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Just because Abraham Lincoln is claimed to have judged that you cant fool all the people all the time doesnt mean modern politicians have been dissuaded from trying their best anyway.

Indeed, the art of modern politics is to arm your activists with enough selective quotes from your partys spokespeople that you can deploy them in an attempt to win over people who often have diametrically opposing views from one another. Yes, they may, a few months or years down the line, be disappointed and disillusioned that the party or policy they voted for didnt quite do what it said on the tin, but such disillusion will only set in after the ballot boxes have been emptied and the polling stations close, so no harm done.

As a fine example, I present the shadow home secretary, Nick Thomas-Symmonds. At the weekend it will be entirely possible for Labour activists to head out for their campaigning activities (or they would if it werent for the pandemic) and to reassure voters who are angry about the arrival of illegal migrants on the Kent shore that the party specifically the Shadow Home Secretary shares their anger. To prove it, theres even a letter from him to the Home Secretary saying that its wrong that this is happening.

Next door, a colleague might be speaking to another voter who is disgusted by the Governments refusal to allow such migrants to settle permanently in Britain. Again, the words of Mr Thomas-Symmonds citing poverty wars and persecution can be deployed. Theres even a letter from him to the Home Secretary saying that To date your efforts have been devoid of compassion.

Someone of a more cynical bent than I might conclude that the Shadow Home Secretarys carefully-worded statements on the issue (not that there have been many of them recently) are aimed at resolving the potentially vote-losing contradiction between his own partys instinctive support for mass migration and the general publics more sceptical approach. But it can hardly be denied that Thomas-Symmonds intervention is thoughtful and considered.

Nuance is certainly in short supply when it comes to debate on immigration. But Labour will find that refusing to take a stand, one way or the other, on the issue of illegal immigration will prove a major weakness by the time the next election campaign kicks off. Thomas-Symmonds is right (as is Diane Abbott on LabourList) to place most of the blame at the feet of the people smugglers making a fortune by exploiting vulnerable (and gullible) people. That is a safe and uncontroversial opinion that carries no risk.

Many on the liberal Left are disparaging of public concerns about the numbers arriving on our southern shores, given the relatively low (though exponentially increasing) numbers involved. Those same commentators also blame the people smugglers. And yet every dinghy that completes the journey safely, every individual not immediately returned from whence they came (and by that I mean France) is the best possible advertisement for the dubious service they provide.

If you really want to stymie a market for any particular product, ensure that it is worthless, that it provides zero return on your money. How do you convince the smugglers potential customers that their life savings will be utterly wasted on a cross-Channel adventure as long as many of those who made it to the shore have yet to be returned?

Thomas-Symmonds reluctance to take a harder line, one way or the other, is understandable given the partys record on immigration. In the first term of Tony Blairs government, there was widespread unhappiness among activists at its robust efforts to clamp down on illegal arrivals, imposing eye-watering fines on lorry drivers who had, in most cases, accepted eye-watering bribes to allow their unofficial passengers to hop aboard before travelling to Blighty.

And who can forget the controversy which, for reasons unknown, was caused by the mug featuring the meaningless slogan Controls on immigration, as if a Miliband Labour government would have been the first government ever to impose controls on who gets to arrive and live in this country.

Unlike coronavirus, illegal immigration is a subject about which the public is more likely to judge political parties. It is hardly extreme to believe that deliberately breaking UK law by arriving on our shores, having paid some of the vilest people on the planet thousands of pounds to evade the British authorities, is an unacceptable way to behave. Similarly, there is a rational, progressiveview that borders belong to a previous era and that no one should be forced to take their lives into their own hands if they want to live here.

Those views, however, are entirely contradictory and no politician seeking one of the highest offices in the land can get away for long with riding both horses. Sooner or later Labour will need to tell the British people where it stands. A deafening silence, or at best an equivocal attempt to please both sides, cannot be sustained.

