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1. Deportation Contagions

Author:
Jorge E. Cuéllar
Publication Date:
03-2020
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
The North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA)
Abstract:
In the age of COVID-19, anything other than ending deportations is a high-risk, potentially disastrous move.
Topic:
Migration, Immigration, Public Health, Asylum, Pandemic, and Deportation
Political Geography:
Central America, Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador

2. What’s Wrong with Temporary Protected Status and How to Fix It: Exploring a Complementary Protection Regime

Author:
Bill Frelick
Publication Date:
02-2020
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal on Migration and Human Security
Institution:
Center for Migration Studies of New York
Abstract:
Temporary Protected Status (TPS) became part of the US protection regime in 1990 to expand protection beyond what had been available under the US Refugee Act of 1980, which had limited asylum to those who met the refugee definition from the United Nations’ 1951 Refugee Convention. The TPS statute authorized the attorney general to designate foreign countries for TPS based on armed conflict, environmental disasters, and other extraordinary and temporary conditions that prevent designated nationals from returning in safety. While providing blanket protection that very likely has saved lives, TPS has nonetheless proven to be a blunt instrument that has frustrated advocates on both sides of the larger immigration debate. This article evaluates the purpose and effectiveness of the TPS statute and identifies inadequacies in the TPS regime and related protection gaps in the US asylum system. It argues that TPS has not proven to be an effective mechanism for the United States to protect foreigners from generalized conditions of danger in their home countries. It calls for changing the US protection regime to make it more responsive to the risks many asylum seekers actually face by creating a broader “complementary protection” standard and a more effective procedure for assessing individual protection claims, while reserving “temporary protection” for rare situations of mass influx that overwhelm the government’s capacity to process individual asylum claims. The article looks at alternative models for complementary protection from other jurisdictions, and shows how the US asylum and TPS system (in contrast to most other jurisdictions) fails to provide a mechanism for protecting arriving asylum seekers who do not qualify as refugees but who nevertheless would be at real risk of serious harm based on cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment or because of situations of violence or other exceptional circumstances, including natural or human-made disasters or other serious events that disturb public order, that would threaten their lives or personal security. The article proposes that the United States adopt an individualized complementary protection standard for arriving asylum seekers who are not able to meet the 1951 Refugee Convention standard but who would face a serious threat to life or physical integrity if returned because of a real risk of (1) cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment; (2) violence; or (3) exceptional situations, for which there is no adequate domestic remedy.
Topic:
Immigration, Border Control, Citizenship, and Domestic Policy
Political Geography:
United States, Central America, and North America

3. The Accuracy Of Proxy Means Tests For Immigrant Populations: A Case Study In Colombia

Author:
Will Sims
Publication Date:
05-2020
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Woodrow Wilson School Journal of Public and International Affairs
Institution:
Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University
Abstract:
This paper examines the accuracy of proxy means tests (PMTs) for identifying low-income households among migrant and refugee populations. Specifically, it develops a PMT model based on Colombia’s SISBEN system, and evaluates its ability to identify poverty among recent and established Venezuelan migrants and refugees. It finds that these groups have significantly higher rates of exclusion errors relative to native Colombians, which could prevent them from accessing valuable social services. These findings are robust to a number of specifications, and the issue is not resolved by simply including immigration status within the model. Additionally, occupational downgrading is identified as the most likely mechanism for this effect, as Venezuelan migrants and refugees in Colombia generally have lower returns to education when compared with native Colombians. These results should inspire caution when choosing to use PMTs for targeting, and it is recommended that all policymakers evaluate the accuracy of their PMTs for vulnerable subpopulations prior to implementation.
Topic:
Migration, Immigration, Refugees, International Development, and Economic Policy
Political Geography:
Colombia, South America, Central America, and Venezuela

