U.S. Channel PBS Airs Controversial Coverage of U.S.-Mexico Border Abuses

Copyright 2005, Mark Campos

Alternately feared and lauded by the many who have attempted or succeeded in crossing the border dividing the U.S. and Mexico and those who oppose their efforts, the U.S. Customs & Border Protection (CBP) has seen a rise in notoriety over the course of the past decade as attempts at crossing the border have grown from feasible and relatively safe migrations to increasingly dangerous expeditions. Reports of abuses at the hands of CBP officials have become customary occurrences, and little to no effort has been made to ensure the implementation of accountability measures.  That may finally begin to change, however, depending on how a new series on border accountability is received by the public (US news channel PBS).  Two episodes have already been aired with the third slated to air at a later date. Called “Crossing the Line”, the series’ first installment on April 20 drew attention to the 2010 beating (and subsequent death) of 42 year-old Anastasio Hernandez-Rojas, a father of five who died near an entry point close to San Diego, California. The second installment discusses the case of a young woman working for the New Mexico branch of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) who had arranged, over a year ago, to meet with CBP officials regarding a case of sexual assault, which later revealed a darker and even more brutal element of CBP’s dealings with migrants.

The series itself comes at a crucial time; laws across the South and Southwest of the U.S. have forced migrants to resort to ever-more dangerous methods of entry into the country, and confrontations with CBP officials have become more frequent, with increasing reports of torture, assault, and varying levels of abuse. Conditions within detention centers, generally described as overcrowded and miserable, which have gone underreported in past years are also being discussed. Part of the PBS program involves a border patrol agent who openly talks about the deplorable situation facing detained migrants, as well as the many violations occurring on the part of the agents themselves.  The series plans to look into whether border (and international) law is being broken, and what needs to change in order to create a safer and more humanitarian presence on one of the most-crossed boundaries in the world. The ACLU released a statement and lawyers representing ACLU New Mexico and ACLU Texas (two states that see some of the highest number of border crossings) have proposed that the U.S. government create a committee to oversee complaints and provide protection to those willing to come forward and talk. The organization has gone on to assert that, regardless of the personal views of Americans on the subject of immigration, migrants must be protected from torture, rape, and murder – each of which constitutes a violation of international law.

While it remains to be seen what impact programs such as the PBS one will go on to have on U.S. border control accountability, it is at least clear that measures are now needed to enforce respect of human rights. A recent article discussed border agents who actively set out to destroy water containers left for dehydrated immigrants, leading many who attempt the dangerous journey to die. This disregard for human life is counter to both U.S. and international law, to say nothing of being intrinsically flawed on a moral level. In addition to working to ensure that immigration law within the U.S. improves, it is also essential that CBP officials be held accountable for their actions, and that measures be taken to also ensure the safety of migrants once they fall into the hands of the U.S. government.

-Evelyn Crunden

Obama’s latest executive order: new possibilities for US immigrants?

Copyright 2010, Jason Redmond, Associated Press

President Obama has recently issued an Executive Order that suggests a major shift in his immigration policy.  While more immigrants have been deported during his administration than under any other president’s term since the 1950’s, he is now ordering a halt on deportations of young, undocumented immigrants who came to the United States before the age of 16, are now under the age of 30, and have lived in the country for at least 5 consecutive years, and are in good legal standing.  The order offers temporary residence and work permits to the young people who meet these criteria and helps them to get on the path towards legal citizenship.

Although President Obama’s Executive Order has stirred controversy in Congress, where Republicans and Democrats were seeking a bipartisan agreement on immigration, it will have an immediate positive effect on all the young people who came to the USA with their parents, and who have grown up as Americans despite their official legal status.  The Obama position is not a solution to the country’s longstanding internal battle with immigration, but it will bring comfort to hundreds of thousands of young people and give them hope for the future.  Many of them have been educated in American institutions and what the new Executive Order does is provides them with an opportunity to actively participate in and contribute to, the society they grew up in and identify with.

Migrants face a variety of impediments when they relocate to new countries.  Confronted by cultural differences, language barriers, and often subjected to poor working and living conditions, migrants are easily and quickly marginalized. This is made all the worse when immigrants are undocumented because they cannot be legally employed and their rights are rarely protected.  They typically live in very poor housing where they encounter problems of overcrowding, poor ventilation and heating, all of which frustrate and depress them as well as expose them to airborne diseases.  Without legal identification, many of them accept to be economically abused and exploited, refraining from calling on law enforcement officials for protection or seeking medical attention when they need it.