Originally posted here:
Labour's refusal to take a stance on illegal immigration will cost it dear - Telegraph.co.uk

Illegal immigration is a problem in America, an expensive one. According to The Hill, though illegal immigrants pay some $19 billion in taxes, that is dwarfed by the roughly $116 billion annual drain on the economy. And about two-thirds of that bill is absorbed by local and state taxpayers.

But the way to discourage illegal immigration is to encourage legal immigration, with the goal of eventual naturalization and citizenship.

Unfortunately, the government has taken a step backward toward achieving that goal.

After a nine-month review, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency updated and finalized its fee structure this week.

According to CNN, It increased the cost of online naturalization applications from $640 to $1,160. The naturalization fee will represent the full cost to process the application, the agency says, plus a proportional share of overhead costs, a change from previous policy.

The new fees take effect Oct. 2.

Thats a pricey jump, especially for a demographic that, being new to this country, is likely to be low income. Coming up with an extra $520 is a huge burden for those just trying to get by, especially in the middle of a coronavirus pandemic.

The spike in fees could prove so onerous that people abandon the naturalization route, and join the ranks of the undocumented.

Like the rest of the country, USCIS is dealing with fiscal fallout from the coronavirus. The agency is facing a significant budget shortfall and looming furloughs. Unlike most federal agencies, USCIS receives most of its funding from fee collection.

USCIS wasnt going gangbusters before COVID-19 hit, either, losing about $4.1 million per business day before the pandemic, a spokesperson told CNN.

These overdue adjustments in fees are necessary to efficiently and fairly administer our nations lawful immigration system, secure the homeland and protect Americans, Joseph Edlow, USCIS deputy director for policy, said in a statement.

Yes, revenues and funding across the country have fallen so far thanks to the pandemic that theyre inches from the Earths core at this point but raising naturalization fees will do more than hit wallets. It will derail immigrants on the path to citizenship.

If youre losing millions a day before a pandemic hits, a funding overhaul is long overdue. But turning to those who can least afford to pay these new, increased fees will do nothing to ameliorate Americas dilemma with the undocumented.

See the original post:
Spike in fees hurts legal immigration - Boston Herald

The H-2A visa program exists to provide U.S. farmers with legal foreign workers when they cannot find U.S. workers as an alternative to illegal immigration and illegal employment. The government requires H-2A employers provide among other benefitshigh wages, free housing, free transportation, and three meals or a kitchen. Despite these requirements, a lengthy NBC News report released this week details a story of horrific abuse of a group of H-2A workers and concludes that as the H-2A program has expanded, it has left more guest workers vulnerable to abuse.

Unfortunately, while highlighting important issues and one person's dramatic criminal behavior, the report has several flaws and inaccuracies that incorrectly create the impression of widespread, systematic abuse of H-2A workers. In general, nearly all H-2A workers benefit greatly from working in the United States.

This post will criticize the use of certain data in this reporting, but I want to be clear at the outset that the narrative component of the story has journalistic merit that does illustrate real issues that can arise with the H-2A program. However, the report grounds its narrative in a couple data points delivered at the top of the piece (along with the graphic) that are problematic:

Last year, the Labor Department closed 431 cases with confirmed H-2A violations a 150 percent increase since 2014; the agency found about 12,000 violations under the program, with nearly 5,000 H-2A workers cheated out of their wages, according to federal data.

There are several issues with this presentation of data:

No recent upward trend in H-2A violations: Despite the jump in violations last year, a fuller presentation of the data over both Obama and Trumps terms shows, first, that a similar number of absolute violations were found in 2012 and 2013 (the year before NBC's graph cuts off) and, second, that the number of violations per 1,000 H-2A jobs is still 29 percent lower than the average year since 2000. The program has grown much faster than the number of violations. Figure 1 shows both the absolute numbers and the number of violations per 1,000 H-2A jobs. Of course, the data could be missing violations that DOL never caught, but this would also have been true in 2012 and 2013, and the trends cut against the journalists narrative and should have been acknowledged.

