Because of U.S. president Donald Trump
administration’s “zero tolerance” immigration
policy, at least 2,342 children, including
infants and babies, known as “tender-age”
children, were separated from their parents in
the one-month between May 5 and June 9.
The videos, photos and recordings of families
being separated, and children and infants
being detained in cages by U.S. border officials
are gut-wrenching and heartbreaking.
Furthermore, the
government of the U.S.
does not have a plan
for how the children
taken will be returned
to their parents. As
soon as the children
were separated, they
became “unaccompanied
children,” the same
classification they would
have received if they had
crossed alone. This makes
them eligible to be sent to
one of an estimated 100
Department of Health
and Human Services
shelters in 17 states.
As reported by Migration
Policy Institute, “As of
yet, the administration
has articulated no plan to
reunite these parents and
children. Doing so would
require a massive logistical
system…with reports of
some mothers deported
back to Central America
as their children were left
in the United States, and
of detained parents not
knowing where their child is and vice versa.”
This is U.S. immigration policy in its rawest
form ± traumatizing children to terrorize
migrants coming to the United States
fleeing war, violence and economic and
environmental destruction. The cruelty and
inhumanity that is U.S. immigration policy
did not begin in 2018. The criminalization and
dehumanization of immigrants, migrants and
refugees are fundamental to the immigration
policy of the U.S. government.
From Family Separation to Indefinite
Family Detention
The U.S. government, both under President
Obama and President Trump, also pays private
companies and non-profit organizations a
shocking amount of money to detain children
and immigrants ± and appears to have no
intention to break these lucrative contracts.
One non-profit, Southwest Key Programs,
Inc. will be paid $458million this year alone
for detaining children in their facilities (Time
Magazine).
As well, family separation is set to continue
through escalating deportations being
carried out by Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE). This agency, which was
founded in 2001, is responsible for terrorizing
immigrant and refugee communities in the
United States, and their campaign of fear
has only increased since Trump took office.
As David Leopold, the former president
of the American Immigration Lawyers
Association told Bloomberg News “I’ve never
seen anything like it in my 30-plus years of
practice…Trump has created a police state for
immigrants Ð legal and unauthorized.”
Detaining Immigrants and Refugees is
Business as Usual
This policy of the U.S. Trump administration
is shocking in its blatant abuse of children and
families, but it is not the first time that the U.S.
government, headed by either a Democrat
or a Republican, has been exposed for their
criminal treatment of immigrants, migrants
and refugees. Under President Obama, a
quota was established for the Department
of Homeland Security which bound them
to have a minimum 34,000 people detained
and “in bed” at the detentions centres at any
given time. Between 2009 and 2015, President
Obama deported 2.5million people - earning
him the name “Deporter In Chief ” in the
immigrant’s rights movement. In the eight
years before Obama, over 2 million people
were deported by President George W. Bush.
Millions of families were separated by these
criminal policies.
Then there is the Presidency of Bill Clinton,
who also implemented policies that
criminalized people fleeing for their lives.
During the 1994 Clinton Presidency, there
was a policy called “prevention through
deterrence” - which sounds an awful lot like
the “deterrence” that
President Trump is
referring to today.
This policy forced
immigrants to cross
through the border
under much more
deadly conditions in
deserts or mountains
where they died from
dehydration, heat
stroke, exhaustion and
hypothermia.
To make it acceptable
to people in the United
States to treat migrants
this way, Trump
has also increased
the campaign to
dehumanize people
crossing the border,
capitalizing on people’s
fears and the economic
insecurities caused by
deepening capitalist
crisis in the U.S. Racist
Trump has referred
to immigrants as
"animals", "murderers",
and "rapists", and has
even used the word
“infest”
to
describe
immigrants crossing the border looking for
somewhere safe to be.
Who Is Responsible for the Crisis?
As reported by Robert Warren, from the
Center for Migration Studies, “The number
[of people] attempting to get across the
Southern border is probably the lowest it’s
been since at least the 1970s.”
What this means is that unlike the U.S.
government wants people to believe, the socalled
border crisis today is not due to increased
migration to the United States. The U.S.
border is not unprepared or overwhelmed; its
brutality has been deliberately organized. The
human crisis at the border is in fact, not due at
all to anything that the migrants and refugees
themselves have done. The responsibility for
the crisis lies squarely on the shoulders of the
U.S. capitalist government.
People crossing the border didn’t decide to
implement a “zero-tolerance” policy, nor to
be separated from their children, nor to be
imprisoned for months waiting to have their
asylum claims heard. No, people crossing
the border aren’t even responsible for the
conditions that drove them to make the
deadly journey through Latin America in the
first place.