The situation is not necessarily getting better.  There have been legislative attempts to require hospitals to report illegal immigrants who seek medical attention at hospitals, and a bill introduced by Arizona lawmakers in 2011 calls for them to be profiled and stopped at the will of law enforcement officers.  A study of undocumented migrants in California and Texas reveals that between 50 to 70 percent of undocumented immigrants in these states do not get to see a doctor even once a year, meaning that they receive little if any, preventative healthcare.  Giving legal status to young migrants will allow them to seek the medical attention they require and it will put their health on par with that of their classmates and colleagues.

Granting temporary legal status will mean that the standard of living of young undocumented migrants in the United States can now improve.  The young people involved will, for the first time, be able to apply for driver’s licenses. They will be able to apply for financial aid, and work towards attending colleges and universities. They will be free (within a supply and demand economy) to seek legal employment and move toward health insurance benefits and an overall improved standard of living. While the President’s decision has spurred political controversy, it is a step in the right direction.  With a bit of luck it could help promote a better standard of living for migrants of all ages, but especially young ones.

-Laura Driscoll and Manuel Carballo

World Refugee Day 2012

Copyright 2011, UNHCR

As the world celebrates yet another Refugee Day it is important that we remind ourselves that the number of people being forcibly displaced across borders as well as within their own countries is once again increasing.  For a short few years it seemed as if the number of refugees was coming down and being overtaken by the number of internally displaced people (IDPs) who do not get a chance to get across borders.  Today, however, the picture is one of more and more people fleeing across borders as well as within their own borders.

Refugees and IDPs are people who are suddenly cut off from friends and relatives, and what are often called “significant others.”  They lose their personal belongings, and the homes and local industries they have invested in and developed over the years. They typically lose whatever national identity papers they had and become stateless.  Most of all, they often lose hope and are thrust into settings and situations where they gradually lose all sense of self-esteem and personal value.  Generations of people are being born and brought up in refugee and IDP camps where they take on the debilitating refugee mentality and identity.

Today’s refugees and IDPs are no longer as welcome as the ones who moved around Europe after the Second World War or even as recently as the Bosnian War.  States that previously opened their arms to refugees now impose time-consuming and psychologically stressful administrative procedures that further worsen the sense of loss and fragility.

Ironically, all refugee and IDP populations contain within them people of talent and creativity, people whom societies everywhere, including their own, would benefit tremendously from.  To be sure not all of them are going to be Einstein’s, but many of them could contribute to the social and economic development of the countries they are fleeing from and the countries they are fleeing to.

Hopefully Refugee Day 2012 will be a day of introspection by politicians and the public alike. The xenophobia that has been used and played with by all too many populists must be counter-acted and a better appreciation of what it is that refugees and IDPs go through must be fostered.  Countries should begin developing the type of policies and programs that would make the most of the presence of refugees and IDPs while at the same time respecting their civil and human rights and making sure they enjoy the benefits that all human beings merit.  The right to health, the right to education, the right to shelter, and the right to food are rights that need to promoted and protected everywhere and by everyone.  We need to remember that we could all be made refugees some day.

Manuel Carballo

A New Opportunity for Europe

President-elect François Hollande’s campaign was marked by an absence of the rhetoric on immigration that has come to characterize much of the political narrative of France and Greece in recent months.  This may well have contributed to his success in a country in which over 10 percent of the population is foreign-born and in which a far larger proportion is descended from recent immigrants.  No one should assume, however, that the issue of immigration in France, or indeed elsewhere in Europe, has gone away.  Migration into the EU remains a challenge that will not go away.

Migration is ultimately a function of supply and demand and the financial crisis confronting Europe has already contributed to both a slight decrease in the number of people arriving in the EU and to the departure of others who were already here but decided to go back to their countries of origin.  The EU will nevertheless continue to be seen as a region of hope and opportunity by the hundreds of thousands of people living in situations of worsening poverty and political instability.  As such it will continue to receive many more would-be immigrants in the coming years.

The challenge President Hollande and other European leaders will hopefully take up sooner than later, is the need to develop a comprehensive and cohesive inter-country approach to migration that takes into account the size and pace of immigration states require, and also the ways in which newcomers can be socially and culturally integrated.  In developing its policies and plans for migration, Europe will have to address the fact that dramatically falling birthrates in most EU countries are urgently calling for new immigrants who can rectify the demographic imbalance that is emerging between the young and the elderly.  The policies and plans that will hopefully emerge will also have to take into account the types of skills that are increasingly called for in countries where aging populations require a type of domiciliary care that is labor intensive and which has proved difficult to satisfy without labor input from outside.  Hopefully, any evidence based approach will equally recognize the fact that defining migrants as “illegal” or “irregular” does little more than prevent them from participating fully in national taxation systems.  Conversely, regularizing migrants quickly increases the number of tax-paying citizens who because they are largely young and healthy, do not make huge demands on national health systems.