Incorrect claim about backpay. The claim that nearly 5,000 H-2A workers cheated out of their wages is simply incorrect. The Department of Labor (DOL) does report that nearly 5,000 workers received back wages from H-2A investigations, but these workers include U.S. workers. Government regulations require that H-2A farmers pay all their workersboth H-2A workers and U.S. workers in corresponding employmentthe Adverse Effect Wage Rate (AEWR) for the state (H-2As inflated minimum wage) on top of the free housing, free transportation, etc. If the DOL audits an employer and finds that only H-2A workers received the AEWR while U.S. workers received the market wage, it will cite the employer and require them to pay backpay to U.S. workers, even if the U.S. workers never asked or were promised the AEWR.

Matthews Sweet Potato Farm, for example, last year paid $56,193 in back wages to 113 employees because, as DOL states, the employer gave H-2A workers preferential treatment when they paid American workers less than ... U.S. workers. This fact is very important for the reader to know because it cuts against the theory that its always H-2A foreign workers receiving lower pay than U.S. workers. The H-2A program is often so generousnot just in theory but in practiceabout pay for guest workers that it often penalizes employers for treating them better than Americans.

No recent upward trend in workers receiving backpay. NBC cuts off the available data, so the reader cannot see that in 2013, the number of (again, total) workers receiving backpay was similar to what it was last year. Moreover, since the program has expanded so dramatically in recent years, it simply isnt reasonable to show the absolute number of workers receiving backpay without context. Figure 2 shows these trends as well. The number of workers receiving backpay per 1,000 H-2A jobs was 57 percent lower than its peak in 2013 and 6 percent below the average for all years. Nothing unprecedented is happening with violations or backpay in the H-2A program under President Trump.

No context about the significance of the infractions: NBC focuses on a horrific case of fraud and abuse but then lumps that case with all other infractions as if they are similar. They are not. The maximum available fine for a single H-2A violation in 2019 was $115,624. The actual average fine amount per violation was just $237. Moreover, in about 29 percent of cases in 2019, DOL considered all of the infractions found so minor that it wasnt worth a fine at all. Figure 3 actually shows a decline in the number of more serious infractions valued at more than $10,000 declined from 26 percent of cases to 7 percent from 2011 to 2019. H-2A opponents sometimes use these facts to imply that DOL is so cozy with employers that it is unwilling to do anything about H-2A violations. This is absurd and cuts against decades of hostility between the DOL and employers.

No context about the frequency of H-2A employer violators. The vast majority of H-2A employers aren't violators. Figure 4 shows the number of H-2A employers who were fined in recent years compared to the number of total H-2A employers. With more than 6,000 employers, some people will violate the law, but it is by no means significant.

No context about the frequency of H-2A trafficking: As I note in my report, the Department of Homeland Security granted T visa status (for human trafficking victims like those documented in the NBC report) to 39 H-2A workers from 2009 to 2013, which represents 0.01 percent of H-2A visas issued. Polaris, a group dedicated to combating human trafficking, received 327 complaints to its human trafficking hotline from H-2A visa holders from 2015 to 2017about 0.08 percent of visas issued. These are tragic cases, but as David Medina of Polaris told the Guardian, most H-2A workers biggest fear is to lose that visa.

Little context about H-2As value for foreign workers: Nearly all H-2A workers try to return to the United States repeatedly because, whatever its flaws, it provides a better standard of living than their home countries. The annualized wage for H-2A workers was almost $25,000 in 2019. Mexicos minimum wage for farmworkers was just $4.64 per day, less than $1,200 per year. Even the highest paid agricultural workers in Mexico only earn $15 per day. In Mexico, they pay very little, one Tennessee H-2A worker said. You work all day and you earn what you earn here in an hour. Its a big difference.

