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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.

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22:03

The untold history of unaccompanied minors

Public opinion remains deeply divided over whether the U.S. government has a moral obligation to offer asylum to Central Americans childre...
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A centre for young refugees in Saint-Omer offers shelter and protection, as well as the chance to enjoy being children again.

On a cloudy day in the northern French town of Saint-Omer, Ibrahim, from Darfur in Sudan, is tending to a crop of vegetables with eight other young teenagers.

Ranging from 14 to 17 years in age, they are among the lucky few who have been given a place at Saint-Omer’s Maison du Jeune Réfugié (‘house for young refugees’), run by the NGO France Terre d’Asile.

Forty-five children live at the centre, one of the few places that provide accommodation and protection for unaccompanied children who had been living in the makeshift camp known as ‘the jungle’ near Calais, 45 kilometres away. Here, they find shelter and protection, and can enjoy being children again – unlike in the jungle, where children sleep outside in makeshift shelters and are at risk of violence and abuse. Many have already faced danger while transiting along insecure routes through several countries in Europe.

Gardening is one of the leisure activities organized by the centre and is popular with residents. The children plant, tend and harvest lettuces, courgettes, thyme, tomatoes, basil and rhubarb.

Germaine Tetou, a social worker in Saint-Omer, is teaching them the French names for the vegetables and gardening tools. They repeat them, joking and laughing at one another’s pronunciation.

Tetou, who herself came to France as a refugee from Benin, says the children learned quickly. “Every day I am grateful to have this job,” she says. “I understand what they have to go through.” Gardening reminds Ibrahim*, who is 14, of his grandmother’s farm in Darfur. “I like everything here in Saint-Omer, but especially gardening,” he says.

He has been in France for 42 days, including the 15 he spent in ‘the jungle’, where he slept in a makeshift shelter with other teenagers who had fled Darfur, like him, without their parents.

“France has an obligation to protect unaccompanied minors living in the so-called jungle in Calais,” says Ralf Gruenert, the representative in France for UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency.

“And that means first and foremost to find appropriate housing solutions and provide them with legal, social and health care, but also to establish a workable and speedy system for family reunification for unaccompanied minors who have families in other European countries, including the United Kingdom, where such a move is in their best interests.”

Activities at the centre include French classes, maths, music, arts, sports, cinema and gardening. There is also a library.

Manal*, 16, from Sudan, looks at photos of castles in the south of France after lunch. “It’s beautiful, where is it?” he asks. He wants to find the location on a map to see if it is possible to visit them.

In the afternoon, some of the residents will head to the cinema, where ‘Ghostbusters’ and ‘Star Trek Beyond’ are their top choices. Afterwards they plan to play football in the park.

They feel safe at the centre, where they are able to dream as children do once more.

Jamal*, 17, from Ghazni in Afghanistan, also lives at the Saint-Omer centre. He arrived in Calais alone after he fled home.

He says he feels comfortable in Saint-Omer and dreams of becoming an electronic engineer. “There is no fighting here like in the jungle. I like everything here but my favourite activity is learning French.”

Accommodation centres and places for children are limited. Most of the unaccompanied children living in Calais do not have the same opportunities as Jamal and Ibrahim.

“Every day we receive requests to receive more children, but we are obliged to refuse as the centre is permanently full,” says the director, Jean-Francois Roger. “More places have to be created. Minors need to be in a safe environment.”

According to NGOs, about 850 unaccompanied children live in the Calais ‘jungle.’

As an emergency measure, 215 minors are accommodated in a temporary reception camp (Le Centre d’Accueil Provisoire, known by the French acronym CAP) and the Jules Ferry centre for women and children, which are run by the organization La Vie Active. Both are full and cannot accommodate more. The other children live in tents and makeshift shelters in the ‘jungle.’

So far this year, of the 300,000 refugees and migrants who have reached Europe, 28 per cent are children and many are travelling alone. In Italy, 15 per cent of the arrivals since the beginning of the year are unaccompanied children.

In 2015, children comprised more than half the global refugee population of 21.3 million, with the number of unaccompanied and separated children on the move also growing dramatically.

Nearly 100,000 asylum applications were made by unaccompanied and separated children in 78 countries in 2015 alone. This was the highest number on record since UNHCR started collecting such data in 2006.

Tensions in Calais have risen over the past few weeks, with French demonstrators blocking access to the Channel Tunnel and the Calais ferry to support calls for the closure of the ‘jungle.’

No matter what, as winter approaches, suitable accommodation for unaccompanied children like Jamal, Ibrahim and Manal is urgently needed.

*Names have been changed for protection 

Céline Schmitt 
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Unaccompanied minors in Calais cultivate a world away from home

A centre for young refugees in Saint-Omer offers shelter and protection, as well as the chance to enjoy being children again. On a cloudy ...
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Up to 1,000 unaccompanied minors will be left to fend for themselves when the so-called jungle camp for refugees in Calais is bulldozed next month. The French authorities have made no plans to rehouse the children, the Observer has learned, because it is hoping to force Britain to honour a promise to help child refugees.

The French interior ministry has informed charities and aid organisations that it intends to destroy the camp in less than four weeks.

Almost 400 unaccompanied youngsters in the camp, some of whom have relatives in the UK, have already been identified as having a legal right to come to Britain.