Encouraging and facilitating the social and cultural integration of migrants remains another part of the equation that must be taken up with a sense of urgency.  At no time in history has it been so clear that migrants who are not encouraged or allowed to socially and culturally integrate risk remaining outside mainstream society and never really identifying with their host countries and their values.  The answer to this challenge will not be simple, but avoiding residential ghettos and ethnically biased schools will contribute much to achieving the goal of integration and ultimately benefit all stakeholders.

Reducing the need to leave countries of origin is of course the solution to massive migration, and here the EU has a unique opening to engage in a new type of focused international development aid that targets the countries and regions where poverty, conflict and persecution are forcing people to uproot and emigrate.  Europe needs to come to terms with the fact that international aid focused around this theme can be as economically productive to donor countries as it is to beneficiary ones.  If well designed it can not only bring employment and a better quality of life to oppressed people, but also open up new trade opportunities and better political relationships between countries.  Sending unwanted migrants back home with financial incentives and a promise of training, which is what some countries are now considering, will always be more expensive than providing them with training and economic enterprise possibilities before they are forced to leave.  Hopefully, these are some of the issues President Hollande will take up, and if he does, that other European leaders will follow him on.

Manuel Carballo

Shooting Europe in the Foot: Europe’s Migration Migraine (Part 2)

A couple of weeks ago,we at ICMHD touched on the growing tendency for politicians to use the theme of migration in their campaigns and, more often than not, blaming migrants for many of the ills facing countries in this time of economic hardship. This diversion could easily cast a shadow on the numerous opportunities available for constructive national social and economic development and at the same time it could directly erode the health of the migrants populations.

In many ways Europe is at crossroads. Demographers and economists largely agree that falling fertility rates, a rapidly aging population, and the growing lack of interest of nationals in occupations they no longer see as financially or socially attractive is creating major challenges to development.  At a time when fewer young people are available to the economic market place and when a larger proportion of national budgets will inevitably be allocated to the care of the elderly, Europe is increasingly finding itself unable to maintain its social security systems and economic competitiveness.

If Europe pragmatically is to prosper socially and economically it must take up this challenge and proactively develop policies and programs designed to attract, absorb and integrate people in ways that will maintain the social capital base the continent needs to achieve these goals.

To date most European countries have done little to integrate migrants. Few have provided migrants with incentives to learn host languages and even fewer have developed outreach programs to incrementally transition migrants to link with the history and values of host societies.  Urban planning and housing schemes have rarely been designed to encourage physical integration and prevent the concentration of ethnic minorities in ghettos. Instead Europe has taken a laissez-faire approach to migration presumably assuming that with time newcomers are automatically absorbed into host societies.

Today many European countries are faced with ethnic minority communities characterized by poor socioeconomic profiles, limited educational and occupational mobility and poor health profiles and, increasinglysocio-political instability.

The response from many politicians has been to talk in sweeping ways about the negative impact of migrants and suggest that the answer is to radically cut the number of newcomers. Instead the time has come for European countries to step back and analyze what type of society they want and what they are willing to do to encourage and facilitate a true absorption and integration of the new people they so desperately need. Isolation is not a valid option in the world we live in today.

We would like to know your thoughts on the specific issue of how you view national European immigration policies and their effects on migrants’ health. Please feel free to share and comment!

Manuel Carballo

Shooting Europe in the Foot: Europe’s Migration Migraine

Thomas Samson/Reuters

The presidential campaign in France has predictably focused, once again, on the issue of migration. Migrants represent approximately 11% of the French population. Many, if not most, have come from countries with a long and strong political and economic link with France. Most have probably seen France in a quasi-motherland manner. They, like migrants everywhere, are contributing to the social and economic development of France. Some are highly skilled physicians, nurses, engineers, lawyers, schoolteachers and others who quickly move in to stable and relatively well paying job situations. Others are less skilled and are taking jobs that nationals are increasingly reluctant to take on. As such, a large proportion of migrants in France, just as in other European countries, have today become the anonymous, easily forgotten workers who keep economies functioning and do so from behind the scenes.

