What is behind the migration crises in the Americas?

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1. The topic to highlight: Changes in immigration laws

Migration across the American continent has changed radically in the last decade.

However, US immigration laws have not adapted, and to address the growing humanitarian crisis on its southern border, it continues to rely on a patchy patchwork of policies inherited from the last century, reports Stef W. Knight of Axios.

News Push

: The Joe Biden Administration plans to end the policy known as Title 42 on May 11.

The measure, adopted by former President Donald Trump in the spring of 2020, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, has allowed immigration authorities to expeditiously return hundreds of thousands of people without giving them the opportunity to request asylum.

• In March, a court in Florida annulled another immigration measure that would allow authorities to release people intercepted after crossing the border, so that they wait to complete their immigration procedures being reviewed by an app or with GPS monitors on their ankles instead of being admitted to a hospital. detention centers.

That lends itself to a scenario

in which as tens of thousands of people continue to arrive at the border, they could experience greater dangers, while border authorities – as well as communities in the area – could be overwhelmed.

Photo illustration: Annelise Capossela/Axios.

Photos by: Aimee Melo/picture alliance and Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images

• Jason Houser, formerly in charge of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) says that he initially believes that there will be an "increase in the number of [unaccompanied minors]."

• Last year was already the deadliest on record for migrants at the Southwest border, according to federal data.

Faced with this reality,

 the Biden Administration is considering stricter immigration proposals.

• One of them would block the possibility of asylum for people who do not use the new parole programs, make their immigration appointment on the other side of the border using an app or first request asylum in another country through which they passed on their way.

• Another measure would be the resumption of the detention of migrant families.

  The Department of Homeland Security has also increased surveillance resources at the border and says it has cracked down on smuggling networks.

But, but, but

: Those solutions would only be in the short term, according to experts.

Continued investment is needed in the long term to address the causes of emigration from other countries through diplomacy and channeled private investment.

• So while the Biden administration won't be the first to tackle the problem of higher flows, it won't be the last either unless immigration policies are truly tightened without being undermined by politicking, Stef says.

2. The realities of migrating the 'right' way

Moving permanently to the United States was once as easy as getting on a boat or walking across the border for some migrants. 

But today most legal mechanisms to enter the country take years due to the overwhelmed immigration agencies and courts, as well as increasing levels of migration around the world and limits on the availability of certain visas.

That has resulted in many more people piling up waiting to enter the US, Russell reports.

[The backlog in immigration courts exceeds two million cases, with an average wait of four years]

• About 9 million people had green card applications open last year, according to the most recent data from the Cato Institute.

  Waiting times to obtain these residency documents have been extended, such that they can now take years and even decades.

• In 1991, only 3% of immigrants with preferential visas due to being highly qualified or those who were seeking a visa to meet relatives already in the US had to wait more than 10 years.

  By 2018, more than a fifth (27%) of applicants had to wait that long.

A look at the current legal migration process

The United States has not increased the number of certain medium- and long-term visas it grants each year since 1990, when then-President George HW Bush signed a bill that established quotas based on the country's total population as well as job needs and economics of the moment.

• But since then, emigration hot spots have increased globally, from parts of Asia and Africa to parts of Latin America and the Caribbean.

• Every year millions of people request the diversity visa, known as the green card lottery, when the Government only plans to grant 55,000 of those visas.

  Experts say that, in addition, it is very difficult for many to navigate the process of visas, whether they are diversity, family reunion or based on migrating for a specific job.

• There are also mechanisms that allow people to live or work

  temporarily

  in the US as students.

Photo illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios.

Photos: Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times and Rhona Wise/AFP via Getty Images

What was the immigration process like before?

Before World War I, the United States did not have the visa system that is known today.

It actually worked with open borders for certain people, David J. Bier, associate director for immigration studies at the Cato Institute, tells Axios.

• Europeans only had to board a ship bound for the US, as there was no US consulate to apply for a visa.

  They were processed upon arrival at Ellis Island. 

Yes, but

: At the same time, the United States prevented some people from immigrating or took discriminatory measures towards certain potential immigrants.

• The Chinese Exclusion Act (1882-1892) prohibited Chinese workers from legally migrating to the United States.

  Measures similar to that law were in force until 1943.

• During the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920), the United States forced Mexican people who wanted to immigrate to strip naked and be sprayed with pesticides for false racist claims that they "brought disease and lice."

3. Diversification on the US southern border.

Migrants are making increasingly dangerous journeys from faraway nations to seek asylum from the US-Mexico border, including from China, India and Russia. 

Why it matters

: This has complicated an already chaotic situation at that border, Stef W. Knight reports, as authorities face new language barriers and responding to people leaving countries in confrontation with the US with which it is not easy to cooperate. for issues of return of migrants and deportation.

• The demographic evolution of who arrives at the southern border, and by what routes, is also a sign of the desperation so many people have to seek refuge in the United States.

Details

: Many people from outside the Western Hemisphere often fly to South American countries that do not require a visa to go from there to the US. Along the way, they face, like people from the American continent, dangers such as kidnapping, extortion , robberies and death.

• Thousands of Chinese migrants have recently made the perilous journey through the Darien Gap, a jungle infamous for its rugged terrain with fast-flowing rivers, which is also the natural habitat of deadly animals and insects such as snakes and the conga spider.

  On top of that are the human dangers such as criminal groups operating in the area.

The intrigue

: Most of the volunteers who operate in the US-Mexico border area.

they are used to dealing with people who speak Spanish or perhaps a common indigenous language on the continent.

