CONNECTICUT’S PAST HISTORY and THE PRESENT NEED: A Call for a Response to the Need for Housing for the Central American Children at the U.S. Border

Last week I got to thinkin'. . .Governor Malloy says that the Southbury facility is not adequate to the needs of the unaccompanied minors at our U.S. Border. There is what is being called “a humanitarian crisis” at the U.S. Border where over 52.000 children, mainly from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, have taken refuge from the violence in their countries.

While the media describes the situation, not much emphasis is placed on the causes. Since some of the causes are due to U.S. policy it would seem to be incumbent on the U.S. to offer a response.

No matter what the causes, this situation demands less talk and discussion and more action.

Each state, including Connecticut, is being asked to offer temporary housing for these children.

Connecticut, like other states, has a history of open-hearted response to humanitarian situations like the present one and the human resources to respond.

CONNECTICUT’S PAST HISTORY OF REFUGEE SERVICES

Has everybody forgotten? Well, now there's a group of immigrant activists who are calling attention to the past history of Connecticut regarding previous refugees.

According to a NY Times article in January 1990:

Today, 8,200 Southeast Asian refugees live in Connecticut, three-quarters of the total of 11,000 refugees who have settled in the state in the last 15 years, Mr. Nguyen said, citing statistics from the United States Office of Refugee Resettlement.

http://www.nytimes.com/1990/01/14/nyregion/for-refugees-from-southeast-asia-adapting-is-a-slow-road.html

Such is the track record of humanitarian response by Nutmeggers to a crisis resulting from U.S. Foreign Policy which many say led to a “pull out” from a ill-conceived war in South East Asia.

THE PRESENT SITUATION

Anyone aware of the news of the past few weeks has seen the reports:

So far this year, more than 52,000 children have been apprehended crossing the country's Southwest Border at the Rio Grande Valley, about twice the amount caught during the same time last year. Most of those children are coming from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, and many are fleeing violence in their home countries.

http://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-immigration-reforms-20140703,0,626802.story

Someone brought to my attention that, legally speaking, the unaccompanied minors have not been declared refugees as were the Southeast Asian "Boat People". Well. let's get them declared "refugees" if that's what it takes to get a response similar to the one in 1990.   

CAUSES

Here are some of the rational that witnesses to the validity of declaring these young people "refugees". 

What some term a “humanitarian crisis” others call a “foreign policy crisis” due to a flawed Latin American Foreign Policy.

In addition, the situation at the border results from the U.S. Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, legislation passed in 2008. According to a recent article in the NY Times:

It was one of the final pieces of legislation signed into law by President George W. Bush, a measure that passed without controversy, along with a pension bill and another one calling for national parks to be commemorated on quarters.

“This is a piece of legislation we’re very proud to sign,” a White House spokesman, Tony Fratto, told reporters on Dec. 23, 2008, as the president put his pen to the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008, named for a 19th-century British abolitionist. “This program has been very effective around the world in trying to stop trafficking in persons.”

Now the legislation, enacted quietly during the transition to the Obama administration, is at the root of the potentially calamitous flow of unaccompanied minors to the nation’s southern border.

More at: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/08/us/immigrant-surge-rooted-in-law-to-curb-child-trafficking.html?_r=0

As a result, some say, over the years since 2008, word of the consequences of the Wilburforce Act has reached Central America. And families, interpreting the law as “if we get our children into the U.S., they’ll be able to stay” thereby avoiding the consequences of the violence in their country, have been sending unaccompanied children to the U.S. Border in increasing numbers in recent years.

According to a Miami Herald report in March of this year:

A report issued in November by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) showed the sharp increase. Every fiscal year between 2004 and 2011, the report said, the number of children detained by immigration authorities averaged about 6,800. But apprehensions jumped to more than 13,000 children in fiscal year 2012 and to more than 24,000 in fiscal year 2013.

Up to 120 unaccompanied youths are arriving each day, and some estimates suggest that the annual number could soon reach 60,000, according to a Feb. 21 story in the Los Angeles Times.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/03/29/4027358/the-number-of-unaccompanied-minors.html#storylink=cpy

And reported estimates seem to indicate that the numbers will continue to grow:

Federal officials estimate as many as 90,000 children have entered the country illegally this year. Most are being held in Texas or elsewhere in the American Southwest. These sites cannot provide adequate care while the children, detained under the U.S. Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, are interviewed and processed for possible deportation back to their countries of origin.

More at: http://www.courant.com/news/politics/hc-ctm-ct-denies-illegal-migrant-children-southbur-20140715,0,114522.story

And

On March 7, 2013, President Obama signed the reauthorization of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA), restoring this country’s most important tool to combat human trafficking.  This reauthorization reasserts the U.S. Government’s leadership role in the fight against modern-day slavery and was passed as an amendment to the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act (VAWA), which strengthens protections for women threatened by domestic violence.

 See more at: http://www.endslaveryandtrafficking.org/trafficking-victims-protection-reauthorization-act#sthash.ROPy5i6B.dpuf

Now this year:

President Barack Obama is facing a clash with Democrats in Congress over proposals to water down a law intended to combat human trafficking in order to speed up the repatriation of unaccompanied children crossing the US southern border from Central America.