In May, David Cameron announced that Britain would accept as many as 3,000 unaccompanied minors. James Brokenshire, immigration minister at the time, said Britain had “a moral duty to help”.

However, Home Office figures reveal that by mid-September, only 30 children had arrived under the scheme. The Home Office did not respond to queries over whether it intended to help lone child refugees once the Calais camp was destroyed.

On Monday President François Hollande is expected to visit Calais and confirm that the refugee camp will be demolished. Details emerged last week when refugee organisations were told that alternative accommodation elsewhere in France would be supplied for 9,000 adults and families.

However, because of a supposed lack of emergency capacity for unaccompanied minors, at least 850 children will be made homeless.


Josie Naughton of the charity Help Refugees said: “We are particularly concerned for the safety of the unaccompanied children and ask the authorities to ensure they are protected and accounted for. We also urge the UK government to make good on its pledge, as there is little time to act.”

Jess Egan of the Refugee Youth Service, which runs a safe area in the camp for many unaccompanied minors, expressed outrage at the development. “It’s really worrying – horrendous – that nothing has been put in place to help these children,” she said.

Emily Carrigan, who has been working at the unofficial women and children’s centre in the camp for nine months, said: “We’ve been told that there is accommodation provided, but not for unaccompanied minors, because they [the French] hope the UK will help.


“Who knows what will happen to them? They will scatter everyone, and we won’t be able to track them. They’ll disappear.”


The dismantling of parts of the camp earlier this year caused so much panic among unaccompanied children that many of them disappeared. One charity,Care4Calais, said that after an area of the site was cleared, 129 unaccompanied minors had vanished.

Charlie Whitbread of Care4Calais said he was looking to set up a system to track down lone child refugees after the camp was demolished.


“The plan is to remain active and help the small camps that will spring up across northern France afterwards,” he said.

Tom Brake, the Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, said: “The plight of hundreds of children, a significant number of whom have a legal right to live in the UK, is being ignored. Some have died waiting for our government to act. This is disgraceful.” 

Fonte: The Guardian;
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New fears for 1,000 lone children in Calais refugee camp

Up to 1,000 unaccompanied minors will be left to fend for themselves when the so-called jungle camp for refugees in Calais is bulldozed ...
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In his State of the Union address this morning, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker asked the EU and Greece to take strong and immediate action to help unaccompanied children: “without protection of these children, Europe is betraying its historic values.” On September 10, the European Commission announced €115 million in new emergency funding to improve conditions for refugees in Greece, including forfacilities for unaccompanied children.


Two asylum-seeking children detained in a VIAL detention facility on Chios island, Greece.
© 2016 Human Rights Watch

On a visit to Athens on September 12, the EU’s commissioner for justice said the creation of 1,500 places for unaccompanied children was a “matter of urgency.”

Rightly so. These welcome steps came just days after Human Rights Watch released a report on the plight of unaccompanied asylum-seeking and other migrant childrendetained in terrible conditions in Greece. We interviewed a number of children, including 16-year-old Wasim, who fled Iraq after the Islamic State (also known as ISIS) invaded his hometown of Mosul and killed his father. Wasim ended up detained round-the-clock in a dirty police station cell in Greece.

Hundreds of children who are traveling alone have been locked up in so-called “protective custody” this year while they await a place in Greece’s overburdened shelter system. Children are routinely detained in small, cramped, and dirty cells, sometimes for weeks and months and sometimes with adults. They have little access to basic care and services.

The European Commission’s leadership on the issue is welcome, but for the children who are currently detained awaiting shelter, more must be done.

Greece should use emergency funding to provide suitable short-term alternatives to detention, increase the number of places in long-term shelters, and establish a foster family system.

But financial support to Greece should not be Europe’s only response. EU member states’ stubborn refusal to share responsibility makes the problem worse. Transfers of asylum seekers from Greece to EU countries under the EU emergency relocation plan are proceeding at a torpid rate. As of September 2, only 49 unaccompanied children had been relocated.

EU countries should make relocating unaccompanied children a priority, speed up family reunification, and endorse a proposal to broaden eligibility for the relocation plan.

Leaders in Greece and other EU countries should heed Juncker’s call, and act in concert to put an end to the unjustified detention of children and ensure these children get the care to which they are entitled. Fonte HRW.org


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14:39

Europe Pledges to Help Migrant Children in Greece. Funding Should End Unjustified Detention of Children in Deplorable Conditions

In his State of the Union address this morning, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker asked the EU and Greece to take strong an...
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Children now make up more than half of the world’s refugees, according to a Unicef report, despite the fact they account for less than a third of the global population.

Just two countries – Syria and Afghanistan – comprise half of all child refugees under protection by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), while roughly three-quarters of the world’s child refugees come from just 10 countries.New and on-going global conflicts over the last five years have forced the number of child refugees to jump by 75% to 8 million, the report warns, putting these children at high risk of human smuggling, trafficking and other forms of abuse.

The Unicef report (pdf) – which pulls together the latest global data regarding migration and analyses the effect it has on children – shows that globally some 50 million children have either migrated to another country or been forcibly displaced internally; of these, 28 million have been forced to flee by conflict. It also calls on the international community for urgent action to protect child migrants; end detention for children seeking refugee status or migrating; keep families together; and provide much-needed education and health services for children migrants.


