Two recent massacres tell the story of human rights failures in Mexico. One massacre was committed by municipal police in Iguala, the second one by Mexican soldiers in Tlatlaya. Both occurred in areas teeming with crime, and activists have linked each one to a government increasingly powerless against drug cartels and violence.
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Source: mexicoinstitute.wordpress.com
By Matt Hanson
Introduction
In North America, and elsewhere around the world, for example in Mediterranean countries such as Greece and Italy, there is a growing antipathy for migrants. The United States and Canada are not alone in the increasing volume of political distaste for migrants. In the United States in particular, there is an inherent contradiction within this debate, and this crisis of asylum, as concerns the identification of migrants as invaders.
With unabated trends favoring economic globalization, such as the overshadowing precedence of international free trade agreements, wealthy nations have a greater responsibility to receive economic migrants, and equally, forced migrants fleeing life-threatening persecution. To deny this responsibility is to reject the foundations of humanity, and to delegitimize the standard of national boundaries as security zones. Instead, national boundaries fulfill their original purpose, militarized demarcations, where the history of an invasion has simply taken another form.
In other words, the misperception of migrants as invaders exposes the fundamental myth of the modern nation state as a cultural, social, political, or economic distinction. As is most apparent outside of North America and Europe, however within as well, cultural, social, political and economic phenomena observably transcend state boundaries, merging in varying forms transnationally. Similarly, all people, as such, are a part of the transnational social capital that exists in every nation individually, and collectively throughout the globe. The inequalities of the global marketplace are manifest in the story of the modern immigrant.
Immigrant is a very different term than migrant. With its special legal, political, social and cultural ramifications, immigration is a process whereby a foreigner resides permanently in a country other than that of their origin. Immigration also connotes official identification, as recognized by the country wherein one is immigrating. Whereas migration is a primordial concept, immigration entails the officialdoms of international law, and domestic policy.
Anti-immigration is the result of geopolitical insecurity, while deeply rooted in forms of racism steeped in multigenerational, and colonialist inequality.
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Source: unsettlingamerica.wordpress.com
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Grand Rapids, accuses Johnston, Iowa-based DuPont Pioneer and two recruiters of violating federal wage and migrant labor laws.
…allegations include poor housing, unsafe transportation to the fields and inadequate water.
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Source: www.usaonrace.com
In 2013 Alba Caceres sent back 48 bodies from South Texas. But it’s not the dead she worries about so much as the living
Source: www.theguardian.com
It’s not just a Texas migrant crisis.
Click through to see the map showing how many human remains were found in border states.
“A man brutally beaten by police in June after he surrendered and lay down on the ground is now at risk of being deported.
Police officers in Santa Ana, California, beat Edgar Vargas Arzate on June 20, according to surveillance video of the incident and interviews with Arzate’s attorney. Arzate, who has struggled with addiction and mental health issues, went to visit the house of a friend, apparently not realizing that the friend no longer lived there, according to his attorney, public defender Frank Bittar. The new residents saw Arzate mumbling incoherently outside their house and called police.
Arzate ran when he saw the officers, leading them on a roughly four-block chase before he surrendered in the front yard of a neighbor’s home, Bittar said. In the video, Arzate can be seen lying facedown on the ground. The officers then begin to savagely beat Arzate, punching, kicking and swinging a flashlight at him.
“He’s lucky he wasn’t put in a wheelchair,” Bittar told HuffPost.
Once he was taken into custody, Arzate was charged with assaulting a police officer. The charge was then enhanced to a higher-level felony when police accused him of having “personally inflicted great bodily injury” on one particular officer who claimed to have broken his hand, according to the charging document.
On Monday, Arzate, 27, who came to the U.S. without documentation as a teenager, was riding with family members to a preliminary hearing to face the charges. Suddenly, three unmarked cars pulled the family over and Arzate was quickly taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
“They stopped them and made everyone get out of the car and then arrested my brother,” said Araceli Vargas, Arzate’s younger sister. “Right now he’s under immigration hold and we’re just waiting on a bail so we can get him out of jail again. I don’t know what’s going to happen next, honestly.”
“My mom told me that the ICE agents made her feel less than human,” Vargas continued. “My dad was so disappointed in the system. My grandpa was so scared, he’s been in bed since. My aunt started crying. Nothing had happened since June, he was just living his normal life, but we have cameras here and we saw the cars that stopped my brother yesterday morning — it was a gray Chevy Impala — they didn’t have markings, but they had been spying on us. They passed by the house at least four times that morning, so they knew what they were doing. Why did they wait until we were leaving the house and going to court?””
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Source: www.huffingtonpost.com
“This humanitarian emergency requires, as a first urgent measure, these children be welcomed and protected,” Pope Francis said.
Source: thinkprogress.org
National controversy over a surge of Central American immigrants illegally crossing the U.S. border establishes a new battleground in Murrieta, California.
Source: www.cnn.com
People don’t even have sympathy for child refugees.
U.S. xenophobia is out of control.
The city of Murrieta has an animal shelter near by – but children in need – the community has no tolerance for children.
And it’s usually the offspring of immigrants themselves who want to block access to those in need.
“There are many so-called “allies” in the migrant rights struggle who support “comprehensive immigration reform” which furthers militarization of Indigenous lands.”
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See on www.indigenousaction.org
“Texas Border Region: The Southern Border Communities Coalition (SBCC) expresses deep concern over recent events involving Border Patrol agent Esteban Manzanares who is reported to have assaulted three Honduran women immigrants, left two for dead, and then killed himself. We urge that the victims be protected, regardless of immigration status and receive fair treatment as survivors.
The following are statements from SBCC members in Texas.
Astrid Dominguez, ACLU of Texas:
This incident is one more in a pattern of CBP abuses in our border communities. Last September, the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) released a report on Border Patrol use of force, which identified key problems with training. This followed revelations by the Government Accountability Office of significant incidence of misconduct within CBP. We demand that DHS conduct a thorough and transparent investigation of this incident, in parallel to independent review by external investigators and determine what policy and training enhancements are necessary.”
See on soboco.org
“Some Texas-based advocacy groups say the release of U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s use-of-force policy for Border Patrol agents is a positive step for transparency. But they add that more could be done.”
“On Friday, U.S. Border Patrol Chief Michael J. Fisher instructed field agents to avoid shooting at vehicles that are only fleeing the scene and to consider all available alternatives to firing their weapons when “projectiles” are hurled at agents, including rocks, a common weapon for would-be crossers caught attempting to enter the country illegally.”
“Agents shall not discharge firearms in response to thrown or hurled projectiles unless the agent has a reasonable belief based on the totality of the circumstances to include the size of nature of the projectiles that the subject of such force poses an imminent danger of death or serious injury,” Fisher wrote in his directive, which he said clarified “existing guidelines.”
See on www.texastribune.org
