Il numero di minori in fuga dall'America Centrale verso gli Stati Uniti è in crescita nuovamente, come il problema della sicurezza e quello economico
nei paesi dell’America Centrale da cui provengono, in particolare El Salvador, Guatemala e Honduras.
Alcuni paragonano l’attuale crisi a quella vissuta nel 2014
in cui un enorme flusso di minori non
accompagnati si spostava dall’America Centrale verso gli Stati Uniti, spingendo
l’amministrazione Obama a mettere in atto misure di emergenza per arginare il flusso.
Lo scorso anno, gli sforzi sembravano funzionare, infatti il
numero è sceso dai circa 70.000 del 2014 a 39.970. Ora l'esodo verso gli Stati
Uniti è di nuovo in aumento. Nei primi 9 mesi del 2016 il numero è di 54.052 minori
non accompagnati.
Ci sono molte ragioni che spiegano questo aumento:
--in El Salvador, le persone sono in fuga da un livello
impressionante di violenza che ha reso il paese il posto in cui si registrano
più omicidi al mondo, secondo i dati della Banca Mondiale.
--in Honduras, la violenza è in calo negli ultimi anni, circa
il 15%, il che significa che molte persone migrano alla ricerca di migliori
opportunità negli Stati Uniti.
--in Guatemala, la violenza è in leggera diminuzione, anche
se resistono sacche preoccupanti di violenza. Per cui il flusso si spiegherebbe
principalmente per ragioni economiche.
Inoltre, a spiegare questo aumento sono le paure dettate da
una probabile vittoria di Donald Trump che ha promesso la creazione di un muro
lungo il confine Messicano. A confermare questa tesi è il direttore del Center
For Immigration Studies, Mark Krikorian, secondo cui la prospettiva di una presidenza Trump è uno
stimolo alla emigrazione dei minori non accompagnati.
Public opinion remains deeply divided over whether the U.S. government has a moral obligation to offer asylum to Central Americans children escaping political persecution or violence in their home countries. According to a survey published last month by theAssociated Press, 53 percent of the U.S. public think their country has no obligation to take in the latest wave of “tired and huddled masses” fleeing troubles in their home countries.
We talked to 11 scholars and activists who think the United States, a self-professed nation of immigrants, does have a moral obligation to provide asylum to Central American minors, many of whom — experts argue — are fleeing violence that resulted from U.S. foreign policy.
Fusion presents the untold history behind the unaccompanied minors, a collection of 60-second videos.
ROBERT REICH
Former Labor Secretary
“We are directly responsible for what’s going on”
Illegal narcotics have been smuggled through Central America for decades, but the violence of the drug war has metastasized aggressively throughout the region in recent years. According to the United Nations, the United States and Mexico’s war on the cartels has “pushed the front lines of drug trafficking towards the south” and turned Central American countries such as Guatemala into a “bottleneck” for 90 percent of the cocaine smuggled north.
“You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to understand this stuff; as you push more and more of the violence into Central America … a lot of the kids and the teenagers face this diabolical choice: join the gangs, get killed, or flee. Many of them choose to flee to the United States,” former Labor Secretary Robert Reich told Fusion.
In 2009, only 3,304 “unaccompanied alien children” from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras were “encountered” at the U.S. border, according to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. By June of this year, that number had jumped to 43,933, according to government data. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson predicts as many as 90,000 unaccompanied minors could be apprehended before the end of fiscal year, on September 30.
Reich says that by pinching the drug cartels out of Mexico and Colombia and into northern Central America, the United States may be implicated in the rise of unaccompanied minors fleeing Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.
“Just connect the dots,” Reich said. “We are directly responsible for what’s going on.”
BILL HING
Immigration Law Professor, University of San Francisco
“The vast majority of these children would not qualify to apply [for legal status] under any existing immigration visa category.”
Protesters at anti-immigration demonstrations around the country insist they’re not racist and that they just want the unaccompanied minors to enter to the U.S. legally. But most kids don’t qualify to apply for visas under any existing U.S. immigration category says Bill Ong Hing, who teaches immigration law at the University of San Francisco.