But its not just the wages. H-2A employment is legal employment with legal status. This is huge benefit to workers who may otherwise cross illegally in dangerous conditions. As one former-illegal, but now H-2A worker explained, I dont have to risk my life anymore to support my family. And when I am here, I do not have to live in hiding. This partly explains, as seen in Figure 5, why the rise in H-2A and H-2B visas for Mexicans has corresponded with a major decrease in illegal immigration from Mexico. H-2A visas are usually better than the alternatives for nearly all H-2A workers, whether staying at home or crossing illegally.

Inaccurate report of a significant decline in investigative resources: NBC states that staff at the Wage and Hour Division (WHD), the Department of Labor's agency responsible for H-2A enforcement, has fallen by 19 percent since 2016, according to federal records. NBC doesnt link to the federal records it references, but it appears that this statement came from comparing the proposed number of full-time equivalent workers for FY 2016 to the total number of actual or proposed workers in FY 2020. Whatever the case, the 19 percent reduction in WHD staff did not occur. In FY 2020, the agency had 1,382 full-time equivalent employees (excluding the H-1B fraud staff who are separately funded by employer fees). This compares to 1,359 in FY 2016. Including the H-1B staff doesn't make the claim correct or substantially change the trends. Figure 6 shows the full trend for WHD staff.

Little context about H-2As complexity: NBC notes that farmers say that the program is complex, but this fact is only affirmed in passing and only as an explanation for why farmers are using labor contractors (which, in the highlighted case, abused the workers in NBCs story), not as an explanation for the violations themselves. The Government Accountability Office has found that the complexity of the H-2A program poses a challenge for some employers because it involves multiple agencies and numerous detailed program rules that sometimes conflict with other laws. In 2014, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) ombudsman characterized it simply as highly regulated. My own report details a noncomprehensive list of 209 H-2A rules that apply to farmers and workers. This flow chart from my report gives a small glimpse into the regulatory hurdles for H-2A employers.

Its inevitable as new employers join a very complicated program that some violations will occur. For example, violations of the corresponding employment rulementioned aboveare common because the belief naturally arises that only Americans recruited by the employer as part of the H-2A process are subject to it. This isnt so. Moreover, its exceptionally difficult outside of that process to determine who a corresponding worker is, if workers perform different tasks at different times of the year.

Despite the shortcomings of its presentation of the data and facts about the program, the NBC narrative does contain some important insights about reforming the H-2A program. An H-2A labor contractoran individual named Manuel Sanchezwith a contract with Premium Pineneedles in Georgia recruited Mexicans to bale pine straw for garden mulch. He promised them all the normal H-2A benefits but illegally charged them a $1,600 to join, nearly the first months expected pay. Once they reached Georgia, Sanchez dumped them without gloves or equipment in a forest to pick up pine needles with their bare hands and forced them to live in abandoned and dilapidated housing without enough food.

Workers want a legal alternative to illegal immigration: NBC states:

Six years earlier, Reyes had crossed the U.S.-Mexico border on foot, without papers. He was caught in Texas, then deported after two weeks in detention. This time would be different, Reyes told himself: "I want to do things the right way legally."

This accords with the experience of many other guest workers who chose the H-2A or H-2B guest worker programs because they were better alternatives to illegal residence. Without the H-2A program, many more workers would continue to attempt to cross the border illegally, placing them in a worse position with their employers and the law. This insight cuts strongly against curtailing the H-2A program.

Make the program less complex: NBC reports:

The program's growth has spawned a cottage industry of visa agents and growers associations to help farmers navigate the complex application process. But increasingly, farmers are turning to farm labor contractors like [the abusive] Sanchez to supply workers. . . . farmers are outsourcing the time-consuming job of hiring, transporting, housing and managing H-2A workers. Labor contractors can also shield farmers from liability, curtailing their legal responsibility for the workers picking their crops should something go wrong.

These statements imply that farmers would be much more likely to hire workers directly and manage the workers themselves if the program was less complex. This is sensible. Simplifying the H-2A program would benefit both workers and employers. This insight undercuts the argument for adding even more regulations to the program.