The U.S. government and their allies have
decimated economies, imposed neoliberal
policies, destroyed entire countries, wrecked
environments and torn apart the basic social
fabric that holds entire societies together
across the third-world (colonial and semicolonial
countries).
Migrants and refugees are fleeing countries
that have been destroyed by imperialist
war, occupations and theft of resources. All
migrants and refugees unconditionally have
the right and deserve a chance to build a life
within the countries that are responsible for
the destruction of their homelands.
As reported by the Doctors Without Borders,
in a May 2017 report on conditions in Central
America’s Northern Triangle (El Salvador,
Honduras and Guatemala), “Through
violence assessment surveys and medical and
psychosocial consultations, MSF [Doctors
Without Borders] teams have witnessed and
documented a pattern of violent displacement,
persecution, sexual violence, and forced
repatriation akin to the conditions found in
the deadliest armed conflicts in the world
today.” These are the conditions that the U.S.
government has imposed upon millions of
people in Latin America.
The Government of Canada Detains
Children Too!
The government of Canada is no exception
when it comes to the criminal treatment of
immigrants and refugees, including migrant
children. The StarMetro Vancouver compiled
data from the Canada Border Services Agency
(CBSA) and found that on average, 182
children are held in immigration detention
in Canada a year. The damaging impacts of
detention on children know no borders, and
children in detention in Canada experience
the same terror and long-term
psychological effects as those in the
United States.
When is comes to an understanding
of the inhumanity of Canada’s
refugee policy, it is important to
examine Prime Minister Trudeau’s
policy of accepting Syrian refugees
in Canada. During the 2015
election campaign, Trudeau made
the promise that the government
of Canada would sponsor “25,000
Syrian refugees by the end of 2015.”
This promise was made at a time
when thousands of refugees were
drowning in the Mediterranean
Sea fleeing imperialist wars and
occupations in the Middle East
and North Africa. The government
of Canada failed to meet this target,
while at the same time they also
utterly failed at welcoming the
refugees as they also promised. Syrian refugees
reported trouble with accessing food banks,
sub-standard housing and 16-month long
wait-lists for federally funded English classes.
Last year, when U.S. President Trump first
instated the outrageous Muslim Ban Liberal
Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau
was boasting #WelcometoCanada on Twitter.
Hypocritically at the same time as this tweet,
the government of Canada was decreasing
the number of government-assisted refugees
it would accept in 2017. As reported by the
Canadian Council for Refugees only 7,500
non-Syrian refugees were resettled in Canada
at a time when the United Nations Human
Rights Commission has called for the urgently
needed resettlement of over one-million
people. The government of Canada has the
moral obligation and responsibility to accept
more refugees, from Syria and every other
country that Canada has worked to destroy
alongside other imperialist governments.
Another gross example of the criminality of
the government of Canada’s immigration
policy is the “Safe Third Country Agreement”
currently in place between the governments
of the U.S.
and Canada.
According to
this agreement, a
person making a
refugee claim must
do so in the first
country that they
arrive in - whether
that be the United
States or Canada.
Therefore, if a
refugee enters
through the U.S./
Mexico border, but then travels to Canada
before making their claim for asylum, they
will be returned to the United States and
told to make their claim there. The Safe Third
Country Agreement is the treaty that forced
refugees and migrants to cross into Canada in
the middle of winter, risking their lives and
losing limbs, fingers and toes. They have the
very real fear that if they cross at an official
border crossing and make their claim for
asylum, they will be turned back to the United
States.
We encourage people to sign an online petition
sponsored by the New Democratic Party (NDP)
MP Jenny Kwan, demanding that Canada cancel
the Safe Third Country Agreement with the U.S.
Sign Here
Ending the Safe Third Country Agreement
is especially important now that the U.S.
Attorney General Jeff Session has announced
that asylum will no longer be given to those
migrants fleeing domestic and gang violence.
This Crisis Facing Humanity is Worldwide
The reasons that there is an “immigration
crisis” in the U.S. are the same reasons why
there is a “refugee crisis” in Europe. An
unprecedented number of people around the
world are fleeing countries that have become
unlivable due to wars, occupations and
economic devastation wrought on them by
the U.S. government and their allies.
Today there are 68.5million people that have
been forcibly displaced around the world.
According to the UN Refugee Commission,
this is the highest number ever recorded.
Over 50% of refugees worldwide (25.4million
people as recognized by the United Nations
Refugee Agency) come from five countries:
Syria, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Myanmar
and Somalia.