More at: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/14/obama-democrats-border-crisis-wilberforce-law-amendment

“VIOLENCE IN CENTRAL AMERICA”

The media tends to suggest that the cause of the migration is the push of the violence created by the criminal nature of the people of these countries. 

An SOA Watch bulletin sheds light on error of the manner of thinking and lays responsibility for the border crisis at the feet of U.S. Foreign Policy in Latin America:

The heartbreaking stories emanating from the immigration detention centers near the border have rightly been making the news. However the U.S. media has largely ignored the real lessons from the increasing number of Unaccompanied Minors being detained near the U.S. border. This “humanitarian crisis” has not been caused by the criminal nature of the people of Central America, irresponsible parenting, or the clichéd pursuit of the “American Dream”. Children and their families are coming to the U.S. to survive. At its root, they are too often trying to escape the devastating consequences of past and present U.S. foreign policy in the region.

The number of children attempting to cross the border into the United States has risen dramatically in the last five years: In FY 2009, roughly 6,000 unaccompanied minors were detained near the border. Credible estimates project that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will detain as many as 74,000 unaccompanied minors by the end of FY 2014. Approximately 28% of the children detained this year are from Honduras, 24% from Guatemala, and 21% from El Salvador.

U.S. SECURITY FUNDING IN CENTRAL AMERICA for “DRUG WAR”

Since 2008, the U.S. has intensified the “drug war”, spending over $800 million in security aid to Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador through the “Central American Regional Security Initiative” (CARSI) as well as millions more in bilateral military and police aid to each individual country. Yet Central America has faced increasing and extreme levels of violence during this time. The rule of law has deteriorated as a result of the battles between drug cartels as well as the corrupt and cartel-infiltrated state security forces. Extrajudicial executions, torture, violence against women, the targeting of grassroots and indigenous leaders, and other human rights violations have risen since the U.S. dramatically increased funding and training of Central American security forces, especially in post-coup Honduras.

By every conceivable measure, including the availability of drugs, mass incarceration, mass immigrant detention, and the ineffective use of tax money in the U.S.; homicide and violence rates, corruption, the overall power of drug cartels, economic activity, and migration rates in Central America – the "war on drugs" has been an abject and costly failure. For the sake of these detained children and their families, it is time for the U.S. government to take accountability for its past and current role in contributing to the root causes of migration from Central America

HONDURAS

The particularly severe increases in Honduran migration are a direct result of the June 28, 2009 SOA-graduate led coup, the abusive policies of the resulting Honduran regimes, and the shameful U.S. support for these corrupt governments that emerged after dubious elections in 2009 and 2013.

EL SALVADOR

Additional U.S. aid, even non-security aid for gang prevention, microcredit and other "economic development" programs, although well-meaning, amount to little more than putting a band-aid on a bullet wound. The U.S. should subscribe to the principle of "do no harm first" before attempting to solve the problems of others through increased military aid or small-scale economic development when the structural and political considerations of migratory root causes are far more determinative. For example, U.S. insistence on El Salvador opening up its new Family Agriculture Plan to huge agricultural multinationals like Monsanto in order to obtain Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) funding is not only outrageous, but more importantly, part of the problem.

More at: http://www.soaw.org/

POSSIBLE RESPONSES TO THE SITUATION

The resources for a response are the similar to those utilized in the Southeast Asian Refugee crisis: people of good will working together toward as solution.

CENSUS DATA QUICK FACTS

Among the total population of 3,596,080 in Connecticut [2013:http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/09000.html],

the 14.3 % of Connecticut population age 5 or older counted as Spanish-dominant population in the metropolitan areas of over 500,000 in Connecticut is 325,665. 

Source: U.S. Census Bureau 2010 American Community Survey Spanish-dominant population and proportion of total population for metropolitan areas with a total population 500,000 or more

Metropolitan area	Total population	Persons 5 or older	Spanish speakers 5 or older	% of Spanish-dominant speakers
Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk, CT MSA	918,714	861,668	118,034	13.7%
New Haven-Milford, CT MSA	862,989	814,466	95,392	11.7
Hartford-West Hartford-East Hartford, CT MSA	1,212,956	1,147,144	112,239	9.8%

Even extrapolating from that over age 5 demographic set, the number of adults in Connecticut whose language in Spanish reaches well over 2000 (the number of children the U.S. General Services Administration is seeking to resettle in Connecticut).  

The median income of the families in this population sampling may be low, and they may not have the means nor the space to house the children of Central America.

But, at the same time, families of more adequate means could offer housing to the children, and Spanish-speaking families could serve as a resource for language-interpretation for those families who would offer temporary shelter for the children.

The point of this is:

1.     There is what is being called “a humanitarian crisis” at the U.S. Border where over 52.000 children, mainly from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, have taken refuge from the violence in their countries.

2.     No matter what the causes, this situation demands less talk and discussion and more action.

3.     Each state, including Connecticut, is being asked to offer temporary housing for these children. It's heartening to see that the force of public opinion is forcing a rethinking of the ways Connecticut can respond to this need by considering using other State facilities for housing. 

4.     Connecticut, like other states, has a history of open-hearted response to humanitarian situations like the present one and the human resources to respond.