Invoking well-known undocumented immigrant and Pulitzer Prize winner Jose Antonio Vargas who came to the U.S. as a child, the cartoon wonders about what could be.
Source: www.buzzfeed.com
I will start asking people, “What kind of refugee was your family?”
More migrants’ lives could be saved with a few inexpensive adjustments in water availability, rescue beacons, and search-and-rescue capability. A directive by the Department of Homeland Security for the Border Patrol to establish water drums, particularly alongside rescue beacons, would be an important step to avoid preventable deaths on U.S. soil. Increasing the number of rescue beacons, as well as providing additional funds to expand Border Patrol Search, Trauma, and Rescue Unit teams (BORSTAR), particularly in southwest border sectors with high numbers of migrant deaths, could also help to assist migrants in distress.
Many of the recovered remains of migrants, which now number in the thousands, are unidentified. Local officials in Brooks County, Texas, estimate that the costs of dealing with the unidentified dead, including mortician fees and autopsies, amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars each year. No unified procedure exists to process remains and DNA samples of bodies found in the border region. Many remains have not had their DNA sampled, and there has been no consolidated effort to match the DNA of unidentified remains with family members searching for missing loved ones.
Measures such as the following would greatly contribute to identifying these remains and provide answers to family members of missing migrants about the whereabouts of their loved ones:
Immigration reform legislation currently before the U.S. Senate (S. 744) includes billions of dollars in new funding for border security. It makes no mention, however, of steps to prevent needless deaths of migrants on U.S. soil, or to help cash-strapped counties identify the dead. The current bill offers an important legislative opportunity to stem the rise of this alarming human tragedy on the U.S. side of the border.
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Source: www.wola.org
Texas recently sent 1000 National Guard to the border. That should prevent some deaths. But we need to prevent all the deaths.
Immigration policy is leading to broken families, children in crisis and border deaths.
Since border security has increased, deaths of (im)migrants and refugees has escalated.
The data: This year, an average of 31,410 captives were held daily in U.S. detention facilities. In 2012, 478,000 foreign nationals were detained — an all-time high. Officially, 2013 saw the second-highest number of migrant remains found on the U.S.-Mexico border.
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Source: www.washingtonpost.com
HARLINGEN, Texas — The first time her aunt in Mexico took her out at night, the young teenager was told they were headed to a party. It was no party. “It was trafficking people, drug dealers,” she recalled. “I just saw a lot of guys. They had guns. I was in shock. I was shaking. The more I was saying no, the more they treated me badly.”
Source: www.bostonglobe.com
Gil Kerlikowske, head of Customs and Border Protection, tells NPR that he is reviewing scores of incidents. “We need to be better at admitting when we’re wrong or where we’ve made a mistake,” he says.
Source: www.npr.org
CNN’s Miguel Marquez explains the difference between those immigrating to the US and those seeking refuge.
Source: www.cnn.com
Republicans always claim America is the best nation on Earth; to their chagrin, child refugees fleeing violence and poverty in Latin America are listening.
Source: www.hulu.com
Mr. Obama called the surge in children from Central America an “actual humanitarian crisis on the border,” and said it “only underscores the need to drop the politics and fix our immigration system once and for all.”
Source: www.nytimes.com
Before dying of pneumonia at a Guatemala hospital in late May, the recently deported 21-year-old Gustavo Antonio Vásquez Chaj told his family that the U.S. Border Patrol had kept him, at some point, wet, stripped of a layer of clothing, and in a cold cell during several days in detention.
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The tragic journey of Vásquez Chaj and Tucux Chiché is one story among many of how harmful U.S. political and economic policies in Latin America violently intersect with a hardening and brutal system of U.S. immigration control. In their case, the young men’s voyage was first and foremost one of necessity rather than of choice. Vásquez Chaj and Tucux Chiché were economic migrants fleeing a country of wreck and ruin that decades of harmful U.S. foreign and economic policies have helped to bring about.
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It is indisputable that the United States shares significant responsibility for the genocide of tens of thousands of Guatemalans—mainly indigenous Mayans, including members of Gustavo and Maximiliano’s community, who comprised a majority of the (at least) 150,000 killed in the 1980s alone.
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Source: nacla.org
Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., says the “border is secure,” and he warns against demonizing the undocumented children arriving at the U.S. from Central America.
Source: www.cbsnews.com
Does anyone think that Central American has been manipulated in order to provide a new source of low cost labor to the U.S.?
How is it that Central American countries used to be livable but now are too dangerous to live in?
What international politics have cause this chaos?