“Though many communities and people around the world have welcomed refugee and migrant children, xenophobia, discrimination, and exclusion pose serious threats to their lives and futures,” said Unicef’s executive director, Anthony Lake.

“But if young refugees are accepted and protected today, if they have the chance to learn and grow, and to develop their potential, they can be a source of stability and economic progress.”

Today children comprise one-eighth of all international migrants in the world (31 million children out of 244 million total migrants), according to 2015 data. The vast majority of child migrants – some 3.7 million children – live in the US, followed by Saudi Arabia and Jordan, while in Europe, the UK hosts the largest number of migrants under the age of 18 (close to 750,000).




Unicef UK is calling on the UK government to step up action to ensure that refugee children stranded in Europe can reach safety with their families in the UK.

“Today, nearly one in every 200 children in the world is a refugee,” said Lily Caprani, Unicef UK’s deputy executive director. “In the last few years we have seen huge numbers of children being forced to flee their homes, and takedangerous, desperate journeys, often on their own. Children on the move are at risk of the worst forms of abuse and harm and can easily fall victim to traffickers and other criminals.

“Many of these children wouldn’t resort to such extreme measures if the UK government made them aware that they may have a legal right to come to the UK safely, and if they provided the resources to make that process happen before these terrible journeys begin.”

The vast majority of the world’s child migrants live in Asia or Africa, the report says. Asia is the birthplace of nearly half (43%) of all the migrants in the world, with nearly 60% of these migrants moving within the region. Most of Asia’s child migrants are hosted in Saudi Arabia, which also receives the highest number of labour migrants – the report’s authors say more research is needed to understand the connection between the two.


Globally, Turkey has the largest share of refugees – including adults – under protection by the UNHCR, and is believed to host the most child refugees as well.

In Africa, nearly one in three migrants is a child – nearly twice the global average – and three in five refugees are children. African migrants move both within and beyond the continent’s borders in nearly equal numbers; South Africa and Ivory Coast are the top two host countries for immigrants. But on-going conflict in many countries, in addition to linguistic difficulties between peoples and extremely limited resources to deal with migrant and refugee populations, mean that “the economic and social pressures of hosting threaten to uproot refugees once more”, the report warns.Understanding how and why children move within or beyond their birth countries is hugely important but usually hidden from view, says Dale Rutstein of Unicef’s Office of Research – Innocenti, which is investigating the multiple drivers that push children to start new lives, and the problems that they face as a result.

“The systems we have in place for people fleeing or seeking asylum are focused on adults, and in no way are articulated for children,” he says. “They are usually based on border control and law enforcement, yet we know that detention for a child is the worst thing that can happen and can create significant problems [for] a child’s development. But time and time again, we see that states don’t have any system for [holding] children apart from [putting them in] detention.”

Data clearly shows that refugee and migrant children disproportionately face poverty and exclusion despite being in great need of aid and resources, and in many circumstances are required to handle their own legal cases as they lack any form of legal representation.“In many parts of the world, children are often and regularly in court proceedings where they have no legal representative and no adult representation, most notably on the border between Central America and the US,” says Rutstein.

“Think of how absurd it is for a child to be arguing their case against a government-appointed lawyer. Often states believe they are set up to protect ‘their own’ children, but children have to be children anywhere and everywhere, and need to have the same standard forms of protection and treatment [around the world].”

The report calls on the international community to fulfil the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the most widely ratified human rights treaty in history, which obliges ratifying countries to respect and protect the rights of all children within their territories, regardless of a child’s background or migration status. While legal frameworks protecting refugees and other adult migrants is unclear and fragmented, the report says, the children’s convention is clear and unequivocal, taking into account minors’ particular vulnerabilities.

SCARICA IL REPORT http://www.unicef.org.uk/Documents/Media/UPROOTED%20Report.pdf

Fonte: The Guardian
Autore: Kate Hodal


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09:30

Nearly half of all refugees are children, says Unicef

Children now make up more than half of the world’s refugees, according to a Unicef report, despite the fact they account fo...
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Data on refugee and migrant children are the focus of Issue 5 of the IOM GMDAC Data Briefing Series, published today. This briefing, written by Rachel Humphries and Nando Sigona, reviews the sources and availability of data on refugee and migrant children arriving in Europe by sea. It finds that variance in policy and practice across European Union Member States results in stark differences in how and when children are recorded, including whether they are considered “accompanied” or “unaccompanied”. Methodologies used to determine age, and how this information is used, also differ from State to State, as do the rights to protection that children receive. The Annex sets out the different definitions used to categorize child migrants and refugees across international and European publications and conventions and a comparison of available data sources on unaccompanied minors.

The authors discuss how double-counting occurs as children move within and between countries, and the consequences of this when estimating the number of “missing refugee children” across Europe. In addition, broad gaps in data on the gender and age of minors who arrive in Europe irregularly further point to what cannot be known from the existing systems of information collection. Overall, there is a need for improved data collection in order that States might develop better policy responses to meet their international obligations towards children. 

