To solve the US border crisis, look to its cause

When a problem is misdiagnosed, it is no surprise that it gets worse. The current “crisis at the border” is real, but one that results from flawed policy analysis and inappropriate policy responses. Former DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson recently stated that the Trump administration strategy at the border is not working because it does not address the underlying factors.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials overseeing Customs and Border Protection (CBP) project that they will have over 100,000 migrants in their custody for the month of March, the highest monthly total since 2008. As many border security experts have noted, these numbers are not unprecedented. Border apprehensions of all irregular migrants (including asylum seekers) remain lower than the peak of 1.6 million in fiscal year 2000.

The policy crisis we face is not one of the volume of migrants but the demographic mix of the migrants and the factors that are propelling their flight to the United States. Stuart Anderson, executive director of the National Foundation for American Policy and former senior official in the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) during the George W. Bush administration, makes a compelling case that the current apprehension statistics are not comparable to those of the past: “In the past, nearly everyone entering the United States unlawfully attempted to evade authorities, whereas today’s border crossers are mostly turning themselves in to Border Patrol agents and seeking asylum.”

Making matters worse, DHS uses dated policy tools that were crafted in response to young men attempting to enter the United States to work. At that time, they most often were from Mexico and thus could just be turned around at the border because they came from a contiguous country.

Today, the migrants are families with children from the northern triangle countries. Rather than being pulled by the dream of better jobs, these families are being pushed by the breakdown of civil society in their home countries. As the Pew Research Center reports, El Salvador had the world’s highest murder rate (82.8 homicides per 10,000 people) in 2016, followed by Honduras (at a rate of 56.5). Guatemala was 10th (at 27.3). Many of them have compelling stories that likely meet the “credible fear” threshold in the Immigration and Nationality Act.

It is becoming clear that the harsh, capricious policies of the Trump administration are exacerbating the influx of asylum seekers from Central America. The Migration Policy Institute’s Doris Meissner, who served as the commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service during the Clinton administration, explains: “Because people are uncertain about what’s going to happen. They see the policies changing every several months. They hear from the smugglers that help them, and from the communities in the United States that they know about, that the circumstances are continually hardening. And so with the push factors that exist in Central America — lots of violence, lots of gang activity — they’re trying to get here as soon as they can.”

[Excerpt of Opinion by Ruth Ellen Wasem, a professor of policy practice at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, the University of Texas in Austin]

Trump cuts aid to Central American countries, threatens to close Mexico border

The U.S. government cut aid to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras on Saturday after President Donald Trump blasted the Central American countries for sending migrants to the United States.

Amid a surge in migrant detentions at the southwest U.S. border, Trump on Friday said he would also close the 2,000-mile (3,200-km) frontier, or sections of it, during the coming week if Mexico did not halt the flow of people. His threat to shut the U.S. border if Mexico does not halt all illegal immigration within its borders has exposed the limitations of the new Mexican government’s strategy of trying to appease the U.S. president as he gears up for re-election.

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol projections are for over 90,000 apprehensions to be logged during March, according to data provided to the Mexican government. That is up more than 140 percent from March 2018, and a seven-fold jump from 2017.

Trump’s words were a slap in the face to President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO), who has refused to answer back to provocative comments from Trump. Instead, the Mexican leader has worked to cement his powerbase by combating poverty with welfare handouts and lambasting his predecessors as corrupt.

Former Mexican foreign minister Jorge Castaneda saus Mexico faces “incredibly damaging” consequences if Trump does order “go-slows” at the border, which would pitch Lopez Obrador into uncomfortable new territory.

[Reuters]

US Congress resists proposed Trump humanitarian and refugee aid changes

Democratic and Republican lawmakers say they are determined to block a White House budget proposal that would gut the State Department’s refugee operations and slash overall humanitarian aid levels.

President Donald Trump’s 2020 budget request proposes consolidating three separate humanitarian assistance accounts operated by the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development. The White House proposal would not only cut funding but reshape humanitarian assistance, particularly in how it affects refugees.

While longtime humanitarian assistance practitioners say the proposal has some merits, they do not trust the Trump administration’s ultimate intentions and thus oppose it. That’s because the White House is seeking to cut the overall humanitarian funding for fiscal 2020 — from the fiscal 2019 enacted levels of roughly $9.5 billion to just under $6 billion, which critics say would eviscerate dedicated refugee programs.

“We all get it. He [Trump] hates the State Department. He hates humanitarian programs. . . . Congress doesn’t agree and so we’re going to go our own way,” Connecticut Democrat Sen. Christopher S. Murphy, a member of the Appropriations State-Foreign Operations Subcommittee, said last week. “I’m not sure [Sen.] Lindsey Graham is even going to read it.” Indeed, Graham, the cardinal of the State-Foreign Operations Committee, was equally dismissive of the White House proposal, as have been other Republicans.

Under the budget proposal, the State’s refugee assistance account, which is managed by the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, would be left with just $365 million, down from $3.4 billion in fiscal 2019 funding.