Migrants fleeing the Middle East and North
Africa continue to risk their lives crossing the
deadly Mediterranean Sea. In 2017, 186,768
refugees arrived in Europe; at least 3,116
were killed on their journey. 200 people were
drowned off the shore of Libya in just three
days at the end of June 2018. Tens of thousands
of people are subject to human trafficking and
slavery. As of April 2018, over 56,000 people
are left living in limbo in Greece.
In nearly two years, from October 2015 to
December 2017 a shameful 33,154 refugees
were relocated by the European Union as
hundreds of thousands of people continued
their dangerous journey through Europe until
they found a country where they could claim
asylum or settled in the large slum camps.
And this is Europe’s “solution” to the refugee
crisis?
Although government representatives in
the European Union and Australia, like
those in the U.S., claim that they are facing
an unprecedented crisis when it comes to
immigrants, migrants and refugees, thirdworld
countries continue to bear the brunt
of the crisis. 80-90% of refugees fleeing their
home countries remain in a country that is
neighbouring their own according to the
United Nations. For example, one in four
people in Lebanon is a refugee, and Turkey
is currently home to 3.4million refugees from
Syria.
If colonial or semi-colonial countries like
Lebanon and Turkey can accept millions of
refugees, then the countries like the United
States and Canada have no excuses.
After 17 years of the new era of war and
occupation since September 2001, imperialist
wars, occupations, sanctions and all forms
of foreign intervention in the Middle East
and Africa have brought on the crisis. The
imperialist legacy of the dirty wars in Latin
America has forced tens of thousand of people
to look for a life in the United States. People
have been left with no other option than
to abandon everything that they have ever
known for the possibility of a better future
and some sense of security, in another city,
country or continent.
Family Separation is Not New
Over the last month, the mainstream media
in both the U.S. and Canada is reporting on
the separation of families and the inhuman
treatment of migrants as if the news is a
shocking of somehow not representative of
“Canadian” or “US” values. However, this is far
from the case.
The governments of the U.S. and Canada are
well experienced in family separations, starting
with the genocide of millions of indigenous
people. Then there are the millions of African
children that were ripped from their families
and homes as part of the trans-Atlantic slave
trade, and the continued forceful separation
of black families within the system of slavery,
where children were ripped from their
mother’s arms to be sold.
In Canada, as in the
U.S., the use of terror
to control Indigenous
people and destroy
their culture continues
to this day. From
Residential schools
which forced 150,000
children from their
families through to today, where 52 percent of children in foster
care are Indigenous, although they are only 8% of the Canadian
population.
These are only a few examples, and it is easy to see the legacy
of family separation and abuse of children that runs through the
very foundations of the U.S. and Canada.
Open the Borders Now!
Think about it, in 2017 every two seconds one person around
the world had to flee their home in search of somewhere safe to
try and build a new life. Such a vast exodus on humanity cannot
be contained by walls, or checkpoints, or razor-wire fences and
armed guards. The only solution to the crisis of immigrants,
migrants and refugees facing the world today is to open the
borders and demand imperialists hands off colonial and semicolonial
countries.
Imperialist governments around the world are attempting to use
racism, xenophobia and Islamophobia to divide poor, working
and oppressed people from immigrants, refugees and migrants.
If immigrants are living in fear of a “zero tolerance” policy and
family separation or detention, they will be less likely to fight for
their human rights.
More than that, keeping poor, working and oppressed people,
including immigrants, divided gives imperialist governments the
space that they require to implement the government cut-backs
and austerity measures necessary to stave off an economic crisis.
This is more easily realized when people are divided, a task that
can be accomplished through Xenophobia and Islamophobia.
This same economic crisis also requires imperialist countries
around the world to maintain and expand wars and occupations in
the Middle East and Africa, to reach more and more markets. For
people living in the Middle East and Africa, this means getting
used to living under the new era of war and occupation, a period of
perpetual war. Imperialist wars and occupations, combined with
the ever-increasing climate crisis, will continue to create millions
of migrants willing to risk everything for somewhere to be safe.
This crisis will not be solved by legalities, because the criminality
lies in the actions of imperialist governments themselves.
Opening the borders is a short-term solution to the humanitarian
crisis facing migrants today. The only long-term solution is to end
all imperialist world domination, as well as wars and occupations.
As a start, Canada should immediately accept 200,000 refugees,
and grant them immediate human and legal rights. It is the
government of Canada’s obligation to do so.
Follow Alison on Twitter: @Alisoncolette
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