm.

The lawsuit was filed after ICE failed to comply with a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request the San Francisco-based civil rights organisation submitted over three months ago.

The ALC submitted the FOIA request on Dec. 21, 2012 because of suspicions that ICE had attempted to improperly influence the governor’s decision on the TRUST Act, which was reintroduced to the state assembly that month.

“ICE has a history of misrepresenting facts about the Secure Communities program to the public and to state and local officials. ICE also has a history of attempting to influence state and local officials who seek to limit compliance with Secure Communities,” the complaint, filed on Apr. 9 with a San Francisco District Court, states.

According to the complaint, ICE has had two private meetings with Governor Jerry Brown: one before Brown’s veto of the bill last September and one shortly after the TRUST Act was reintroduced by California state Assemblyman Tom Ammiano on Dec. 3, 2012.

California’s revised TRUST Act is slated to be voted on by the State Assembly on May 31.

“There’s a public right to know about issues surrounding pending legislation. The public has a right to know what information was given that may have motivated decisions on the bill,” said Jessica Karp, an adjunct professor at University of California, Irvine who also works with UC Irvine’s Immigrant Rights Clinic, which is representing ALC.

The TRUST Act, which passed the California Senate and State Assembly last summer only to be vetoed by Governor Jerry Brown on Sep. 30, 2012, would prevent the pre-conviction sharing of fingerprints by law enforcement with ICE, allowing local police to detain individuals for ICE only if they are convicted of a serious crime.

The TRUST Act was designed to alter the state’s participation in ICE’s Secure Communities programme, which is responsible for deporting 266,137 immigrants, ostensibly in order to prioritise the deportation of immigrants convicted of serious crimes. However, according to ICE’s statistics, less than 30 percent of those deported were convicted of Level 1 crimes.

“When it was first implemented it was politically untouchable,” Karp told IPS, explaining that it was impossible to publicly oppose a piece of legislation with the stated objective of removing serious criminals.

But two years after it was implemented, the actual impact on the community has been very different from the programme’s alleged goal. The vast majority of those detained or deported under S-Comm had no criminal history or had committed, at most, a small misdemeanor.

Numerous stories of individuals ending up in deportation proceedings because they had committed small infractions, traffic violations – or were themselves the victims of crime – quickly hit the news.

As Karp explained, “Secure Communities has allowed ICE to use local law enforcement agencies to help them meet their deportation quota of 400,000 people each year. S-Comm helps them do that using local resources.”

In addition, S-Comm has proven to be a pricey measure for state and local resources, costing the state of California an estimated 65 million dollars a year to detain immigrants for ICE.

In response to the overwhelming evidence that S-Comm was not focusing on serious criminals, some local communities, law enforcement agencies and state legislatures attempted to opt-out of the programme in which they had initially agreed to participate by voluntarily signing a Memorandum of Agreement.

San Francisco’s sheriff, Michael Hennessey, was one of the first to seek to opt out in 2010.

In an editorial for the San Francisco Chronicle in May 2011, Hennessy wrote, “Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s controversial Secure Communities program violates… hard-earned trust with immigrant residents.”

Hennessy went on to explain that S-Comm gave local law enforcement no discretion over which arrestees would trigger an ICE deportation proceeding.

Counties throughout California and the nation followed suit in seeking to opt-outof the programme.

However, to the confoundment of many localities and state representatives, ICE responded by asserting that sharing fingerprints was no longer optional and canceling the initial Memorandum of Agreements.

ICE has repeatedly emphasised that S-Comm targets immigrants with criminal histories, but evidence that the programme continues to ensnare individuals with no criminal conduct or background abounds.

In early April, in Bakersfield, California, Ruth Montano – a 14-year resident of the state whose three children were born and raised in the United States – faced deportation proceedings after police came to her apartment in response to neighbours’ complaints over her barking dogs.

Montano’s case caught the attention of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California and immigrants’ advocacy group Cuentame, which orchestrated a successful information campaign to pressure for Montano’s release from deportation. But as ACLU lawyer Jennie Pasquarella pointed out at the time, Montano’s good fortune is the exception.

“Immigrant communities are more fearful of going to the police, to report crimes they are victims of. This is why the TRUST Act is so important, so that Secure Communities can do what it is meant to do while restoring trust between local law enforcement and immigrant communities,” Tim Huey of the ALC told IPS.