 
Fonte: publications.iom.int
Autori: Rachel Humphries and Nando Sigon





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Data on refugee and migrant children - IOM GMDAC Data Briefing Series

Data on refugee and migrant children are the focus of Issue 5 of the IOM GMDAC Data Briefing Series, published today. This briefing, writt...
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Bekim left Albania when he was a teenager. He was forced to flee after local mafia tried to shoot his father, he says. He made the long journey over land to Spain, and it was there Bekim – not his real name – met people-smugglers who wooed him with promises of a new life in the UK. But it would come at a cost.

“You have to pay them a lot of money, around £6,000,” Bekim said. “If you don’t have the money, you can pay them back by working for them once you’re in the UK.

“The traffickers told me I can have a better life in the UK. They told me I can work for them and help them to sell things. I believed them.”

When Bekim arrived in the UK he came to the attention of social services. Realising he could be at threat from those looking to exploit him, social workers took action and referred him to the anti-trafficking and support service of children’s charity Barnardo’s.

Bekim says it was only then he realised the danger he was in. But he was one of the lucky ones.


A BuzzFeed News investigation has found that scores of other vulnerable teenagers have disappeared after arriving in the UK from Albania.


Asylum-seeking children arriving alone are automatically put into care. But freedom of information requests to more than 130 local authorities across England and Wales show that the number of Albanian children going missing doubled between 2014 and 2015.

Ninety-three unaccompanied asylum-seeking children from Albania – which is not a member of the European Union – went missing from care last year, compared to 46 in 2014. Around a quarter of those who disappeared in 2015 remain missing, while the rest dropped off the radar temporarily before being found again.

These children arriving in the UK alone are increasingly at risk from people-traffickers, with children as young as 15 being exploited for labour on dangerous building sites, the investigation found.

Anne Longfield, the children’s commissioner for England, told Buzzfeed News she was concerned about the reports: “This is definitely something on our radar. We are hearing that Albanian children are particularly vulnerable around labour exploitation and our team is looking into the issue.”


“Traffickers will brainwash their victims, they will be promised a better life. The young people are told not to trust anyone in authority.”

In other cases older men have used vulnerable teenagers for sexual exploitation and criminal activity such as selling drugs.


The number of Albanian children in the UK feared to have been trafficked for labour and sexual exploitation has quadrupled in the last two years, according to figures from the National Crime Agency.

Our investigation comes as the government explores plans to send unaccompanied asylum-seeking children back before they turn 18.

Now experts are voicing concerns that not enough is being done to safeguard Albanian children from potential trafficking gangs looking to exploit them.

Chloe Setter, of the children’s rights charity ECPAT UK, said the rise in Albanian children being trafficked and exploited was “staggering”.

“We know that children and young people are being sold into sexual exploitation and forced into committing crime by Albanian organised crime gangs all across the UK,” she said.

“Many of the identified children disappear once they are found by authorities, and most are never found. Our experience shows that these crime gangs are particularly brutal and use any means necessary to control and abuse these young people.”


Klevis, an Albanian boy aged 13, in his home near the town of Shkodra. He was among several boys AFP met earlier this year who are living in fear of the country’s blood feud tradition. Dimitar Dilkoff / AFP / Getty Images

Last year more than 450 Albanian children arrived alone to the UK. The number of people arriving in the UK to claim asylum has rocketed since 2013, with people travelling overland or using cheap flights to cross Europe. More than a third of those have been unaccompanied children.


A common reason given for asylum claims is Albania’s well-documented tradition of “blood feuds”, though earlier this month the UK Home Office downplayed the likelihood of such claims in its most recent country guidance report.

Despite uncertainties over why children are arriving in such numbers, concerns are now being raised that they may be in more danger once they arrive.

Last year 209 Albanian children in the UK were referred to authorities as at risk from traffickers. That number had jumped up from 117 in 2014 and just 56 in 2013.

Now NGOs are increasingly concerned about what is happening to these children when they then disappear from care. Many of the experts BuzzFeed News spoke to voiced fear that children could be being exploited once in the UK, with criminal gangs taking advantage of their vulnerability to put children to work in dangerous and traumatic environments.

Javed Khan, the chief executive of Barnardo’s, said: “Trafficked children are some of the most vulnerable children in society and trafficked Albanian children are no different. They are exploited for other people’s gain and many experience unimaginable trauma.”

Many of the children have been exploited in Albania or on their journey to the UK.

“The plight of children needs moving right to the top of the agenda. We don’t want to be in the position where five, ten years down the line we’re looking back and wondering why we didn’t address it then.”

The youth group Shpresa did an audit of the 180 Albanian teenagers it works with. It revealed that 46% of the teenagers had been trafficked for labour or sexual exploitation, while 26% said they were fleeing blood feuds. The rest said they were fleeing persecution on either religious grounds or because of their sexuality, while five young people said they were fleeing forced marriages.


“Once the young people are re-trafficked or join with gangs, we are usually unable to contact them,” says Esme Madill, who works with the group. “The travesty is that in spite of the platitude that every child matters, these children really don’t matter [to the authorities] and they disappear without anyone making a fuss.”

Lynne Chitty from anti-trafficking group Love146 has seen the number of Albanian children in her care increase greatly.

She recalled one 16-year-old, whom we are calling Admir. After arriving alone Admir was housed with social workers, but he had to be moved from his home three times after strange men turned up looking for him.

