Although Obama has called it a “humanitarian crisis” Obama’s administration will request the authority to immediately repatriate children from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador – the Central American countries from which most of the child migrants are travelling. Juanita Molina, executive director of Border Action Network, a rights group said that many government officials were doing their best to treat the children well, with some facilities now having toys. But she warns that the lack of facilities and staff can defeat even the best-intended workers. “The federal government needs to reframe how they look at this,” she says, “not as a detention crisis, but as a humanitarian and refugee crisis.”
More than 50,000 unaccompanied children have been apprehended on the border since October. Administration officials have been particularly alarmed by the increase in children, many of them girls, under the age of 13. Border officials have reported finding some children as young as four or five or travelling alone. The US border control agency cannot hold them for more than 72 hours before they are transferred to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) who in turn are required to “act in the best interest of the child”, which often means transferring the child into foster care or, more commonly, the custody of a family member or relative in the US. Nevertheless, such migrants are still in the removal process, and will have their case heard by a judge, who can deport them.
The United Nations has interviewed more than 400 children on their experiences in their home countries. Nearly 60 percent reportedly meet the requirements for international protection, in what the U.N. called a conservative estimate.
“We heard stories of children watching classmates tortured, dismembered, threats against girls,” Leslie Velez, of the U.N. Refugee Agency, told reporters last week. “This wasn’t just about gangs but criminal armed groups, drug trafficking, cartels, transnational criminal organisations – all operating with greater and greater impunity.”
Children they don’t see themselves in the future of Honduras. Just like their parents – who migrated because they saw no possibilities for work or survival. It seems that only the rich can afford to stay in the country, pay for education for their children, afford to buy food and clothing for their families. The average citizen cannot find a job or support their family. The Central American Free Trade Agreement, and other trade agreements with mining companies, have exacerbated poverty in the country by dispossessing people of their land and subsistence. These agreements have weakened labor laws and worker rights, and with this post coup government friendly attitude towards foreign companies, even national lands are up for sale. Laws that favor capital have given transnational companies an advantage and power to not respect labor law, oppose unions and challenge the very fabric of the working class family. When parents are not earning decent wages to afford the basic food basket, or school uniforms and supplies, children suffer.
Michelle Brane, of the Women’s Refugee Commission, an advocacy group, told IPS that the United States regularly asks countries around the world to uphold international protection standards, with Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan currently accepting millions of Syrian refugees into their much smaller countries. “The numbers here are small in comparison.”
Immigrant rights groups have labeled the president "deporter in chief”, for forcefully removing two million immigrants since coming to office in 2008 – more than any other president to date. Obama is now cowardly putting in limbo the lives of young children migrants at the border, endeavouring to refuse them access to humanitarian aid. The U.S. government should realize that they are gaining themselves a long-term problem by militarizing the border and deporting children instead of trying to get to the root of the problem. When kids are deported they are returning to a country where young citizens have only three options: first, try their best to survive the growing violence and exclusion; a second option is becoming part of the violence joining the organized crime; or the third option is continuously try to enter the United States, they have nothing more to lose.
Adapted from here
No comments:
Post a Comment