Inform workers of their rights: NBC explains that it took a local pastor to explain to them their rights:

The following night, the workers heard a knock on their door. The men scattered. Some hid inside the house, Luna recalled, fearing that immigration agents had come to deport them, as Sanchez kept threatening would happen, even though they'd done nothing wrong. [The pastor] Marcela De Leon was overwhelmed. "This is abuse," she said, telling the men to speak to a lawyer. "You have to report it."

Every H-2A worker first has a visa interview at a U.S. embassy or consulate. Consular officers at the end of those interviews should be informing workers of their rights. Every interview should conclude with the promised job conditions and where to go if those conditions are not met. No H-2A worker should believe that reporting human trafficking and fraud should result in deportation. They should understand the availability of T visas for trafficking victims, which the workers ultimately obtained.

Allow workers to leave their jobs without fear of losing status: NBC reports that for the workers:

their greatest fear more than being mistreated was never being able to come work in America again. What would all that suffering have been for? "All that time in vain," as one of the men later put it.

For U.S. workers, leaving a job is never easy, but theres no risk that you will never be able to work in America again. Foreign workers need the same assurance. If workers can leave their jobs to find new ones, they can assert their rights more vigorously and blunt the fear of losing financially. Unfortunately, the H-2A program makes this exceptionally difficult. H-2A status automatically expires 30 days after the end of the first job. The regulation is not at all clear that this 30-day period applies to workers who abscond from their first job, but it should be universal. Moreover, 30 days is not enough assurance for workers. The H-2A program should guarantee a minimum of a years status with renewals possible with proof that the worker is continuing to find jobs.

As importantly, all the regulatory red tape to hire a foreign workerwhich takes about 90 days to completemakes it almost impossible to quickly connect to a new employer that isnt already interested in H-2A workers. The government should allow farmers to hire H-2A workers already in the United States on the same terms as their U.S. workers. The statutory requirements only apply to employers seeking to import a foreign worker, not to those already present in the country. Moreover, under the statute, employers should be required to hire available H-2A workers first because the statute requires them to seek any available worker (without specifying U.S. worker) in the United States.

More visas will reduce abuse: NBC reports:

Sanchez, whom he met through a friend, told [the worker] that it would cost $1,600 for the visa, transportation and a "special" passport that turned out not to exist.

It is almost impossible to stop these deals if workers fail to report themanother reason that workers should receive detailed instructions about their rights at the visa interview. In a free market, workers would enter the country and find jobs in the same manner as U.S. workers cross states, which would deny unscrupulous recruiters their power. Even without that ideal, it remains true that the more visas are available, the greater the bargaining power of the workers become. If visas are easy to come by, then workers will be less willing to pay or not be willing to pay as much.

Conclusion

I have asked NBC to correct its report with respect to the claim that 5,000 H-2A workers were cheated out of their wages in 2019, since it is incorrect, but so far no correction has come. It would have been nice if they had quoted at least one worker supportive of the program (there are hundreds of thousands) or quoted a proponent of the program that wasnt an employer (which may have caught some of the issues above). Another bit of missing context is the fact that entirely aside from the H-2A program, some employers in every industry sometimes lie and defraud U.S. workers too. They fail to pay them what they are owed. The only way to reach zero abuse is to stop all hiring, which is obviously not a realistic proposal. Instead, we need to empower workers to understand and stand up for their rights.

More here:
Problems and Insights within NBC's Report on H-2A Abuses - Cato Institute

On June 23rd, Donald Trump visited Arizona to celebrate the completion of two hundred miles of wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. That the number of coronavirus cases in the state had reached an all-time high did not stop Trump from focussing on the structure, hailing it as great, powerful, and really foolproof. His visit to Arizona, a key battleground state in the 2020 election, gave him an opportunity to showcase a formidable campaign promise that he has neither fulfilled nor got Mexico to pay for. Before surveying the thirty-foot-tall fence in San Luis, where a silver plaque awaited his signature, Trump spoke at a border-security roundtable. He boasted of his success in preventing immigrants, drugs, crimes, and even the coronavirus from reaching the U.S.s southern border. For that, Trump had an unlikely ally to thank. I want to thank the President of Mexico, he said. Hes really a great guy. I think hell be coming into Washington pretty soon.