4. The Intersection of Poetry and U.S.-Mexican Border Affairs in Natalie Scenters-Zapico’s “Lima :: Limón”

Author:
Gabriel Panuco-Mercado
Publication Date:
01-2020
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
Abstract:
Natalie Scenters-Zapico is a poet from the United States-Mexico border towns of El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico. Her work, like her origin, is about borders. In her debut collection, The Verging Cities, Scenters-Zapico explores immigration, marriage, and femicide in the realm of border culture and identity [1]. She expands these themes in her second collection, Lima :: Limón, where she creates a scathing depiction of the brutal machismo that conditions a Mexican woman’s experience. Lima :: Limon is especially personal to Scenters-Zapico. Her lyrical passages draw from the music of her childhood. In an age where distorted narratives about immigration lead to family separation and threaten asylum seekers, Lima :: Limon’s intimacy is especially critical. Unlike the efficacy of border policy or trade negotiations, Scenters-Zapico’s personal narrative is undeniable—as are the harrowing experiences of millions of Mexican women.
Topic:
Immigration, Women, Borders, and Literature
Political Geography:
Central America, North America, Mexico, and United States of America

5. Fixing What’s Most Broken in the US Immigration System: A Profile of the Family Members of US Citizens and Lawful Permanent Residents Mired in Multiyear Backlogs

Author:
Donald Kerwin and Robert Warren
Publication Date:
05-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal on Migration and Human Security
Institution:
Center for Migration Studies of New York
Abstract:
The US Department of State (DOS) reports that as of November 2018, nearly 3.7 million persons had been found by US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to have a close family relationship to a US citizen or lawful permanent resident (LPR) that qualified them for a visa, but were on “the waiting list in the various numerically-limited immigrant categories” (DOS 2018). These backlogs in family-based “preference” (numerically capped) categories represent one of the most egregious examples of the dysfunction of the US immigration system. They consign family members of US citizens and LPRs that potentially qualify for a visa and that avail themselves of US legal procedures to years of insecurity, frustration, and (often) separation from their families. Often criticized in the public sphere for jumping the visa queue, it would be more accurate to say that this population, in large part, comprises the queue. While they wait for their visa priority date to become current, those without immigration status are subject to removal. In addition, most cannot adjust to LPR status in the United States, but must leave the country for consular processing and, when they do, face three- or 10-year bars on readmission, depending on the duration of their unlawful presence in the United States. This population will also be negatively affected by the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) proposed rule to expand the public charge ground of inadmissibility (Kerwin, Warren, and Nicholson 2018). In addition, persons languishing in backlogs enjoy few prospects in the short term for executive or legislative relief, given political gridlock over immigration reform and the Trump administration’s support for reduced family-based immigration. In this paper, the Center for Migration Studies (CMS) offers estimates and a profile based on 2017 American Community Survey (ACS) data of a strongly correlated population to the 3.7 million persons in family-based visa backlogs: i.e., the 1.55 million US residents potentially eligible for a visa in a family-based preference category based on a qualifying relationship to a household member. CMS data represents only part of the population in family-based backlogs. In particular, it captures only a small percentage of the 4th preference, brothers and sisters of US citizens.[1] However, everybody in CMS’s data could be petitioned for, if they have not been already. Among this population’s ties and contributions to the United States, the paper finds that: Fifty-nine percent has lived in the United States for 10 years or more, including 23 percent for at least 20 years. Nearly one million US-born children under age 21 live in these households, as well as 111,600 US-born adults (aged 21 and over) who have undocumented parents. 449,500 arrived in the United States at age 15 or younger. 139,100 qualify for the DREAM Act based their age at entry, continuous residence, and graduation from high school or receipt of a GED. Seventy-two percent aged 16 and older are in the labor force, and more than two-thirds (68 percent) are employed; these rates exceed those of the overall US population. Two-thirds of those aged 18 or older have at least a high school diploma or its equivalent, including 25 percent with a bachelor’s degree or higher, and 295,100 aged three and older are enrolled in school. The median income of their households is $63,000, slightly above the US median. More than two-thirds (68 percent) have health insurance, including 51 percent with private health insurance. Nearly one-third (32 percent) live in mortgaged homes, and 12 percent in homes owned free and clear. The paper provides several recommendations to reduce family-based backlogs. In particular, it proposes that Congress pass and the President sign into law legislation to legalize intending family-based immigrants who have been mired in backlogs for two years or more. In addition, this legislation should define the spouses and minor unmarried children of LPRs as immediate relatives (not subject to numerical limits), not count the derivative family members of the principal beneficiary against per country and annual quotas, and raise per country caps. The administration should also re-use the visas of legal immigrants who emigrate each year, particularly those who formally abandon LPR status. This practice would reduce backlogs without increasing visa numbers. Congress should also pass legislation to advance the entry date for eligibility for “registry,” an existing feature of US immigration law designed to legalize long-term residents. In particular, the legislation should move forward the registry cutoff date on an automatic basis to provide a pathway to status for noncitizens who have lived continuously in the United States for at least 15 years, have good moral character, and are not inadmissible on security and other grounds. In fact, Congress advanced the registry date on a regular basis during most of the 20th century, but has not updated this date, which now stands at January 1, 1972, for 33 years.
Topic:
Migration, Immigration, Border Control, and Domestic politics
Political Geography:
United States, Central America, and North America