While the TRUST Act was originally drafted for California, copycat bills have been proposed in Massachusetts, Florida, Connecticut, Colorado and a number of other localities this year.

ICE does not take an official position on pending legislation and thus has not stated opposition to the TRUST Act. The agency would not comment on pending litigation with the Asian Law Caucus.

An immigration reform rally in Long Beach, California, Mar. 29, 2013. Credit: a_auzanneau/cc by 2.0

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Apr 18 2013 (IPS)

A long-awaited legislative proposal to reform the United States’ immigration system is sparking frustration on both the left and right here, but is widely being seen as a centrist compromise bill that will now energise all sides as debate in Congress begins Friday.

The massive overhaul plan, released Wednesday by a bipartisan group of eight senators, offers nearly 900 pages of changes. If it passes what is sure to be contentious negotiations over the coming months, any final legislation would be the first major immigration reforms in the United States since the 1980s.“A change like this would set up a comparison between a scientist and a sister, and that’s a big concern.” -- Center for Community Change's Kica Matos

Yet nestled among the new proposal is a fundamental realignment of U.S. visa policy away from a longstanding priority on family reunification and towards, instead, a model that more closely fulfils the needs of business.

Indeed, the proposal would stop offering siblings or adult children of U.S. citizens the chance to apply for family visas, though it does ease travel to the United States by other relatives. For decades, Washington has made available some 65,000 family-related visas every year, an ideological cornerstone of its immigration programme.

Under the proposed changes, on the other hand, visas for agricultural workers and high-skilled workers would be greatly increased, a key concession to the business community.

“This draft clearly damages the family-based immigration system and the longstanding principle of family unity,” Kica Matos, the director of Immigrant Rights and Racial Justice at the Center for Community Change, a Washington advocacy group, told IPS.

“A change like this would set up a comparison between a scientist and a sister, and that’s a big concern.”

In addition to immigration rights proponents, the AFL-CIO, one of the country’s largest unions and a kingmaker in the current debate, has come out strongly against the family visa changes.

In addition, the diversity visa programme – historically one of the most popular ways of emigrating to the United States, offering around 55,000 visas through an annual lottery system – is being replaced with twice as many “merit-based” visas. Eventually, this programme is aimed at rising to around 250,000 visas per year.

Some analysts suggest that such changes could have a significant effect on the demographic impact of the U.S. immigration system, perhaps greatly increasing the number of Asian immigrants into the country to the detriment of others.

“The diversity visa was historically of particular importance for people of colour, especially those from Africa,” Matos says.

“The switch away from family visas and the elimination of the diversity visa is a step in the wrong direction, introducing a far more mercantile approach. Doing so leaves these important decisions up to big corporations, rather than preserving longstanding U.S. commitments to immigration and keeping intact family unity.”

Matos is quick to note, however, that the new proposal still constitutes a “historic step towards humane policy reform”, including reforms that advocates have been emphasising for nearly two decades.

11 million

Despite widely differing approaches, the United States’ immigration system has long been seen by all sides as “broken”, due in part to its complexity, cost and contradictory aims.

Yet particularly following the recent national elections, in which the growing Hispanic community largely turned against Republicans, a broad coalition of business, labour, law enforcement and religious communities is viewing 2013 as the year that comprehensive reforms could be possible.

And they’re almost unanimous in stating that the current bill is a strong starting point.

“On the whole, we think this is a good bill, and does a really good job of including all core elements you need for a reform bill like this,” Mark Falzone, the deputy director of the National Immigration Forum, an advocacy group, told IPS.

“People on the right and left are going to be critical of certain aspects of this proposal, but that’s the nature of compromise. We haven’t had meaningful immigration reform in this country in recent memory, but this time is clearly different, with both Democrats and Republics pushing hard.”

Still, one of the most contentious issues remains the presence in the United States of around 11 million undocumented immigrants. These migrants tend to be seen as critical labour by the business community, as lawbreakers by conservatives, and as victims of an inhumane system by liberals.

Thus, the centrepiece of the new bill includes a highly controversial route to citizenship for the undocumented. The plan would normalise their status after they pay fees and taxes, and pass a criminal background check and other requirements, and allow them to progress towards citizenship.

This has been a baseline demand by liberals, but the proposition is already leading to the most explosive responses from conservatives worried about “rewarding” lawbreakers. (In fact, Mexican migration into the United States has almost completely stopped in recent years, due to both demographic and economic changes in Mexico.)