“He didn’t understand the problem,” she told BuzzFeed News. “He kept saying ‘you’re mad, they’re OK, they just want to take me to London’. He didn’t realise these criminal gangs are just looking to exploit young people.

“Traffickers will brainwash their victims, they will be promised a better life. The young people are told not to trust anyone in authority. Victims of trafficking need to be safe and they need to feel safe. When young people feel safe it helps them to regain a sense of control in their lives and helps to reduce their risk of going missing and going back into the hands of their traffickers.”

Kevin Hyland, the UK’s anti-slavery commissioner, told BuzzFeed News Albania was a “priority country” for him.

“One major issue is what happens to children arriving alone – we’re really concerned about that,” he said.

“The plight of children needs moving right to the top of the agenda. We don’t want to be in the position where five, ten years down the line we’re looking back and wondering why we didn’t address it then.”


Albanian children seeking asylum in France, in 2013. Jeff Pachoud/AFP / Getty Images

The Home Office says it is aware of the business in trafficking vulnerable children in the UK.


As long ago as July 2014, Karen Bradley MP, then a junior minister in the Home Office,told MPs of “a terrible industry in Albania of falsifying histories of blood feuds. Organised crime gangs are involved in it, and I have enormous sympathy for the children who end up in that dreadful situation: trafficked by somebody who is falsifying their life records in order to use them for labour and other exploitation in the UK.”

Bradley went on to say: “It is an absolute travesty that people are able to use and abuse these most vulnerable young people in that way, and we have to work across borders to stamp it out.”

Despite growing concerns about child safety, the Home Office has undertaken a pilot project in Croydon to explore the possibility of removing Albanian children back to the country.

In an FOI response, Croydon council said staff had been out to Albania in 2014 to explore how removals could work. Bradley and other Home Office staff also visited the country in 2014, but no children have been returned as yet.

Klara Skrivankova of Anti-Slavery International said: “This investigation highlights the sad truth that in many cases the UK’s response to trafficking is failing children. The authorities should be looking how to protect them better rather than trying to come up with the best ways to deport them back to Albania, where they’re at risk of being re-trafficked.”

The Home Office said it would only seek to remove an unaccompanied child from the UK if it can demonstrate that there are safe, appropriate, and sustainable reception arrangements in place in the country to which they are returning to.

In a statement, it said: “Law enforcement agencies, councils and social services all have a statutory duty to safeguard children as part of their local responsibilities – regardless of nationality or immigration status. A child’s welfare is always the overriding consideration.”

Fonte: www.buzzfeed.com

Autore: MaeveMcClenaghan





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09:58

Albanian Children Seeking Asylum In The UK Are Disappearing In Record Numbers

Bekim left Albania when he was a teenager. He was forced to flee after local mafia tried to shoot his father, he says. He made the long jour...
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Conditions for unaccompanied child asylum seekers in Calais are worsening because of a shortage of safe accommodation, according to a report.
The Refugee Youth Service (RYS), a key child protection agency in the Calais camp, has produced a report called Nowhere To Go that documents the deteriorating situation and disturbing lack of support for some of the mostvulnerable residents of the camp. The report also warns that deteriorating conditions mean that hundreds of children are at risk of disappearing.
The report is published as senior councillors from the Local Government Association prepare to visit the Calais camp on Thursday to consider how local government in France and the UK can work together to keep unaccompanied children safe and ensure they receive the care and support they need.
The report analyses the current scarce accommodation for children in the camp and in surrounding areas and calls for more accommodation to be provided as a matter of urgency. The report warns that unless safe areas are provided as soon as possible many of the estimated 608 unaccompanied children will disappear.


The report states: “The complete lack of child protection measures or any form of safeguarding in other informal camps or on the road to their next destination highlights the danger these young people are forced to put themselves in due to lack of feasible options.
“If something is not done in the immediate future we are at risk of repeating the catastrophic mistakes of the past.”
The report examines three on-site and three off-site centres around Calais that should be providing support for unaccompanied children but, for various reasons, are providing little or none. One, the Jules Ferry Unaccompanied Minors Accommodation Centre, is supposed to accommodate 72 unaccompanied children on the site but has not yet been built.
Approximately 183 children are living in a container camp known as Le Cap. While this provides a safer option for children than taking their chances in the ramshackle huts and tents on the site it is operating at capacity and has no space to accommodate more children.
RYS has called on the French government to provide safe accommodation for the hundreds of unaccompanied children and states that hundreds of children disappeared when the southern section of the camp was demolished in March. RYS tracked a number of these children to other parts of France and Europe.
The report highlights the cases of some individual children, including a 14-year-old boy who is self-harming, smoking hash and living between two tents and a caravan. He tried to claim asylum in France but was told he must wait in the camp until a space became available in an accommodation centre in Calais. He lost hope because of the delay and continued to make dangerous attempts to get to the UK each night instead. A 16-year-old boy arrived at the camp with nowhere to stay and was forced to move into a tent with strangers while waiting to be granted asylum in France.
A team of experienced therapists, including a group from the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust in London, are making regular visits to the camp. Known as the Calais Resilience Collective, they are working to enhance coping strategies of refugees, staff and volunteers, building on work carried out by the refugee team at the Tavistock.
A spokeswoman for the collective expressed alarm at the findings of the RYS report and said conditions for children were “very grim”.
Campaigners have criticised the UK government for not doing more to bring unaccompanied child refugees to the UK in line with Labour peer Alf Dub’ s amendment to the immigration act promising sanctuary. The Home Office said it was involved in active discussions to speed up mechanisms to identify, assess and transfer children to the UK. When the Guardian checked again the Home Office said there were no developments on these discussions to report.
The report follows a warning by Yvette Cooper, the Labour MP, that hundreds of child refugees have been unacceptably left in limbo in Calais camps by Home Office delays, despite having the legal right to be reunited with families in the UK.
Autore: Diane Taylor