Two weeks later, President Andrs Manuel Lpez Obrador boarded a commercial flight en route to the U.S. capital. His decision to visit Trump in the midst of a pandemic and a fraught American election spurred criticism on both sides of the border. Many argued that Trump could reap political benefits from the meeting at a time when he is hoping to pull Latino voters away from Joe Biden, especially in battleground states he must win in 2020, such as Arizona, Florida, and Texas. While Trumps polling averages have plummeted among other groups, his support among Latinos has remained steady. He is still losing among these voters by a wide marginmore than thirty percentage pointsbut he also appears to be benefitting from Bidens inability to generate enthusiasm for his candidacy in the community. Recent polls show that less than sixty per cent of the Latino electorate would vote for Bidena far lower number than the seventy-one per cent who voted for Obama in 2012 and the sixty-six per cent who voted for Clinton in 2016.

During two tightly scripted public appearances, where no questions from the press were permitted, Lpez Obrador flaunted his friendship with Trump, showering him with adulation and praising his treatment of Mexico. Im here to express to the people of the United States that their President has behaved toward us with kindness and respect. He has treated us as we are: a dignified country, Lpez Obrador, who is commonly known by his initials, AMLO, said. He left Washington politically unscathed at home because Trump, in a rare display of discipline, made no virulent remarks against Mexico. Mexican-Americans uplift our communities, Trump declared. They strengthen our churches and enrich every feature of national life. They are hardworking, incredible people.

In Trumpian fashion, the President took full political advantage of the visit. Hours after the two leaders spoke in the Rose Garden, Trump tweeted a campaign-style video of Lpez Obrador hailing him and his record. Snippets from Trumps remarks, mixed with triumphant music, narrated the footage. Today we celebrate the historic victory we achieved together just days ago, when NAFTA was officially terminated and replaced with a brand-new, beautiful U.S.M.C.A., Trump says as a picture of the trade deal, featuring his signature in oversized letters, appears on the screen. Earlier in the day, when Biden reminded his followers on Twitter that Trump launched his 2016 campaign by calling Mexicans rapists, the proxy account @EquipoTrump responded that Trump has actually delivered for our community. Thats why President Lpez Obrador said today that @realDonaldTrump has treated Mexicans with understanding and respect. Days later, Axios reported that the Trump campaign planned to spend millions on Spanish-language ads featuring Lpez Obradors remarks at the White House.

Equipo Trump is the official bilingual Twitter account of the Presidents relection campaign. In recent days, the account tweeted a warning in Spanish that a possible Joe Biden Vice-Presidential pick, Karen Bass, would adopt policies of appeasement toward the Venezuelan ruler, Nicols Maduro, and Cubas leader, Ral Castro. It also wished Peruvians a happy Independence Day. Unlike in 2016, the Trump campaign appears to be actively trying to expand Trumps base of support among Latinos. The effort is being shepherded by Vice-President Mike Pences nephew, John Pence, a corporate lawyer in his thirties who has said that he discovered the perils of socialism while studying abroad in Argentina and teaching English in Nicaragua. It has a Latino advisory board comprising twenty-two members, ranging from Hispanic business leaders to evangelical pastors. And, since the onset of the pandemic, the campaign has been holding frequent online events and sending out e-mails highlighting issues that appeal to conservative Hispanics, warning of The Radical Lefts desire to achieve unlimited abortions through Biden or its attempt to cancel Goya Foods.