At the same time, the new legislation would continue to step up security along the U.S.-Mexico border, presumably increasing fencing and personnel while potentially adding unmanned surveillance drones to the mix.

“We have included a lengthy path to citizenship … contingent on doing everything possible to make the borders secure,” Senator John McCain, one of the architects of the new bill and a Republican who in the past has faced stiff resistance for deal-making on immigration, told reporters Thursday.

“Republicans have got to compete for the Hispanic vote. Passage of this legislation wouldn’t gain a single vote from the Hispanic community but it would put us on a level where we could compete in the battle of ideas. Right now, we’re not competitive.”

13-year wait

Still, the new proposal would not make the citizenship programme effective immediately. Rather, as McCain notes, it would be conditional on the creation of a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) strategy to achieve a specified border security “effectiveness” rate.

If DHS were to be unable to do so within six months, the bill would require the creation of a commission led by border states.

Yet even if that strategy were to be deemed acceptable, those hoping to get “provisional” status en route to citizenship would end up waiting years to decades. Under the new proposal, the minimum wait time would be 13 years, which some immigration advocates are saying is unjustly long.

Further, a proposed cut-off date for eligibility for the “provisional” status is currently December 2011, barring those who arrived thereafter. Yet this would leave a few hundred thousand people who automatically wouldn’t qualify – putting them permanently in the position that the new legislation is trying to ameliorate once and for all.

Kyle and Scott Kuwahara, nine-year-old twins, talk to their friend Rodrigo Guzman via Skype in their Berkeley, California home. Credit: Judith Scherr/IPS

By Judith Scherr
BERKELEY, California, Mar 28 2013 (IPS)

Rodrigo Javier Diaz Guzman was a fairly typical Berkeley, California kid. He loved playing baseball and video games, enjoyed school and got good grades, watched Ninjago on TV, and ate take-out burritos and Chinese food whenever he could.

His mother was one of those parents who always showed up at school with snacks for field trips and came along to help if she could get away from work.In school we are learning about all these important people like Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks who fought for people's civil rights and freedom. So what about Rodrigo's freedom?

But today, the Mexico-born nine-year old who came to Berkeley with his parents when he was not quite two can’t come home at all.

On a stop-over in Houston, Texas, on their way home from a Christmas trip to see relatives in Mexico, airport immigration officials interrogated the father for hours and determined that the family’s visas had expired. They sent them back to Mexico, saying they could not reapply for visas for five years.

Incensed at the injustice of their friend being prevented from coming back to school, Rodrigo’s fourth-grade classmates, with some parental help, launched a campaign they’re calling “Bring Rodrigo home.”

Unwittingly, the children thrust Rodrigo and his family onto the stage of a raging national debate on immigration reform.

“The law isn’t fair and Rodrigo should be able to come back to his classmates and his friends,” Rodrigo’s classmate, nine-year-old Aminah Diaby, said.

The campaign to bring Rodrigo home got press attention when the local school board and city council each voted unanimously to ask congress and the president to support the family’s return.

“We need to do what we can here in Berkeley to try to bring Rodrigo home and also to try to change our immigration system so that people can become citizens of our country by a much quicker process,” said Berkeley City Councilmember Jesse Arreguin. “While their visas did expire, because of the way our immigration system is, it’s very difficult for them to get legal citizenship. They’re the victims of a flawed federal policy.”

Rep. Barbara Lee, representing the Berkeley-Oakland area and among the most pro-immigration-reform members of congress, invited a few of Rodrigo’s classmates to a private meeting with her before a Mar. 26 community-wide immigration forum at St. Elizabeth’s Catholic School, located in the heart of Oakland’s Latino community.

With parental help, the children brought Rodrigo himself via video Skype to meet Lee in a classroom next to the auditorium where the forum was to take place.

“Can you please help get me and my parents get back home, back to Berkeley?” Rodrigo asked the congresswoman.

“We’re going to do everything we can do,” Lee responded. “But let me tell you—what has happened to you is a real example of why we have to have comprehensive immigration reform. So while we work on that, we’re going to do everything we can do to help you get back. But we want people to know that you’re a real example. And what happened to you is why we have to work to get [immigration reform] done this year.”