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08:29

Conditions for unaccompanied children in Calais camp worsening, says report

Conditions for unaccompanied child asylum seekers in  Calais  are worsening because of a shortage of safe accommodation, according to a r...
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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

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Almost 5,000 unaccompanied minors caught at US-Mexico border last month

Nearly 5,000 unaccompanied immigrant children were caught illegally crossing the US border with  Mexico  in October, almost double the nu...
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Di seguito riportiamo  un interessantissimo articolo sulla situazione dei minori non accompagnati che provano ad attraversare la frontiera tra Messico e Stati Uniti d'America.Il reportage di seguito riportato è stato scritto dalla scrittrice Sonia Nazario, autrice del bellissimo libro Enrique's Journey: The True Story of a Boy Determined to Reunite With His Mother e pubblicato sul New York Times.

"Se un bambino sta fuggendo da un pericolo nel suo paese d'origine e bussa alla nostra porta, implorando aiuto, abbiamo il dovere di aprire la porta."

IN the past 15 months, at the request of President Obama, Mexico has carried out a ferocious crackdown on refugees fleeing violence in Central America. The United States has given Mexico tens of millions of dollars for the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 to stop these migrants from reaching the United States border to claim asylum.

Essentially the United States has outsourced a refugee problem to Mexico that is similar to the refugee crisis now roiling Europe.

“The U.S. government is sponsoring the hunting of migrants in Mexico to prevent them from reaching the U.S.,” says Christopher Galeano, who spent last summer researching what’s happening in Mexico for human rights groups there. “It is forcing them to go back to El Salvador,Honduras, to their deaths.”

I went to Mexico last month to see the effects of the crackdown against migrants, who are being hunted down on a scale never seen before and sent back to countries where gangs and drug traffickers have taken control of whole sections of territory. More than a decade ago, I rode on top of seven freight trains up the length of Mexico with child migrants to chronicle hellish experiences at the hands of gangs, bandits and corrupt cops who preyed on youngsters as they journeyed north. Compared with today, that trip was child’s play.

In a migrant shelter in Ixtepec, Mexico, I met July Elizabeth Pérez, 32, who was clutching her 3-year-old daughter, Kimberly Julieth Medina, tight in her arms, and keeping a careful eye on her two other children, 6-year-old-Luis Danny Pérez and 12-year-old Naamá Pérez. She arrived at this shelter after fleeing San Pedro Sula, a city where she grew up and worked as a waitress but that is now the deadliest town in Honduras, a country with one of the highest homicide rates in the world.

She was aiming to reach the United States, where her mother and grandmother live legally in Florida — 3,000 miles away.

She got less than 300 miles inside Mexico’s southern border to the migrant shelter, and that took 20 terrifying days. Four times, Mexican state and federal police stopped buses she and her children were on. She cried. She bribed them. Other times, she and her three children got out of taxis or buses to walk around checkpoints.Photo

July Elizabeth Pérez with one of her daughters, 3-year old Kimberly Julieth Medina, and her only living son, 6-year-old Luis Danny Pérez, at the Hermanos en el Camino shelter in Ixtepec, Mexico. CreditKate Orlinsky for The New York Times

After walking 12 hours around a mountain, they waited, exhausted, for seven days until a freight train left. July hid in a cubbyhole at the end of a freight car with her children, but 15 minutes later some men stopped it and shot toward those aboard. “Sons of bitches, we are going to kill you!” they yelled at the migrants.

Some migrants on the train threw rocks at them; in the chaos, July and her children were able to escape. By the time they arrived at the shelter, she had spent $3,000 sent by her grandparents and mother in the United States on bribes and wildly inflated prices charged by buses and taxis to reach the shelter on July 23. Two days later, she applied for a humanitarian visa to get through Mexico to reach her mother in Miami. She has been waiting two months.


“I think Mexico is putting up as many obstacles as possible so you despair, give up, and leave,” she says.

The crackdown has changed the shelter, Hermanos en el Camino, like many church-run immigrant shelters in southern Mexico, from a place migrants stopped for a quick bite and respite to a refugee camp where migrants wait for months, desperately hoping to get a visa or asylum from Mexico that would allow them to stay or safely continue north.Photo

The shelter Hermanos en el Camino, which is used for sleeping at night and to escape the sun during the day, when people relax, play cards and hold church services on Sundays. CreditKatie Orlinsky for The New York Times

By day, some 150 migrants erect buildings to expand the shelter, chop firewood, clean, take care of one another’s children. At night, the dozens who cannot cram into overcrowded dormitories throw thin mattresses under the canopy of the huanacaxtle tree, in the dirt, in hammocks slung between branches. There’s a cacophany of snoring in the courtyard. A woman kidnapped by bandits in Mexico and raped in front of her husband sobs.

