Family, border dangers keep Mexicans from returning to US

AP: There are many reasons for the historic reversal of migration between the U.S. and Mexico, according the Pew Research Center, which announced Thursday that more than 1 million Mexicans headed south to re-establish their lives in the last five years, while only 870,000 migrated north to the U.S.

Some have grown tired of living in the shadow of the law, and say border jumping has become too dangerous. Jobs are easier to find now in Mexico, and family ties are powerful. Here are some of their stories. Read more.

Study: More Mexicans Returning to Mexico Than Entering U.S.

Latin American Herald Tribune: More Mexicans are returning to their homeland than are emigrating to the United States, with a net outflow from this country of 140,000 between 2009 and 2014, according to a report released on Thursday.

The report, prepared by the Pew Research Center, says that more Mexican immigrants have returned to Mexico from the U.S. than have migrated here since the end of the Great Recession. Read more.

America's poorest border town: no immigration papers, no American Dream

The Guardian: Seven miles east of McAllen’s palm-studded city streets, the interstate off ramp slides past the sprawling branch of a popular Texas supermarket – HEB (Here Everything’s Better) – and a drive-in bank. Swinging under the highway and heading north on Alamo Road, the shopping malls and car showrooms recede at the first traces of the colonias – the ramshackle but largely unseen towns that are home to hundreds of thousands of Latinos across the Rio Grande valley of southern Texas.

A mechanic’s sign declares “credit no problem”. Vibrant green fields of coriander or cilantro, a staple of Mexican cooking, accentuate the dilapidation of the road. A small square building with a corrugated iron awning marks the corner with East Trenton Street. A wooden, hand-painted sign is nailed to one of its walls: “Trenton’s Second Hand Store”. Doors, sinks, windows and mosquito screens are propped in a jumble on the grass in front. Buyers stop by to pick up the parts for colonia houses, constructed piecemeal as their owners find the money. Read more.

Q&A: Economist Gerardo Esquivel says full benefits of NAFTA elude Mexico

World News Report: Next week, the George W. Bush Institute, the public policy arm of the former president’s library in Dallas, will launch a North America Scorecard with an assessment that the North American Free Trade Agreement has been a boon to the United States, Canada and Mexico.

Gerardo Esquivel offers up a slightly different point of view, specifically that Mexico has not done as well as the other nations.

Mexican AG's office apologizes to parents for 12-year-old migrant's death

EFE: The Mexican Attorney General’s Office publicly apologized to an Ecuadorian couple for the March 2014 death of their 12-year-old daughter at a children’s shelter in the northern state of Chihuahua.

The deputy attorney general for human rights, crime prevention and community services, Eber Omar Betanzos Torres, “addressed some words to the parents,” who live in the United States, at the Consulate General of Ecuador in New York, the AG’s office said in a statement Tuesday.

The Ugly Truth: Mexican-Americans Despise Mexico

El Universal (Translated by World Meets): There is an urban legend going around: Hillary Clinton asked some of her [Mexican] supporters a couple of years ago: Why don't Mexican-Americans get along with Mexicans in Mexico?

The befuddlement of the current democratic presidential hopeful over the mystery is widely shared. The Israeli, Irish, Italian, Cuban, Chinese, Indian, Colombian and Salvadorian diasporas – all far less numerous in the United States than the Mexican – provide support to their countries of origin. They support the agendas of their government in Washington, finance their candidate's campaigns for elected office, and strengthen their communities abroad.

Our case is very different. Among some second, third or fourth generation Mexicans grievances persist: my father, grandfather - my ancestors - were obliged to emigrate for lack of opportunity, and on top of that they called us traitors to our country and the Virgin of Guadalupe. It isn't so much a rejection of Mexico as it is of the class-related and racist codes that even today prevent upward social mobility in Mexico. Read more.

Immigration to U.S. from Mexico drops sharply

Vallarta Daily: Even as immigration remains a hot topic in the U.S. presidential campaign, the number of people emigrating from Mexico to the United States, legally and illegally, has dropped sharply in recent years, research published Wednesday shows.

Demographers at the University of Texas San Antonio and the University of New Hampshire say the number of immigrants coming from Mexico peaked in 2003, and has fallen by more than half since then. Read more. 