Hing says he’s concerned about legislation that would allow an expedited deportation of unaccompanied children without a proper immigration hearing. Nearly 50 percent of children with legal representation are granted legal status in the United States, as opposed to one out of 10 without a lawyer, according to the Transnational Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. ALEX SANCHEZ
Former gang member and co-founder of Homies Unidos
“Gangs are not the only reason why children are fleeing”
A common narrative among many of the children fleeing the northern triangle of Central America involves gangs terrorizing people through extortion, forced recruitment and drug-turf wars. Absent from the conversation is analysis on how and why those gangs flourished in Central America in the first place, and the economic conditions that allowed them to thrive. “When I hear people blaming gangs for the reason why kids are fleeing Central America they miss the real reason why these children are leaving,” explains Alex Sanchez, a former Salvadoran gang member and a founding member of the Los Angeles-based gang-prevention group Homies Unidos.
“These countries have economic issues, poverty, corruption and El Salvador even has an ex-president that’s on the run right now,” Sanchez said, referring to former Salvadoran President Francisco Flores, who iswanted on embezzlement and corruption charges for allegedly embezzling $5.3 million while he was president and mismanaging $10 million that was donated by Taiwan’s government during his presidency.
“All of this is a result of a corrupt society and the children are the victims in this tragedy,” Sanchez said.
POLICARPO CHAJ
Executive director of the indigenous community group Maya Vision
“Maya children face three additional language barriers”
A sizable contingent of indigenous Maya children are among the tens of thousands of Guatemalan minors fleeing to the United States. Once they arrive, they face additional barriers because many Maya speak little or no Spanish.
Policarpo Chaj was born in the central highlands of Guatemala and today serves as the executive director of Maya Vision, an indigenous community group in Los Angeles. His organization helps federal agencies in the U.S. with translation services for some of the 22 Maya languages spoken in Guatemala. Chaj says in his decade working as a translator for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) he’s never seen so many young Mayas fleeing to the United States.
Multiple requests to ICE for more details and data on the number of Maya children detained here went unanswered.
K’iche’, a Maya language spoken by the K’iche’ people in Guatemala, became the 25th most used language in immigration courts last year.
MARQUEECE HARRIS-DAWSON
President, Community Coalition
“It feels like the country hasn’t moved since the early 1940s and 50s”
Marqueece Harris-Dawson leads a community organization in South Los Angeles. He says the recent protesters in Murrieta, Californiaagainst the arrival of unaccompanied children in the region reminded him “of another piece of my history as an African American.”
DANA FRANK
Honduras History Professor, University of California, Santa Cruz
“What’s missing [from the conversation] is the responsibility of the really dangerous Honduran government”
Most of the unaccompanied children arriving in the United States are coming from Honduras, which has the dubious distinction of being one of the most violent countries in the world.
In Honduras anyone can kill anybody with total impunity, says Dana Frank, a professor of history at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
HECTOR FLORES
Artivist, Las Cafeteras
“In the time of the great divide, my people were left behind”
Héctor Flores is an activist and vocalist in the Los Angeles-based band “Las Cafeteras.” He expressed his thoughts on unaccompanied children coming to the U.S. in a lyrical spoken word piece.
MONICA NOVOA
Communications Strategist, Families for Freedom
“The way that Central Americans are painted in the media is very harmful”
Mónica Novoa’s family left El Salvador when she was just three years old in 1982. Her family was fleeing a military crackdown that targeted teachers and other intellectuals during the civil war.
She remembers the way people fleeing the Salvadoran civil war were portrayed in the media when she was growing up. Novoa, who is currently a communications strategist for Families for Freedom in New York, says the press should consider how children feel when watching news reports covering unaccompanied minors coming to the U.S.
FELIX KURY
Psychotherapist, Clínica Martín-Baró, UCSF/SFSU
“A crime against humanity”
Felix Kury is a psychotherapist who practices at Clínica Martín-Baró in San Francisco. He worries about the psychological effects of sending children back to the environments they fled.