• The diversification of the people coming to the area has put even the welfare organizations in trouble.

• Several have tried to support people using tools such as Google Translate, which do not always provide an accurate translation, Andrea Rudnik, volunteer coordinator for the NGO Team Brownsville, told Axios Latino.

4. Experiences when applying for asylum

Requesting asylum in the United States, despite being codified in the law, in practice is too complicated and entails many restrictions compared to what is promoted on paper, according to Astrid's immigration advocates.

Big Picture

: Policies designed to reduce irregular migration, put in place by both former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden, have made it much more difficult for people fleeing conflict or persecution to gain support or refuge if they arrive. from the southern border.

What is asylum?

At the international level, legal recognition was given to asylum and refuge in 1951, after the massive displacement caused by the Second World War.

• The United States did not ratify that 1951 convention, but it did sign the 1967 Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees. This requires it to provide protection to those who qualify as refugees ("persons fleeing persecution based on race, religion, nationality, opinion political or more, or are fleeing severe harm, including human rights violations, armed conflicts and persecution," according to the UN).

But a 1980 immigration law says that asylum is a "discretionary" status, so the United States can deny asylum to some people who meet the refugee definition.

• In part it is because the definition given in that law to a refugee, someone who can correctly verify the fear of being persecuted, is narrow and, according to experts, results in the vast majority of cases being denied.

• For example, many people in Central America are fleeing widespread gang violence, not necessarily highly personalized threats, and many immigration judges interpret such cases as falling outside the definition, says Alicia Vasquez-Crede, director of asylee services for Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service.

What is it like to ask for asylum?

Ana Rosa, a 31-year-old Venezuelan asylum seeker, crossed the Darien Gap and several Latin American countries with her husband and four children (ages 3, 6, 8, and 11) before arriving in Texas in 2022.

• She tells Axios Latino that all of her children are deaf and require surgeries that are not possible in Venezuela, where many hospitals have a shortage of supplies.

Photo illustration Shoshana Gordon/Axios.

Photos: Gerardo Vieyra/NurPhoto and Jair Cabrera Torres/picture alliance via Getty Images

• The family applied for asylum a few weeks after arriving last summer.

  But her first hearing before a judge will be until next August, according to Ana Rosa, who asked not to give her last name for fear that her request would be affected.

• "Actually we struggle. We like to work and here we have to do some things without permission because imagine, how do we support four children?" Ana Rosa said.

• She told Axios Latino that she is waiting to meet the deadline (150 days from the acceptance of the application papers, which for her would be mid-May) to request a work permit that some asylum seekers can process while their case is resolved. case.

5. A hemispheric issue

The increasingly pronounced effects of climate change, as well as long-standing problems such as violence, political instability, and economic woes, are reshaping migration patterns from Latin America and the Caribbean.

Big Picture

: Not only are more people arriving in the United States, but they are also migrating within Latin America and beyond cities that have long welcomed migrants.

• "Those mobility dynamics that were very marked have been becoming more and more elastic," Diego Chaves-González, director of the Initiative for Latin America and the Caribbean at the Migration Policy Institute, told Axios Latino.

• But the policies to address the issue have not yet been revised to take into account these factors that make migration something much more hemispheric than before.

  "If the solutions to immigration systems and policies are still going to happen in border areas, it's really not going to get much done," says Chaves-González.

Current situation

: Ecuador had been a place of arrival for many migrants from neighboring countries for two decades.

Now, people are leaving Ecuador due to the increase in gang violence that has made life in major cities like Guayaquil untenable.

• Disasters from natural phenomena such as hurricanes, aggravated by climate change in damage and frequency, have also forced more people from nations such as Guatemala, Haiti, Panama, Honduras, and the Dominican Republic to leave their homes.

• Financial pressures aggravated by the pandemic and rising global inflation have also contributed to an increase in hemispheric migratory movements.

  For example, Colombia registered a record emigration last year.

Photo illustration: Annelise Capossela/Axios.

Photos: Pedro Pardo/AFP and by Seth Sidney Berry/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Between the lines

: Another important problem behind the increase in migratory movements throughout the Americas is the lack of integration policies, which help new immigrants to adapt culturally and allow them to contribute to the economy of the country they initially arrived in, according to Chaves. -Gonzalez.

• That's because most of the measures that address migration in the region focus on regulating transit rather than how to help people who have already migrated, he adds.

• That has meant, for example, that more Nicaraguans are now trying to reach the US by fleeing political repression in their country.

  In the past, many had gone to Costa Rica, but obtaining refugee status there has become much more difficult under the current government, and there are reports that anti-immigrant sentiment has grown among Ticos.

• Similarly, many Venezuelans who fled political instability and food and medicine shortages at home to other South American nations have begun traveling north instead since the pandemic, even if it means crossing the dangerous Darien Gap.

• Some Venezuelans have said they felt they were languishing in limbo as they faced xenophobia and long waits for status regularization in nations like Peru or Colombia. 

To Watch Out For

: Twenty-one governments from the Americas (including the United States) signed the Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection last June.

They promised to cooperate in search of regional and coordinated solutions to regulate the flow of people.

• Representatives of the signatory nations met again in Washington DC last September to begin forming joint action plans.

• To really make a difference, any proposal or action plan must get adequate funding and real political backing, Chaves-González says.

• They should also have provisions to jointly combat criminal groups that exploit migrants with promises of transit, adds the expert, and include programs that foster resilience against the threats of the climate emergency (how to adapt crops to floods, for example , instead of just thinking about how to help newly affected people when there is an emergency).

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