Still, the campaign, in many respects, is closely following Trumps aggressive 2016 playbook. Last fall, when Biden launched an initiative called Todos con Biden (All with Biden), Trumps team rushed to buy the Web domain. To date, anyone visiting the site todosconbiden.com will find a photograph of the Vice-President looking downward, with his arms crossed, and an announcement, in both English and Spanish: Oops, Joe forgot about Latinos. A link at the bottom of the page, which reads Vamos (Lets Go), redirects visitors to the Latinos for Trump Web page. Weve seen that the Trump campaign has no compunction when it comes to weaponizing any statements of support for their own political purposes, Fernand Amandi, a Democratic strategist and pollster, told me. If the campaign thinks its enough to propel them to be able to win the Hispanic vote on the basis of AMLOs comments, theyre sorely mistaken. If their aim is to try to use these comments to increase support from Hispanic voters on the margins, it might very well have that effect.

Trump, though, also faces enormous political challenges in increasing his support among Latinos. His stance on immigration, and particularly his Administrations policy of separating migrant children from their families, is widely unpopular in the community. As the pandemic continues, Trumps claims of a thriving economy, which once resonated strongly among Latino men, are no longer crediblethe unemployment rate for Hispanics currently stands at more than sixteen per cent. Furthermore, Latinos have caught and died from the coronavirus at an outsized ratethe research group Latino Decisions recently reported that, in a majority of states, Hispanics are more than twice as likely as other Americans to contract the virus. All the while, the President has continued his long-running practice of making false claims about undocumented immigrants and playing on racial fears as a way to scare voters into supporting him. On June 28th, he tweeted, Corrupt Joe Biden has confirmed that he would give UNLIMITED Healthcare to Illegal Immigrants. This would break our system and bring millions of people to the USA.

To Trumps opponents, this all begs the question of why Lpez Obrador would allow himself to be so overtly used. After the Rose Garden address, Representative Ral Grijalva, an Arizona Democrat and the son of a Mexican immigrant, derided Lpez Obrador as nothing more than Trumps collaborator. In 2018, Lpez Obrador ran for office on a pledge to counter Trumps vitriol and restore the dignity of Mexico. The previous year, within months of Trumps inauguration, he had filed a complaint at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, in Washington, D.C., denouncing the Administrations border wall and its immigration policy. He also published a book, Oye, Trump (Listen Up, Trump), in which he declared that Trump and his advisers speak of Mexicans the way Hitler and the Nazis referred to the Jews, just before undertaking the infamous persecution and the abominable extermination.

Read more from the original source:
Equipo Trump: The Presidents Brazen Attempt to Win Over Latino Voters - The New Yorker

Since 2017, more than 1 million Central Americans have made their way to the U.S. southwestern border, triggering a disjointed but brutal crackdown by the administration of President Donald Trump. Although the combination of tighter border controls and the coronavirus has reduced these flows, they will resume when the COVID-19 lockdowns lift.

Only this time, Mexicans are likely to join the exodus. The resulting tensions could destabilize one of the worlds most tightly woven bilateral relationships, jeopardizing cooperation on everything from counternarcotics to water rights and the prosperity that closer ties have underpinned on both sides of the border.

Mexican migration to the U.S. peaked at the turn of the last century. At the end of the 1990s and early 2000s, hundreds of thousands of Mexicans moved north every year, many evading border sentries along the way. They fanned out across the nation, drawn to enclaves in California, Texas, Illinois and Arizona, but also to newer locations: Colorado, Florida, Georgia and Idaho. And many switched from seasonal work in the fields to more permanent year-round jobs in child care, landscaping, hotels and car services.

By the mid-2000s, the exodus slowed. For the past 15 years, more Mexicans have left the U.S. than come each year. This shift reflects economic progress at home, not least an end to the financial booms and busts of the 1980s and 1990s. Beefed-up enforcement at the U.S. border has also discouraged circular migration, with workers now rarely returning home for a few months between planting seasons.