Understanding Mexico's passport requirement

San Diego Union Tribune: Mexico’s top immigration official in Baja California worked Tuesday to assuage fears of long southbound pedestrian lines into the country as his agency prepares to step up enforcement of a requirement that U.S. visitors carry a passport when entering Mexico.

“We are going to do everything possible to ensure that there are no obstacles,” Rodulfo Figueroa said during a news conference at the offices of the Tijuana Tourism and Conventions Committee. "We're going to start applying the law gradually. We know there is going to be a learning period, we won't be inflexible in applying the law, but certainly we'll try to educate the public." Read more. 

Paper: Most US-Mexico border smugglers are Americans

AP: The smuggling of migrants across the U.S.-Mexico border relies heavily on American labor, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review found in an eight-month investigation that paints a portrait of the network of smugglers known as "coyotes."

Three out of every five convicted smugglers are U.S. citizens, according to an analysis by the newspaper of 3,254 federal trafficking convictions during 2013 and 2014 in federal courts in the southern stretches of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California. Read more. 

US mainstream press notices child migrants, tells half the story

There has been a blitz of stories over the past couple of weeks on child migrants arriving on the U.S.'s southern border. For many of us in Mexico, this is nothing new. But US press attention to it is relatively new, as one major media outlet after another features stories on the plight of unaccompanied minors.

It's a positive step that these kids do not remain invisible. What they go through should be cause for indignation on a global level. The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees issued a report last March that found that half had experienced or been threatened with serious harm on the journey north.

But most of these mainstream press stories are telling half-truths about child victims while muddling or downright manipulating the question of who and what is responsible.

The New York Times, AP and others outlets have been running stories that follow a pattern of emphasizing two general conclusions. One, that parents in the United States are selfishly and irresponsibly encouraging this phenomenon and putting their own children at risk by sending them north and, two, that more children are migrating to the United States because they perceive Obama administration policies and practices as lenient on child migrants and think they have a good chance of staying--even if they get caught.

Although many of these stories mention conditions of poverty and violence in the places where the children come from, they almost never mention how these places have become so poor and violent, or much less the direct role that U.S. foreign policy has played in making them that way and forcing the children to leave.

To give a few examples: In April the NYT ran a story on child migration focused on a 12 year-old Ecuadorean girl who apparently committed suicide in a shelter in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. The article stressed the grandparents' reluctance to let her go and the insistence of the parents, who live in New York. It described the lone terror of the girl and her body found in the shower. it did not delve into the circumstances or the allegations that Mexican police captured her before her arrival at the shelter or why her parents could not provide for their family in Ecuador.

Readers were left with the impression that it was the parents that were to blame, not a system of injustice that stretched from the Andes to the US-Mexico border. This induced conclusion was reflected in the gist of many of the hundreds of comments on the page that expressed genuine compassion for the death of the dark-eyed child in indigenous dress, but also many variations on this comment: "The parents are at the root of this crime".

An AP story June 3 leads with a 14 year-old boy heading north with friends, saying that he had heard that minors were being allowed to stay in the U.S. Alhough the story later mentions the conditions of violence in his native Honduras, again there is no context and the boys seem to be going to the border to take advantage of the US government's largesse--a message sure to inflame anti-immigrant forces.

The AP follows up with this interpretation in a June 6 story stating the thesis explicitly: "Rumors of asylum raise hopes for migrant families". These stories present anecdotal evidence of the thesis that the spike in child migration is due to hopes of being allowed to stay, in the form of interviews that often appear to have been reporter-led into giving this as the cause. In fact, none of the unbiased surveys on reasons for leaving list lenient migration practices in the U.S. as a major cause.

The predictable result of the spate of articles on children migrants is to urge the creation of more detention facilities (potentially good news for the private prison industries) and call for an end to releases, as noted in the AP article:

Texas Gov. Rick Perry last week asked that the Department of Homeland Security stop releasing immigrants with notices to appear. On Monday, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer asked the same for the hundreds of immigrants, mostly women and children, who in recent weeks have been flown to Arizona from South Texas for processing.