Rodrigo and his parents are just three among 11 million people in the U.S. without legal status. At the forum that followed Lee’s meeting with the children, sponsored by the PICO National Network’s Campaign for Citizenship, “undocumented” people lined up to urge Lee to take their stories to Congress.

“For 16 years we’ve paid our taxes year after year; we read the sacred scriptures on Sundays at St. Bernard’s church,” Mireya Chavirria said in Spanish, speaking through an interpreter. “And I’ve been very active in our community working to stop violence as well as working to stop foreclosures, so that people don’t get kicked out of their homes.”

She talked about her dying mother in Mexico, whom she cannot visit, due to her immigration status. “This is a road filled with pain,” she said.

The forum, attended by more than 300 people, demonstrated the breadth of those involved in advocating immigration reform.

Nunu Kidane of the Black Immigration Network told the audience that 10 percent of immigrants to the U.S. are Black. Calling for “full citizenship now,” she said, “Whether it’s a Spanish-speaking person, or Asian, African, Haitian, Hispanic, we all stand together for all rights and justice and humanity for all.”

Labour unions were also represented. “A high percentage of our union members are immigrants,” said Josie Camacho, executive secretary-treasurer of the Alameda County Central Labour Council.

Camacho expressed concern for non-union immigrant workers, who are subject to exploitation by their bosses, sometimes not paid at all, or paid less than minimum wage.

“Employers know they won’t report them as a result of people being afraid about their status,” Camacho said, arguing that immigration reform would help end the exploitation of immigrant workers.

Washington lawmakers are deep in discussions about immigration reform, though no legislation has been written. Given their losses in the 2012 election, Republicans – many opposed to immigration reform in the past – appear to be leaning toward support of a law that would regularise the status of people without valid permission to be in the U.S.

At this point, it’s unclear what the legislation will look like. While many in congress talk about “a path to citizenship,” they differ on who gets to walk that path. Some conditions are likely to be a clean criminal record, paying back taxes and speaking English.

Some lawmakers want to allow LGBT (lesbian gay bisexual transgender) couples to be considered as families for the purpose of immigration. Some want to issue temporary worker status for certain “low skill” jobs. Some want to increase the number of visas available to university graduates with hi-tech skills.

Many advocate increasing security with the U.S.-Mexican border so that new undocumented immigrants won’t follow those already in the U.S.

It’s unclear how Rodrigo’s family, currently barred from U.S. soil, will fit into any eventual reform.

Immigration reform “basically lays out important values for California and the nation,” said Reshma Shamasunder, executive director of the California Immigrant Policy Center.

“It will determine the fate of millions of people like Rodrigo’s family. It’s being written right now. Our policy-makers need to be made aware that they must consider the painful realities of people like Rodrigo and others,” she told IPS.

The children campaigning for Rodrigo’s return don’t know a lot about the complexities of the current immigration discussion. They just know that their friend is unhappy and stuck in a country he scarcely knows. They’re planning a trip to Washington D.C. to lobby congress for his return.

Standing at the public microphone at the Campaign for Citizenship forum, Rodrigo’s classmate Kyle Kuwahara, nine, read a letter he wrote to President Barack Obama.

“It is really important to us that he is allowed to come back,” he said. “He has been in our school for five years and he is a friend of mine. Rodrigo is not free to come back. In school we are learning about all these important people like Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks who fought for people’s civil rights and freedom. So what about Rodrigo’s freedom? Who is fighting for his freedom?”

Rights groups and government officials here have been testifying in a string of hearings, before both bodies of the U.S. Congress, on how to overhaul the United States’ huge immigration detention system, the scope of which has expanded massively in recent years in ways that some suggest impinge on civil and human rights.

According to official estimates, the federal government will detain some 400,000 people on immigration charges this year, at a cost of around two billion dollars. Activists say the size and functioning of the immigration detention system are out of alignment with “U.S. values” – and, increasingly, Washington politicians appear to agree.If these people are not public safety risks … why are they detained at all?

“We are a nation of immigrants, but our immigration law is inconsistent with America’s values,” Senator Chris Coons stated at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday. “Our immigration system exacts a high cost on families, on civil liberties and on human dignity. This cost is unnecessary, unwarranted and unfair.”