The perennial concern in France about migrants is not unique to France alone but it is nevertheless visceral and prominent in political discussions. Every presidential candidate has felt it expedient to take up this theme and, with a few variations, essentially attempts to appeal to the masses by stating that France neither wants nor needs nor can further accommodate more migrants. The reality, of course, is that almost every European country has now come to terms with the fact that in a continent of dramatically falling fertility rates, migrants represent a lifeline for the economy. Without this substantial segment of the workforce many industries will become less efficient, but more importantly, in the absence of tax paying migrants, the social security systems of Europe will have a short shelf-life. It is speculated that the day will soon come when contributions to pension scheme by nationals are so restricted that future generations will simply not be able to draw on them.

In Germany where the proportion of migrants is higher than that of France, there has been little evidence of a politicization of the phenomenon. While this is not to say that foreign-born people in Germany are by any means more integrated or accepted; politicians have seen it fit not to focus political debates on or around them. There are many good reasons for following the German model.

Migration is a complex phenomenon and people who move; be it for economic or political security reasons are pressured in many psychological ways. There are many reasons that contribute to the constant outflux and influx of people from one place to another. These reasons are usually beyond their scope of control, rendering them to leave behind family, friends and cultures.

Politicization of migration and migrants does little more than force this essential population further on the margin of mainstream society. It increases their stress and anxiety and we know it makes them all the more vulnerable to a wide range of physical and mental health problems. If Europe is to avoid creating a marginalized and frustrated ghetto population who feel they are not wanted but know they’re needed, it must stand back and decide where it is heading with this phenomenon. Is Europe prepared to deal with a massive and detrimental fall in the size of its population? Is it willing to move forward and create a cohesive, productive and socially constructive Europe? If the latter choice is the aim then politicization of a process that has characterized every period in history and will have to come to an end and politicians will have no choice but to engage in more responsible and constructive political debates.

By: Manuel Carballo

Climate Change: A health hazard?

Pakistan 2010 Floods (Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images)

In November 2011, a group of ministers and senior representatives of governments from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America, and the Pacific met in Dhaka, Bangladesh, to discuss the threat of climate change and the growing vulnerability of countries to the prospect of global warming. The Secretary General of the UN, Ban Ki Moon, was also present. The conclusion of the Climate Vulnerable Forum Dhaka Ministerial Meeting was to call for more concerted action to help countries adapt to the impact of climate change and take steps to mitigate its impact by creating carbon sinks, disseminating environmentally sound technologies and establishing a balance in the energy mix by focusing on renewable and alternative energy.

The emphasis the Dhaka ministerial meeting placed on limiting global warming, in this case to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre industrial levels and progressively reducing greenhouse gas emissions, is symptomatic of the challenges facing the response to climate change. For while reducing greenhouse gas emissions will remain an essential goal to achieve, this will be difficult in an era of economic crisis and the felt need by countries to stimulate new industries and employment at the cost of greenhouse gas emissions.

As we move further into what is already a serious situation, it would be perhaps more important to address the fact that climate change is displacing millions of people and is expected to uproot and forcibly move some 250 million people in the coming years. At a time when countries everywhere are raising barriers to immigration and making life more difficult for refugees, asylum seekers, and economic migrant workers of all kinds, the prospect of up to 250 million people moving in search of human security portends massive social, economic, political and health challenges. This is where we should be placing our attention and finding ways of preparing for what may be involved.

Accommodating displaced people will constitute, if it does not already do so, a massive challenge in terms of availability of land, of housing, of sound water and sanitation, social and health services. At ICMHD we believe that a large proportion of the people who will be displaced will move towards large towns and cities either within their own countries or in neighboring ones. Many of these towns and cities are already overwhelmed. Unplanned and poorly coordinated rural urban migration has outpaced the capacity of many of them to absorb and provide the conditions needed for healthy life. The vastly overcrowded shantytowns and slums that now characterize many cities in developing countries are not only making the protection of health difficult, but are actually producing the conditions that facilitate disease.

ICMHD believes that far more attention should be given to this part of the climate change challenge than it has received to date. This is where meaningful action is probably possible in a shorter time frame and could help avert a major global disaster.

By Manuel Carballo

Asylum seeking: Seeing the positive

Asylum seeking is not new, and is in principle governed by well established and ratified international laws and principles. People have been fleeing persecutions of one kind or another for centuries and the world has seen fit to codify how to respond to this. Legislation apparently has not made it any easier.  In a recent article from Canada, Anabelle Nicoud (La Presse, February 6^th 2012 http://tinyurl.com/7qnadzb) has highlighted some of the problems asylum seekers arriving in Canada are encountering, and what in turn, the cost of these problems are to the state.  She refers specifically to the arrival in August 2011 of 492 Sri Lankans who were handcuffed on arrival and then incarcerated for about 3 ½ months during which time their cases were estimated at a cost to the state of 22 million Canadian dollars.