Following the thread, a New York Times article June 7 called "Child Migrants Strain Make-Shift Arizona Shelter" described a veritable junior brown tide pouring into the US and echoed the criticisms of Arizona's anti-immigrant governor Janet Brewer regarding administration efforts to house the migrants.

“I am disturbed and outraged that President Obama’s administration continues to implement this dangerous and inhumane policy, meanwhile neglecting to answer crucial questions our citizens demand and deserve,” the governor, a Republican, said in a statement late Friday.

Not once did the article bother to cite an immigrant or an immigrants' rights advocate, of which there are, fortunately, many in Arizona. Much less did it or any of the other articles on the issue mention a need for policies that would facilitate family reunification.

Children in harm's way
No one would argue that it is a good idea to attempt to bring a child to the United States without a trusted companion. Note that these children are not usually "unaccompanied". Their parents have paid large sums of money to smugglers to bring them over the border safely. But they often do not know the smugglers and human smuggling has become a big business for organized crime over the past decade, thanks in large part to increased security making it necessary for anyone trying to cross to hire professional help. As the cost of crossing went up, organized crime recognized a new business opportunity and replaced independent coyotes or relatives in getting migrants over the border.

The press stories seek to pull heartstrings over the trials and traumas of the kids, while containing a strong hidden message of opprobrium against the parents. How could they let this happen? How selfish of them to expose their children to such perils! 

Maybe the reporters and publishers don't have children. Or maybe they do, and they simply cannot imagine what it's like to know your son is growing up and you cannot be there for him, or to mark your daughter's birthday on a calendar and wonder what she looks like now. This heart-wrenching tragedy, repeated millions-fold, is the direct result of US immigration policies.

A New York Times editorial at least took a somewhat more compassionate view of the situation, recognizing the "false narrative" of the enforcers:

The crisis comes at a bad moment in America’s stalemated immigration debate, with Republicans gleefully seizing on a situation seemingly tailored to fit their false narrative, that any reform short of an aggressively militarized border will create yet another magnet to pull more of the wretched poor over our border, and that all the chaos in the system is Mr. Obama’s fault.

As an example, it quoted Bob Goodlatte, the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee:

“Word has gotten out around the world about President Obama’s lax immigration enforcement policies, and it has encouraged more individuals to come to the United States illegally... Enforcement at the border and in the interior of the U.S. is crucial to end these kinds of situations, not another bureaucratic task force.”

The editorial emphasized the "push" factors and that children "are fleeing for their lives". It called for the government to humanely attend to the flows but did not mention longer-term solutions regarding disastrous U.S. policies in their home countries.

On June 3, President Obama referred to the "humanitarian crisis" and issued a memorandum calling for the formation of a "Unified Coordination Group" to attend to unaccompanied children migrants. He asked for $1.4 billion dollars to create infrastructure for the influx of minors.

An article in VOX notes that the US government seems to understand that the real solution lies in improving conditions in countries of origin but has failed to address them:

Ultimately, any long-term solution has to address not only the "pull factors" that bring children here, but the "push factors" that drive them out of their own countries. The federal government appears to understand this, but there aren't many good ideas for how to deal with it. Last week, Jeh Johnson, the Secretary of Homeland Security, suggested to Congress that the US government could launch a public-awareness campaign in Central American countries to advertise the dangers of migrating to the United States.

Again the "solution" suggested blames the victims for risking the journey.

So why does the mainstream press seek to place the blame on the parents and a supposed softening of immigration policy?

Because the alternative to blaming migrant families themselves is unpalatable to them.

The alternative is to accept that the Central American and North American Free Trade Agreements have left thousands of youth with no economic opportunities.

It is to accept that US security aid for drug wars has armed and aggravated violence in Mexico and Central America.

It is to understand the high cost of supporting the Honduran coup and how the Honduran people and the US population continue to pay that price, as out migration has surged over 500% in the past two years and human rights violations, instability and violence are skyrocketing.

In my travels to migrant shelters and interviews with migrants coming through Mexico I have found that, astoundingly, they do realize the risks and yet decide to make the journey anyway.

The public-awareness campaign we really need is one addressed to U.S. citizens and Congress regarding the impact of economic and security polices on their southern neighbors, and especially on the children.

Then we need a public action campaign to do something about it.