6. Paradoxes of Protection: Compassionate Repression at the Mexico–Guatemala Border

Author:
Rebecca Galemba, Katie Dingeman, Kaelyn DeVries, and Yvette Servin
Publication Date:
07-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal on Migration and Human Security
Institution:
Center for Migration Studies of New York
Abstract:
Anti-immigrant rhetoric and constricting avenues for asylum in the United States, amid continuing high rates of poverty, environmental crisis, and violence in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, have led many migrants from these countries to remain in Mexico. Yet despite opportunities for humanitarian relief in Mexico, since the early 2000s the Mexican government, under growing pressure from the United States, has pursued enforcement-first initiatives to stem northward migration from Central America. In July 2014, Mexico introduced the Southern Border Program (SBP) with support from the United States. The SBP dramatically expanded Mexico’s immigration enforcement efforts, especially in its southern border states, leading to rising deportations. Far from reducing migration or migrant smuggling, these policies have trapped migrants for longer in Mexico, made them increasingly susceptible to crimes by a wide range of state and nonstate actors, and exacerbated risk along the entire migrant trail. In recognition of rising crimes against migrants and heeding calls from civil society to protect migrant rights, Mexico’s 2011 revision to its Migration Law expanded legal avenues for granting humanitarian protection to migrants who are victims of crimes in Mexico, including the provision of a one-year humanitarian visa so that migrants can collaborate with the prosecutor’s office in the investigation of crimes committed against them. The new humanitarian visa laws were a significant achievement and represent a victory by civil society keen on protecting migrants as they travel through Mexico. The wider atmosphere of impunity, however, alongside the Mexican government’s prioritization of detaining and deporting migrants, facilitates abuses, obscures transparent accounting of crimes, and limits access to justice. In practice, the laws are not achieving their intended outcomes. They also fail to recognize how Mexico’s securitized migration policies subject migrants to risk throughout their journeys, including at border checkpoints between Guatemala and Honduras, along critical transit corridors in Guatemala, and on the Guatemalan side of Mexico’s southern border. In this article, we examine a novel set of data from migrant shelters — 16 qualitative interviews with migrants and nine with staff and advocates in the Mexico–Guatemala border region, as well as 118 complaints of abuses committed along migrants’ journeys — informally filed by migrants at a shelter on the Guatemalan side of the border, and an additional eight complaints filed at a shelter on the Mexican side of the border. We document and analyze the nature, location, and perpetrators of these alleged abuses, using a framework of “compassionate repression” (Fassin 2012) to examine the obstacles that migrants encounter in denouncing abuses and seeking protection. We contend that while humanitarian visas can provide necessary protection for abuses committed in Mexico, they are limited by their temporary nature, by being nested within a migration system that prioritizes migrant removal, and because they recognize only crimes that occur in Mexico. The paradox between humanitarian concerns and repressive migration governance in a context of high impunity shapes institutional and practical obstacles to reporting crimes, receiving visas, and accessing justice. In this context, a variety of actors recognize that they can exploit and profit from migrants’ lack of mobility, legal vulnerability, and uncertain access to protection, leading to a commodification of access to humanitarian protection along the route.
Topic:
Migration, Immigration, Border Control, Violence, and Humanitarian Crisis
Political Geography:
United States, Central America, North America, Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador

7. Fight and Flight: Tackling the Roots of Honduras’ Emergency

Author:
International Crisis Group
Publication Date:
10-2019
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
International Crisis Group
Abstract:
Despite U.S. restrictions on Central American migration, Hondurans are fleeing north in record numbers as the country struggles with polarised government, corruption, poverty and violence. With outside help, Tegucigalpa should revisit its heavy-handed security policies and enact judicial and electoral reforms to avert future upheaval. What happened? Months of street protests and a mass northward exodus, despite a sustained U.S. campaign to deter Central American migrants, illustrate the depth of despair in Honduras at political leaders, gang violence, extortion, poverty and inequality. Why does it matter? State security crackdowns against a backdrop of extreme political polarisation dating back to the 2009 coup, fuelled by scandals over alleged links between the ruling party and criminal networks, could further fuel violent unrest. Washington’s fixation on bottling up migrant flows in the region risks making a bad situation worse. What should be done? With support from the U.S. and other donors, the Honduran government should enact electoral and anti-corruption reforms and grant stronger investigative powers to the judiciary and police, avoid heavy-handed responses to civil unrest, and fund programs that address urgent humanitarian needs while also reducing violence, a key driver of migration.
Topic:
Security, Corruption, Migration, and Immigration
Political Geography:
Central America, Honduras, and United States of America

8. Mexico and Central America: A Delayed Encounter | México y Centroamérica: encuentro postergado

Author:
Luis Rubio, Gustavo Mohar, Salvador Arriola, Jorge Durand, Joaquin Villalobos, Ursula Roldan, Yolanda Gonzalez Cerdeira, Carlos Quesnel, Demetrios G. Papademetriou, Oscar Chacon, Marco A. Alcazar, Beatriz Zepeda, Carlos Heredia, and Mauricio Reyes
Publication Date:
12-2019
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Mexican Council on Foreign Relations (COMEXI)
Abstract:
The surprise arrival of massive migrant contingents (known as “caravans”) to the border between Guatemala and Mexico constituted a watershed in the history of Central American migration to the United States through Mexican territory. This text is published by the Mexican Council on Foreign Relations (COMEXI) in order to contribute to the discussion in Mexico, in the United States and in Central America itself. The contribution of Central American social activists and academics with their local perspectives enhances and complements their Mexican counterparts’ reflections and proposals. Now is the time to undertake concrete measures for this delayed encounter. /// La sorpresiva llegada a la frontera entre México y Guatemala de grandes contingentes de migrantes (conocidos como “caravanas”) marcó un parteaguas en la historia de las migraciones procedentes de Centroamérica con destino a Estados Unidos, que utilizan suelo mexicano como territorio de tránsito. El Consejo Mexicano de Asuntos Internacionales (COMEXI) publica este texto para abonar a la discusión interna en México, así como a la que tiene lugar tanto en Estados Unidos como en la propia Centroamérica. La contribución de académicos y activistas sociales centroamericanos, con sus puntos de vista locales, enriquece y complementa las reflexiones y propuestas de sus contrapartes mexicanas. Es momento de asumir acciones concretas a este encuentro postergado.
Topic:
Migration, Immigration, and Borders
Political Geography:
Central America, Mexico, and United States of America

9. Fleeing Violence in Central America: Time to Implement Canada’s Resettlement Policies

Author:
Rachel Kiddell-Monroe and Celine de Richoufftz
Publication Date:
12-2019
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Institute for the Study of International Development, McGill University
Abstract:
Canada should take proactive and concrete actions to protect Northern Central American refugees fleeing violence including: Implementing its policy to offer resettlement to Central American refugees caught in legal limbo in Mexico. Ensuring it welcomes asylum seekers who are at risk under the US immigration system. Supporting Northern Central American states in their efforts to build fairer and more efficient immigration systems. Advocating for safe passages, legal pathways and for an end to the criminalization of clandestine immigration.
Topic:
Immigration, Border Control, Refugees, Violence, and Asylum
Political Geography:
Central America, Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador

10. Immigration and the War on Crime: Law and Order Politics and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996

Author:
Partisia Macias-Rojas
Publication Date:
01-2018
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal on Migration and Human Security
Institution:
Center for Migration Studies of New York
Abstract:
The 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) was a momentous law that recast undocumented immigration as a crime and fused immigration enforcement with crime control (García Hernández 2016; Lind 2016). Among its most controversial provisions, the law expanded the crimes, broadly defined, for which immigrants could be deported and legal permanent residency status revoked. The law instituted fast-track deportations and mandatory detention for immigrants with convictions. It restricted access to relief from deportation. It constrained the review of immigration court decisions and imposed barriers for filing class action lawsuits against the former US Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). It provided for the development of biometric technologies to track “criminal aliens” and authorized the former INS to deputize state and local police and sheriff’s departments to enforce immigration law (Guttentag 1997a; Migration News 1997a, 1997b, 1997c; Taylor 1997). In short, it put into law many of the punitive provisions associated with the criminalization of migration today. Legal scholars have documented the critical role that IIRIRA played in fundamentally transforming immigration enforcement, laying the groundwork for an emerging field of “crimmigration” (Morris 1997; Morawetz 1998, 2000; Kanstroom 2000; Miller 2003; Welch 2003; Stumpf 2006). These studies challenged the law’s deportation and mandatory detention provisions, as well as its constraints on judicial review. And they exposed the law’s widespread consequences, namely the deportations that ensued and the disproportionate impact of IIRIRA’s enforcement measures on immigrants with longstanding ties to the United States (ABA 2004). Less is known about what drove IIRIRA’s criminal provisions or how immigration came to be viewed through a lens of criminality in the first place. Scholars have mostly looked within the immigration policy arena for answers, focusing on immigration reform and the “new nativism” that peaked in the early nineties (Perea 1997; Jacobson 2008).Some studies have focused on interest group competition, particularly immigration restrictionists’ prohibitions on welfare benefits, while others have examined constructions of immigrants as a social threat (Chavez 2001; Nevins 2002, 2010; Newton 2008; Tichenor 2009; Bosworth and Kaufman 2011; Zatz and Rodriguez 2015). Surprisingly few studies have stepped outside the immigration policy arena to examine the role of crime politics and the policies of mass incarceration. Of these, scholars suggest that IIRIRA’s most punitive provisions stem from a “new penology” in the criminal justice system, characterized by discourses and practices designed to predict dangerousness and to manage risk (Feeley and Simon 1992; Miller 2003; Stumpf 2006; Welch 2012). Yet historical connections between the punitive turn in the criminal justice and immigration systems have yet to be disentangled and laid bare. Certainly, nativist fears about unauthorized migration, national security, and demographic change were important factors shaping IIRIRA’s criminal provisions, but this article argues that the crime politics advanced by the Republican Party (or the “Grand Old Party,” GOP) and the Democratic Party also played an undeniable and understudied role. The first part of the analysis examines policies of mass incarceration and the crime politics of the GOP under the Reagan administration. The second half focuses on the crime politics of the Democratic Party that recast undocumented migration as a crime and culminated in passage of IIRIRA under the Clinton administration. IIRIRA’s criminal provisions continue to shape debates on the relationship between immigration and crime, the crimes that should provide grounds for expulsion from the United States, and the use of detention in deportation proceedings for those with criminal convictions. This essay considers the ways in which the War on Crime — specifically the failed mass incarceration policies — reshaped the immigration debate. It sheds light on the under-studied role that crime politics of the GOP and the Democratic Party played in shaping IIRIRA — specifically its criminal provisions, which linked unauthorized migration with criminality, and fundamentally restructured immigration enforcement and infused it with the resources necessary to track, detain, and deport broad categories of immigrants, not just those with convictions.
Topic:
Immigration, Border Control, Domestic politics, and Deportation
Political Geography:
United States, Central America, and North America