For eight years, July’s family has been struggling with the gang and narco-cartel violence that has overtaken many areas of her country. On Oct. 29, 2007, her brother, Carlos Luis Pérez, a skinny 22-year-old, was kidnapped and then found dead two days later in a sewage ditch, his hands and feet cut off. He had been on his way to deliver the family’s $91 in rent money when he was robbed.

In 2010, July’s mother left legally for the United States with a visa that her mother had obtained for her. When July’s mother arrived in the United States, she quickly applied for a visa for July, vowing, despite long backlogs for such visas, to get July out soon, too. “Hurry!” July begged, “I don’t want anything to happen to my children.” Matters grew worse in her city; there were three mass murders in the two blocks near her house as neighbors and friends were killed by the 18th Street gangsters who ruled her area.

Not long after her oldest son, Anthony Yalibath Pacheco, turned 14, he told July that 18th Street gangsters ordered him to be their lookout. “No,” he told them, “my mom will be mad at me.” Terrified that her son was in danger, she tried in 2014 to get any kind of visa from the United States Embassy; both her October and November applications were denied. She was told to wait for her mother’s visa to be processed, something that can take years.

On Dec. 4, 2014, at 7 p.m., she sent the 14-year-old and his friend on an errand just steps from home. When he didn’t return immediately, July called, then texted. Her son did not respond.Photo

July Elizabeth Pérez holds a photo of her son Anthony Yalibath Pacheco, who was killed in Honduras by gangs last year when he was 14 years old. CreditKatie Orlinsky for The New York Times

Desperate, she went to the police station, pleading for help even though she knew they were in collusion with the gang. They found her son’s bike at a house that reeked of marijuana, although no trace of the gangsters — tipped off, July believes, by the police. They found the boys’ bodies nearby moments later. Her son had ligature welts on his wrists, his face was beaten, ribs kicked, and burn marks singed his lips. His body had been stuffed into a garbage bag. Another bag over his head had suffocated him. Her son loved to help others, study math, and take care of his younger siblings, she says, and he longed to be a lawyer. “Why didn’t they leave him alive? Why? Why?” She sobs, tears streaming down her cheeks.


July quickly buried her son in a spot on top of the grave of her brother who had died, abandoned her house, and went to live three hours away. Seven months later, a neighbor tipped her off that the gang had found her. She left in less than 24 hours, carrying little. Speed was crucial; many migrants have fled Honduras only to be traced and killed in Guatemala by the same gang there. In her haste to leave her home she left behind her passport and photos of herself.


She decided her only safe alternative was to go to the United States illegally, but she made it only a few miles inside Mexico before she and her children were caught and detained in the 21st-Century Migration Station, Mexico’s largest immigration detention facility, in Tapachula, Chiapas. Despite Mexican laws that require all detained migrants to be notified of their right to apply for asylum, no one informed her of her rights. She begged to be considered a refugee. “I cannot go back to my country!”

The detention center was packed. Her children slept on filthy mattresses. Her 6-year-old son’s arms were covered in a rash and bleeding. July’s asthma left her barely able to breathe. She begged for medicine. Twelve days after being caught, she was deported to San Pedro Sula, where both her son and brother had been murdered. She immediately headed north again, fearing that if she didn’t leave, the 18th Street gang would find her.Photo

Siblings Luis Danny Pérez, 12-year old Naamá Pérez and Kimberly Julieth Medina, play cards with another child fleeing violence, Anthony Douglas Ponce Barahona, 3, in the shelter's women's dormitory. CreditKatie Orlinsky for The New York Times

Beginning in July 2014, Mexico redirected 300 to 600 immigration agents to its southernmost states, and conducted over 20,000 raids in 2014 on the freight trains migrants ride on top of, and the bus stations, hotels and highways where migrants travel. In a sharp departure from the past few years, in the first seven months of fiscal 2015, Mexico apprehended more Central Americans — 92,889 — than the 70,448 apprehended by the United States. This year, Mexico is expected to apprehend 70 percent more Central Americans than in 2014, while United States apprehensions are projected to be cut by about half, according to a Migration Policy Institute study last month.

Of course, barriers will not ultimately stop children who are increasingly desperate and can find new ways around obstacles. In a worrisome development for the White House that another surge could be brewing, last month more than twice as many unaccompanied children were caught coming into the United States illegally and put in federal custody than a year ago.

Mexico has been particularly zealous in beating back children traveling alone. In the first seven months of this year, Mexico had already apprehended 18,310 minors, up nearly a third over the same period a year ago.

But unaccompanied minors feel they have no choice but to flee. At the Ixtepec shelter, Brian Enoc Pérez Molina, 16, says there is nothing left for him to go back to — the local narco cartel, which trafficks cocaine and marijuana, killed his brother and father. He tried to go home once, to an island off Bluefields, Nicaragua, and the narcos nearly bludgeoned him to death, too.