UPDATE: Here's an interesting post on the legal aspects. Note the graph on where the child migrants come from.
NOTE June13: Still trying to get to the bottom of this. These figures indicate that there is no doubt about the surge in detentions of child migrants, in Texas ONLY. No other crossing point even shows an increase while the Texas figure is more than twice as high. Is this at least partly a result of a state of Texas policy decision to apprehend more child migrants?  http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/06/10/number-of-latino-children-caught-trying-to-enter-u-s-nearly-doubles-in-less-than-a-year/

On Location Video: Mexico's drug cartels recruit migrant labor

GlobalPost
By: Deborah Bonello
August 4, 2013

Mexico — As the US Congress mulls legislation to increase fencing and manpower on the United States southern border, migrants from Central America face increasing perils as they cross Mexico. The Mexican crackdown on drug trafficking, partly financed by the US government, is prompting criminal gangs to exploit other revenue streams such as kidnapping and extortion. And these gangs are now tapping migrant streams for new recruits. Those fleeing poverty back home find it hard to resist the lure of a life of crime, and some are being given no choice.  Watch here. 

U.S. and Mexico: The Indecisive Empire and its Stuttering Colony

Proceso
By Sabina Berman
Translated by Stuart Taylor
Mexico Voices 

For Fey Berman, my Mexican-American sister

According to conventional measurements of power, the United States is an empire. Actually, it is the most powerful empire that has ever existed. Its ideology conquered the entire world in the 20th century. Even once reluctant China is now part of the great Free Market that the U.S. spread throughout the planet and, at times, forced upon unwilling nations.

Today, its armies and security agencies patrol the streets and sidewalks of around twenty countries in crisis, such as Mexico, where, hidden behind national security forces and later independently, they fight and capture drug lords.

Its culture dominates other cultures; its movie stars are the celebrities of the globe; its academics dictate universal discourse and American English is the lingua franca of today, just as Latin was during the Roman Empire.

Above all, and at the base of its power, the giants of U.S. capital govern the transnational economy, businesses that acquire surpluses from the four corners of the planet on a daily basis to deposit them on Wall Street, the street filled with skyscrapers in whose windows the sun turns gold. Read more. 

Immigration Reform Should Address Why People Leave

Huffington Post 
By Andrew Wainer
July 18, 2013

In June, the Senate approved the most far-reaching reforms to U.S. immigration policy in 50 years. The Border Security, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Modernization Act passed on a vote of 68-32. It now faces a more daunting challenge in the House of Representatives. The 1,000+ page bill includes an earned legalization process for 11 million unauthorized immigrants, increased enforcement both at the border and at home, and a revamped guest worker program for both high- and low-skilled jobs.

But even as policymakers attempt to fix what everyone agrees is a broken immigration system, the proposed legislative solutions overlook one of the system's most important moving parts -- the economic hardship in immigrants' home countries that drives them to seek work in the United States. Thus, the U.S. development community can play a new and important role in helping to integrate economic development and poverty reduction into U.S. immigration policy.  Read more. 

In Mexico, rails are risky crossing for a new wave of Central American migrants

Washington Post 
By Nick Miroff
July 15, 2013

Central Americans have been catching freight trains to the U.S. border for years, risking injury or worse for a free ride and a path clear of Mexican government checkpoints. But at a time when illegal immigration to the United States remains near its lowest point in four decades, the number of Central Americans going north has soared, putting new attention on the rail system that takes thousands to the border each year.  Read more.

Mexico objects to border security portion of US immigration bill, says fences not solution

The Washington Post 
By Associated Press
June 25, 2013

MEXICO CITY — The Mexican government objected on Tuesday to an immigration bill that appears headed for approval in the U.S. Senate, saying the initiative’s heavy focus on border security is not consistent with the relationship between the two countries.

Foreign Relations Secretary Jose Meade said that instead of expanding a border fence, as proposed in the bill, the United States should modernize border bridges to expedite commerce.

“Fences do not unite,” Meade said while reading a statement to reporters during a news conference where he didn’t take questions.  Read more. 

Millions of immigrants waiting for green cards

USA Today
Daniel González, The Arizona Republic
June 23, 2013

The long wait is at the center of the debate over whether to give the estimated 11 million immigrants living in the country illegally a pathway to citizenship.