Coons said the U.S. government is currently paying more than 160 dollars per day for those kept in some 250 immigration detention centres. He also noted that Congress-stipulated “bed quotas” – around 34,000 at any given time – for these centres appear to be driving policies at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and are responsible for keeping far more people under detention than otherwise would be necessary.  

That’s “enormously expensive”, Coons noted. “It could be cheaper while also better serving both our national security and our national commitment to civil rights.”

Indeed, the hearings come in the aftermath of a surprise announcement, early this month, that the government would be releasing nearly 2,300 people awaiting immigration trials. That number included “many who did not require detention by law”, according to testimony at the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday by John Morton, director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

While Morton explained the move as a necessary cost-cutting measure given the massive budget-cutting that came into effect at the beginning of March, the decision has outraged some conservatives. Yet ICE will save tens of millions of dollars on this move alone, simply in allowing immigrants awaiting trial to remain out on their own recognisance.

“It looks to me like maybe there’s an overuse of detention by this administration,” Representative Spencer Bachus, a conservative, told Morton, at Tuesday’s House hearing. “If these people are not public safety risks … why are they detained at all?”

In response, Morton admitted, “For many of the long-term residents, frankly, it doesn’t make any sense either as a matter of policy.”

The hearings are part of a flurry of bipartisan activity, both in Washington and nationally, aimed at reforming the United States’ sprawling, creaky immigration system. On Wednesday, Nancy Pelosi, a key Democratic leader in the House of Representatives, expressed optimism that the Congress would approve a comprehensive immigration reform package “before summer”.

Yet Senator Coons, who chaired Wednesday’s Senate hearing, warned that comprehensive reform “cannot be truly comprehensive if it does not address serious current flaws that deny immigrants minimum due process rights that are consistent with America’s values.”

He warned that today’s detention system “looks in many ways like a criminal proceeding”. Unlike in an actual criminal case, however, U.S. law does not offer those brought up on immigration charges the right to an attorney.

Compromised, punitive process

Over the past two decades, the U.S. government has poured hundreds of billions of dollars into stepping up border security and taken an increasingly hard line on immigration issues. The swollen detention system is one unintended corollary of this focus.

Legislation was significantly tightened in 1996, which among other things vastly expanded the number of immigration-related offences considered felonies and which would require automatic deportation. Some of these laws were again strengthened on terrorism worries in the aftermath of the attacks of Sep. 11, 2001, but President Barack Obama has surprised many by deporting far more people than his predecessors had.

Rolling back some of these automatic penalties are now a central part of the push for reforms. Under the 1996 law, for instance, Congress largely did away with immigration judges’ discretion in ruling on immigration violations – for instance, taking into account how long a migrant had been in the country, the person’s work experience and the hardship that deportation may impose on his or her family.

“This change made for a far more punitive system,” Muzaffar Chishti, director of the New York office of the Migration Policy Institute, a think tank, told IPS. “Since 1996 especially, we’ve had a much more compromised review process, both at the administrative level and at the official level.”

By 2002, an immigration-specific appeals system was experiencing a massive backlog, prompting officials to allow the appeals process to proceed on a simple up-or-down decision by a single judge, with no explanation for verdicts. This led to a huge increase in the amount of cases appealed to the federal court system, Chishti says, to the point where half of the caseloads in some circuits today are immigration cases.

At Wednesday’s Senate hearing, Ahilan T. Arulanantham, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, noted that immigration defendants were being forced to spend months or even years behind bars awaiting trial. He also noted that new technologies are available today that would cheaply and efficiently allow the accused to remain outside of detention but still ensure that they appear at required court dates.

Commitment to refuge

Meanwhile, some within the U.S. immigration detention system probably shouldn’t even be there in the first place. Critics point in particular to refugees and asylum-seekers.

“The United States has a long history of protecting and providing refuge to victims of persecution,” Sarah Ibrahim, with Human Rights First, an advocacy group, told IPS.

“But what we’ve seen recently is the U.S. faltering in this commitment – for instance, by imposing deadlines that require asylum applications to be filed within a year of entry into the United States. We are also failing these people by keeping those under detention in jails and jail-like facilities without prompt judicial review, and at the behest of an underfunded and overstretched court system.”

In February, Human Rights First and more than 160 other organisations sent a letter to President Obama stating that “immigration reform legislation must include key changes to the U.S. asylum system to better ensure that refugees who seek the protection of the United States are afforded meaningful access to a fair, effective and timely asylum adjudication process.”