LEISY ABREGO
Sociologist, University of California, Los Angeles
“The Central American Free Trade Agreement has been disastrous for the region”
Leisy J. Abrego is a sociologist working at the University of California, Los Angeles. She’s interviewed more than 100 Central American youths for her book “Sacrificing Families,” which explores the experiences of Salvadoran parents in the United States and their children back home.
Abrego maintains that U.S. foreign policy is to blame for the conditions that Central American kids are facing back home.
“The Central American Free Trade Agreement has been disastrous for the region. Instead of reducing inequality, they’ve exacerbated [it] and made it impossible for people to remain there and actually survive,” Abrego said.
“One of the results of that inequality is that people have to find way to survive,” she added; “and when they don’t find it there they have to leave.”
SARAHI & ANTHONY DORMES
Mother and son who fled Honduras in June, 2014
“They killed one of my neighbors … the killers had confused him for my brother”
Sarahi Dormes fled Honduras with her 7-year-old son last June. She says her brother was killed by gang members two years ago; the rest of her family fled when the gang returned to kill her second brother in retaliation for refusing to join them.
Though her family managed to escape the immediate threat of violence in her home country, her family has been separated in the United States. She says the future is unclear.
Nearly 5,000 unaccompanied immigrant children were caught illegally crossing the US border with Mexico in October, almost double the number from October 2014, according to US Customs and Border Protection data.
Also, in the figures released Tuesday, the number of family members crossing together nearly tripled from October 2014 – from 2,162 to 6,029.
Illegal immigration has become a major issue among Republicans in the US presidential race. Billionaire Donald Trump has called for mass deportations, which some of his rivals criticize as an impractical plan that would hand Democrats a talking point as they seek to appeal to Latino voters.
The numbers spiked despite expectations of lower numbers due to the colder winter months coming, better enforcement along the border and efforts by Mexican authorities to stem the stream of Central American migrants to the US. Though tens of thousands of women and children from Central America were caught at the border in summer 2014, it had dropped by nearly half during the 2015 federal fiscal year that ended 30 September.
The 4,973 unaccompanied children caught at the border last month is the highest number that Washington DC-based thinktank Washington Office on Latin America has recorded for October since its records began in 2009, said Adam Isacson, a border expert and senior analyst.
The high numbers buck the typical trends of crossings peaking in spring then declining through summer and fall, Isacson said. But there was an uptick in families and children crossing in July, and the numbers have stayed over 4,000 each month since.
“Rather than a big jump, it’s been a steady burn,” he said. “I think we are almost in crisis mode with this many months of sustained arrivals.”
Most children and families trying to cross the border in October were from El Salvador. Increased violence in the tiny country, which averaged 30 murders a day in August, is likely partly to blame, Isacson said. Previously, Guatemala had the most families and children apprehended at the border.
While the Rio Grande Valley remains the center of migration flows in Texas, immigrants are starting to venture farther west. The number of unaccompanied children caught in Del Rio sector jumped from 120 to 237, while 187 children were apprehended in the remote Big Bend area, up from just 13 a year ago.
According to internal intelligence files from the Homeland Security Department, most families interviewed told Customs and Border Protection officials that smugglers decided where they would try to cross. They reported that the cost ranged from about $5,000 to cross the border near Matamoros or Reynosa, Mexico, across the border from the Rio Grande Valley, but was about $1,500 to $2,000 to cross near Ciudad Acuna, across the river from Del Rio.
The US was caught off guard by the sudden surge of children and families in 2014 and made several efforts to curb the flow of people crossing the border illegally, including media campaigns in Central America to scare people out of attempting the dangerous journey.
US Customs and Border Protection said in a statement this week that the campaigns are still in place and highlight that “those attempting to come here illegally are a top priority for removal”.
Immigrant families caught illegally crossing the border between July and September told US immigration agents they made the dangerous trip in part because they felt they were likely to succeed, according to the intelligence files. Immigrants spoke of “permisos”, or passes, that they believed would allow them to remain in the US.theguardian.com
Per evitare che affrontino il pericoloso viaggio dal Centroamerica. Nel corso dell'estate, gli Stati Uniti hanno affrontato una crisi umanitaria, con l'arrivo di decine di migliaia di minorenni non accompagnati.