Phoenix - Alejandro Bojorquez wants to play by the rules.

The Mexican citizen has patiently waited for years for a green card to allow him to come to the United States legally, even as millions of compatriots crossed the border illegally.

But his wait has been long. Very, very long.

Bojorquez was 14 when his father, Jesus Bojorquez, then a legal permanent resident, filed a green-card petition on his behalf. Alejandro is now 29.  Read more. 

Border Deal by 2 in G.O.P. Lifts Chances of Immigration Bill

The so-called comprehensive immigration reform bill in the U.S. Congress is shaping up to be the worst counter-reform in terms of human rights and civil liberties in the history of U.S. legislation. 

Here is a note from the New York Times on yet another Republican knife in the back of immigrant rights, this time in the form of a "border surge" (yes, they are actively striving to make Chihuahua look as much like Iraq as possible), including fencing and 40,000 security forces, all for a cool $30 billion in taxpayer money, which could easily end up being double that due to "errors" and cost overruns, if the history of this lethal boondoggle is any example.

NYT, WASHINGTON — Two Senate Republicans reached an agreement on Thursday on a plan to strengthen border security with the bipartisan group of eight senators that drafted an overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws, raising hopes that the new deal could build Republican support for the immigration legislation being debated on the Senate floor.

The deal, according to aides with knowledge of the discussions, will call for what was described as a “border surge” that nearly doubles the current border patrol force to 40,000 agents from 21,000, as well as the completion of 700 miles of fence on the southern border. The additional border agents, an aide said, would cost roughly $30 billion.  Read more...

Mexico 'remaking' itself, Obama tells students

Los Angeles Times 
By Kathleen Hennessey and Tracy Wilkinson
May 3, 2013

Mexico City -- President Obama painted a sunny picture of a modern, “emerging” Mexico in a speech before an audience of young people Friday, his second day of a three-day swing through Latin America.

Speaking at the National Museum of Anthropology, the president expressed optimism about the push for reforms led by the new administration of President Enrique Peña Nieto and called on young people to be persistent.

“You honor your heritage, thousands of years old, but you are also part of something new, a nation that’s in the process of remaking itself,” Obama said, speaking in a central courtyard of the iconic museum with Mexican and American flags hanging behind him. “And as our modern world changes around us, it is the spirit of young people, your optimism and idealism, that will drive the world forward.”

The president’s message of a rising Mexico serves both his and his counterpart’s domestic agendas. Obama is pushing for immigration reform, and is seeking to reassure skeptics at home that the root causes of illegal immigration – poverty, violence and corrupt institutions in Mexico – are easing under new leadership.  Read more. 

US President Obama to discuss trade in Mexico

BBC
May 2, 2013

US President Barack Obama is travelling to Mexico on Thursday for talks expected to focus on bilateral trade.

Mexico is the third largest trade partner of the US and the president has said he is keen to discuss job creation on both sides of the border with his Mexican counterpart Enrique Pena Nieto.

President Obama's planned immigration reform is also likely to feature high on the agenda.

During the three-day trip the president will also visit Costa Rica.

Policy shift

US National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes said strong economic ties between Mexico and the US had been overshadowed by a focus on security in the past, but that Thursday's trip would attempt to redress the balance.

That sentiment was echoed by Sergio Alcocer, Mexico's Deputy Foreign Minister for North America, who said the two presidents would discuss "the benefits and the need to re-balance and diversify the relationship" between Mexico and the US.

It will be the second meeting between the US leader and Mr Pena Nieto, who was invited to the White House even before he was sworn in on 1 December 2012.  Read more. 

A Healthy Future for Immigrant Children Is a Healthy Future for the Nation

Huffington Post 
By Irwin Redlener
April 30, 2013

After years of postponing the inevitable, the U.S. is finally on the verge of reforming our dysfunctional immigration policies. For millions of immigrant families who have committed themselves to building better lives for themselves and their communities, change cannot come too soon. And for the children in these families, their hopes for the future are very much part of America's future.

Immigrant children are highly vulnerable. Their level of disadvantage and fragility has consistently grown due to factors outside their control. This population was explicitly excluded from the benefits of the president's health reform initiative. Read more.