Better schooling also helped. With the number of years of education nearly doubling since 1990, the average Mexican 16-year-old is in class, not the workforce. So have changing demographics: Starting in the 1980s Mexican families have had fewer kids, now averaging just over two per household. Compared with the 1990s, fewer Mexicans are turning 18 every year and searching for work either at home or in the U.S.

But in place of Mexicans came a swelling wave of Central Americans, driven by poverty, violence and devastating droughts due to climate change. The majority have been women and children, pulled, too, by the presence of family, friends and economic ties in the U.S.

The Trump administration has made aggressive efforts to stop them. It changed asylum rules, attempting to disqualify those fleeing gang or domestic violence, to limit the right to apply to those arriving at official border crossings, and to otherwise make it more difficult to seek protection. Those families who did enter the U.S. system were often subjected to inhumane living conditions, with children separated from parents and placed in detention pens resembling cages.

The U.S. leaned hard on Central American governments to stop these would-be migrants from leaving in the first place. Under pressure, Mexico also acquiesced to holding tens of thousands of Central Americans for months or more as they waited to have their claims heard in U.S. immigration courts.

The number of Central American migrants did decline. In the start of 2020, flows fell almost by half compared with the year before. With COVID-19 restrictions, the movement nearly ceased in April and May. Yet the reasons pushing families to leave havent changed. Instead, the pandemic is making them all the worse. And not just in Central America, but also in Mexico.

The biggest factor driving a resurgence of Mexicans north is economic desperation: Mexicos economy is expected to shrink by more than 10% this year. Even before the pandemic, both public and private investment had fallen to historic lows. Since then more than 12 million Mexicans have lost their livelihoods, as the government is doing little to keep companies going or preserve jobs. And in addition to the consequences of President Andres Manuel Lpez Obradors misguided economic policies, his reversal of education reforms has made it less important and likely that students will stay in school. Those who do will be less likely to learn the skills needed in a 21st-century Mexican economy.

Rising violence is also driving hundreds of thousands of Mexicans from their homes and communities. Last year homicides topped 34,000. The first half of 2020 has been even more deadly.

As these factors push Mexicans to leave, economic and familial ties pull them north. Mexicans represent the biggest migrant population in the U.S. (the majority here legally). Even with a soft U.S. economy, these fellow citizens can provide a contact, a first place to stay and a lead on a job for future aspiring migrants.

If the past is any guide, many more Mexicans will head north. Their numbers are already ticking up: Since January, more Mexicans than Central Americans have been apprehended at the border.

The Trump administrations methods to discourage Central Americans wont work with Mexico. Lopez Obrador and his National Guard arent able to stop citizens who have a constitutional right to leave their country. Mexican migrants are less likely to be asylum-seekers (even as many flee incredible violence), so the rule changes wont dissuade their journeys. And Mexicans are also more likely to succeed in making it into the U.S.; the nations proximity means that those who have been deported can easily try their luck again.

A migration surge could be a game changer for U.S. politics and policy. On the foreign policy side, it could rupture the bonhomie between Lopez Obrador and Trump, as migration becomes a defining electoral campaign issue. Mexicos president has so far ignored or endured U.S. slights, but a full frontal attack on his citizens would be harder to take given his long-standing (and popular) defense of Mexican migrants.

For the U.S. presidential race, a surge in Mexican migration would mobilize both sides. It would provide anti-immigrant fodder that Trump could use to feed his base. But his tirades could also motivate more of the tens of millions of Mexican Americans, weary of the ugliness directed at them by association, to turn out to vote. With Latinos representing 13% of the electorate, Democrats could benefit.

The hardest part will come later. Whoever wins in November wont have the policy tools to manage this migration effectively or humanely. Outdated laws and an already strained immigration system provide little recourse, and political polarization makes it all the harder to fix them. Mexican migration could easily become the new administrations first big crisis.

Shannon ONeil is a senior fellow for Latin America Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

Link:
OPINION EXCHANGE | Mexico's misery, and a resurgence of illegal immigration, could be any new administration's first crisis. - Minneapolis Star...