In Switzerland, 2012 has started out with highly publicized concerns about the growing number of asylum seekers arriving in the country (a 45% increase since 2010) and the unwillingness and/or inability of some local authorities to accommodate them. Last week, 400 residents of Pully, a small relatively well-to-do town close to Lausanne, met to protest the idea of opening an underground civil protection shelter to hold 50 asylum seekers.  Civil defense facilities have been increasingly dedicated to housing asylum seekers in Switzerland, and most recently a psychiatric institution has been partially given over to the task as well.

In 2011 the 27 EU countries, with a total population of over 500 million people, received some 66,000 asylum seekers applications. Insignificant as this number may seem, asylum seekers have nevertheless become a major political, social and economic challenge in the EU as elsewhere. Why this should be so is not clear. Most EU countries (as well as Canada) receiving asylum seekers are ageing quickly and in need of new human resources. Theoretically these countries would benefit from employing young able bodied people who clearly want to be socially and economically integrated. Doing so would also help to cut the cost of the prolonged administrative procedures that prevent asylum seekers from quickly inserting themselves, working, paying taxes and contributing socially.

Employing asylum seekers would also help to raise self-esteem. Fleeing from persecution is never easy and most asylum seekers suffer from trauma and a perceived sense of powerlessness and loss of control.  Typically homesick, anxious and depressed because of what they have gone through and the people they have left behind, asylum seekers are fragile.  Fear of not being able to meet the often complex and unclear legal/administrative requirements of the countries they arrive in is erosive of both their physical and psychological health, which is again a cost to the state.  In the EU where of the 55,000 decisions taken on asylum seekers in the first quarter of 2011, only 1 in 4 were positive, and the administrative process can take years.

Much could be gained by if governments would recognize the potentially positive impact of quickly integrating asylum seekers in the community. The global number of asylum seekers is small and the world has already defined their rights.  People fleeing persecution and threats to their lives deserve better, and we should never lose sight of the fact that although some people are clearly more at risk than others, we are ultimately all at risk if becoming asylum seekers.

by Manuel Carballo

The Swedish election and the growing battle over immigration

Manuel Carballo

The election campaign in Sweden is once again highlighting the growing controversy over migration. This morning, in a televised interview the head of the Sweden Democrats Party stated that the two foremost preoccupations of the Party are immigration and the care of the elderly. In the case of immigration, the idea is to do everything possible to curtail it, and in the case of the elderly, the aim is presumably to increase and make more efficient their care.

Early campaign badge for Sweden Democrats Party- 'Keep Sweden Swedish.' (Wikipedia)

The link between these two aims may have been lost on the Sweden Democrats Party. Care of the elderly is becoming more precarious throughout much of the European region for a variety of reasons. First of all, the number of people moving in to the category typically referred to as the elderly, is growing, and doing so far more rapidly than health planners ever thought likely. The needs they are presenting with are also more complex than many people have previously thought likely. The paradox that Sweden and other European countries face, however, is that the cost of an increasingly elderly population is growing exponentially. More elderly people means that more people are living longer, and hence, contributing to the demand on national pension schemes. This changing profile of the elderly, of European demographics, and the costs of care, is emerging against a backdrop of falling birth rates and smaller numbers of people available to join the workforce, pay taxes, and contribute to social security and pension schemes. There are no two ways about this dilemma. Unless European countries can replenish their populations through massive migration, Europe’s pension schemes will come to abrupt and disastrous ends. Cutting back migration could be catastrophic for Europe, Europe’s elderly of today, and even more so, for Europe’s elderly of tomorrow.

There is of course another reason why cutting back on migration will harm the elderly. Caring for elderly people is neither easy, nor necessarily attractive. Not many people go into this type of work, and throughout much of Europe, this has become a domain in which migrants have contributed immensely. Care of the elderly has become dependent on a labour force that is often foreign-born, and that comes from countries where caring for the elderly still remains an integral and natural part of life.

The Sweden Democrats Party is right to highlight the need for care of the elderly to become more consistent, efficient, and effective. The decision by them to highlight and promote a restriction of immigration would simply make all its aims for the elderly unachievable.

Related Articles

• Factbox: Anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats party (reuters.com)
• FACTBOX-Anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats party (reuters.com)
• Swedish far-right leader: Success due to immigration backlash (cnn.com)
• Q&A: Why does Sweden’s election result matter? (cnn.com)
• Swedish election too close to call (time.com)
• The summing up of the Swedish election campaign (Cavatus’s Blog)