[Roll Call]

EU laments recalling ships helping in Med migrants-rescue-mission

The European Union is lamenting a move by member countries to recall all the ships taking part in an EU naval mission helping to manage migration in the Mediterranean Sea.

The EU’s Operation Sophia has been working to reduce migrant smuggling, train the Libyan coastguard and enforce an arms embargo on Libya. EU commission spokeswoman Maja Kocijancic said Wednesday that “without naval assets, the operation will not be able to effectively implement its mandate.”

Italy commands Sophia but the anti-migrant government refuses to allow any people it rescues to be disembarked in its ports, complicating the mission.

EU countries agree in principle to renew Sophia’s mandate for six months. For now, they want to recall its ships, but not its aircraft. A formal decision must be made by March 31.

[AP]

Oxfam calls for climate action, as children strike worldwide

Our children are walking out of school today, saying we have failed them.

In a speech today, Oxfam’s Winnie Byanyima evoked the words of Greta Thunberg, the Swedish teenager who yesterday was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and today is leading another strike by school children around the world, protesting against climate change and our pitiful weakness to resolve it.

Winnie implored the UN to show the same clarity of purpose and energy exemplified by the 16-year-old Swede.

Yes, we abhor kids being out of school. But climate change means that one day many may not even have a school to attend. Anyone whose very existence is under threat should at least have the right to speak up about it. The right to protest, to mobilize and organize, to raise one’s voice and have it heard, is no less a right that it should be denied.

To our children, climate change is not an abstract idea but a frightening, threatening reality. Our children are seeing their leaders failing to tame our economy’s addiction to coal, oil and gas, driving our planet toward and over 1.5 degrees warming. We place economic growth on a pedestal and disregard its harmful consequences on people. So what if the factory that employs people in the village also emits pollution that creates health hazards and climate change? Or if the much-hyped oil plant also taints people’s drinking water and spews out greenhouse gases?

Nearly half of the world’s population lives on under $5.50 a day, the World Bank’s new poverty line for extreme poverty in upper and middle income countries. If we continue to tinker around the edges of our current system, we will need a global economy 175 times bigger for everyone to achieve life above the extreme poverty line. This would destroy our planet – so it is self-evident that the structure of our economic model must change.

We are the proverbial ostriches with our heads in the sand, refusing to acknowledge that our system of pursuing development has not only given rise to huge inequality between the 1% super-rich and the rest – but it’s also been destroying our planet. We need to transform our economic system so that it redistributes income and wealth more fairly, and is powered in a greener, cleaner, more sustainable way. This economic transformation is entirely achievable and within our hands; we need a “New Green Deal” that both redistributes wealth and allows us a more sure and sustainable way to steward our planet.

We will be judged both by the environmental legacy we leave our children and how much we have prepared them to speak truth to power and take on the emerging challenges of a complex world.

[Oxfam]

Footage contradicts U.S. claim that Nicolás Maduro burned aid convoy

The narrative seemed to fit Venezuela’s authoritarian rule: Security forces, on the order of President Nicolás Maduro, had torched a convoy of humanitarian aid as millions in his country were suffering from illness and hunger.

Vice President Mike Pence wrote that “the tyrant in Caracas danced” as his henchmen “burned food & medicine.” The State Department released a video saying Mr. Maduro had ordered the trucks burned. And Venezuela’s opposition held up the images of the burning aid, reproduced on dozens of news sites and television screens throughout Latin America, as evidence of Mr. Maduro’s cruelty.

But there is a problem: The opposition itself –not Mr. Maduro’s men– appears to have set the cargo alight accidentally.

Unpublished footage obtained by The New York Times — including footage released by the Colombian government, which has blamed Mr. Maduro for the fire — allowed for a reconstruction of the incident. It suggests that a Molotov cocktail thrown by an anti-government protester was the most likely trigger for the blaze.

The rag used to light the Molotov cocktail separates from the bottle, flying toward the aid truck instead. Half a minute later, that truck is in flames.

The same protester can be seen 20 minutes earlier, in a different video, hitting another truck with a Molotov cocktail, without setting it on fire.

Many of Mr. Maduro’s critics also claim that he ordered medication set on fire during the border standoff. For example, John R. Bolton, President Trump’s national security adviser, posted on Twitter on March 2: “Maduro has lied about the humanitarian crisis in Venezuela, he contracts criminals to burn food and medicine intended for the Venezuelan people.”

Juan Guaidó, the leader of Venezuela’s opposition, has fervently maintained that the aid contained medicine and that it was burned by Mr. Maduro as well.

Yet this claim too appears to be unsubstantiated, according to videos and interviews.

After being contacted by The Times about these claims, American officials released a more cautious statement describing how the fire began:  “Eyewitness accounts indicate that the fire started when Maduro’s forces violently blocked the entry of humanitarian assistance,” the statement said. It did not specify that Mr. Maduro’s forces lit the fire.

[The New York Times]