No one systematically tracks how many deportees end up dead when they are returned to their homes, but the social scientist Elizabeth G. Kennedy in a forthcoming report documents, from news reports, that at least 90 migrants deported by the United States and Mexico in the past 21 months were murdered. The true number, she notes, is most likely much higher.Photo

Willmer Villatoro, 16, and his brother Alexis Villatoro, 18, at the Hermanos en el Camino shelter. They fled gangs in El Salvador after Willmer was shot for not joining them.CreditKatie Orlinsky for The New York TimesPhoto

Willmer Villatoro's scar from a gunshot wound inflicted by gangs in El Salvador.CreditKatie Orlinsky for The New York Times

Although President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico said when he announced the so-called Southern Border Plan that it was to “protect the human rights of migrants as they pass through Mexico,” the opposite has happened. By the Mexican government’s own accounting, 72,000 migrants have been rescued from kidnappers in recent years. They are often tortured and held for ransom. The survivors tell of being enslaved working in marijuana fields or forced into prostitution. Many are killed — sometimes they have organs harvested — in what’s become an invisible, silent slaughter. The government push has been interpreted as open season on migrants who have become prey to an exploding number of criminals and the police who rob, rape, beat and kill them.

The crackdown has forced migrants to travel in ways that are harder, take longer, are more isolated and have fewer support mechanisms. New measures have made riding on top of freight trains north, a preferred method for anyone who cannot afford a $10,000 smuggler fee, incredibly difficult. In Tierra Blanca, Veracruz and elsewhere, tall concrete walls topped with concertina wire have been constructed to thwart migrants. In Apizaco, the Lechería train station outside Mexico City and elsewhere, chest-high concrete pillars, or rocks, have been installed on both sides of the tracks so migrants cannot run alongside moving trains and board them.

PhotoPeople head north in Chahuites, Mexico. It is one of the most dangerous areas along the southern migrant trail, where people are preyed on by criminals and fear officials monitoring the trains.CreditKatie Orlinsky for The New York Times

In Veracruz, low-hanging structures have been built that the trains pass through, so unsuspecting migrants atop freight cars are swept off moving trains. Mexican immigration officials are using tasers to zap people off moving freight trains, says Alberto Donis, operating coordinator of the Hermanos en el Camino shelter in Ixtepec.

Four in five of the migrants I spoke to at the Ixtepec shelter have walked most of the way, often with babies or toddlers in their arms.

“There are children walking the length of Mexico,” often at night so as not to be seen, says David Muñoz Ambriz, the Latin America communications manager for World Vision International, a Christian humanitarian aid group.

Migrants are also taking more clandestine, dangerous routes to go undetected, far from the dozens of mostly Catholic-run shelters that have sprung up next to the tracks to aid them. The Rev. Alejandro Solalinde, the priest who runs the Ixtepec shelter, has worked arduously to reduce abuses. He has been jailed by the police, threatened by narco traffickers, and lives with multiple bodyguards in daily fear for his life for denouncing barbaric crimes against migrants and complicity by Mexican law enforcers.Photo

A morning scene at the immigrant shelter in Chahuites, one of the most dangerous areas on the southern trail. CreditKatie Orlinsky for The New York Times

As Mexico has blocked refugees from moving forward, it places enormous obstacles in the way of being able to apply for asylum in Mexico. Those who are detained by migrant officials and are allowed to apply remain locked up during a process that can take months or a year, sometimes in jails where rats roam by day and worms infest the food migrants get. Of those who are able to hold out for a decision, only about 20 percent win — less than half of the roughly 50 percent asylum approval rate of the United States. Mexico granted asylum to 18 children last year.



“You can lock people inside a burning house, you can close the front door, but they will find a way out,” says Michelle Brané, director of the Migrant Rights and Justice program at the Women’s Refugee Commission. “The U.S. doesn’t want to recognize this as a refugee situation. They want Mexico to be the buffer, to stop arrivals before they get to our border.”

OTHER surrounding Latin American countries outside the so-called three conflicted Northern Triangle countries — El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala — have seen an almost 1,200 percent spike in asylum claims between 2008 and 2014, according to a United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees study.Photo

A guide for migrants in Ixtepec issued by the National Institute of Migration (Instituto Nacional de Migración), a government organization that supervises immigrants. The pamphlet includes maps as well as safety and legal information.CreditKatie Orlinsky for The New York Times

While a legitimate debate can continue about the pluses and minuses of economic migrants to the United States, the solution with these refugees from our neighbors to the south is clear. It seems ridiculous to have to say it: If a child is fleeing danger in his or her home country, and that child knocks on our door pleading for help, we should open the door. Instead of funding only the current policies toward migrants in Mexico, we should fund fair efforts by Mexico to evaluate which Central Americans are refugees.

While migrants’ claims are evaluated, we should help Mexico pay for places for migrants to be held that are humane.

The United States should develop a system for these refugees, much like Europe is now doing for Syrians, to equitably allocate people who are fleeing harm throughout this continent — including sending them to safer countries in Latin America, to Canada and to the United States. In the 1980s, many United States churches stepped up to help Central Americans fleeing civil war violence, and many would gladly sponsor a migrant today if encouraged by our government.

Will the United States step up and be a moral leader for these refugees?

Sonia Nazario is the author of “Enrique’s Journey: The Story of a Boy’s Dangerous Odyssey to Reunite With His Mother.”

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19:04

The Refugees at Our Door

Di seguito riportiamo  un interessantissimo articolo sulla situazione dei minori non accompagnati che provano ad attraversare la frontie...
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