The migration of small groups of Mexicans and Central Americans has been an almost natural phenomenon of the second half of the 20th century: North American industry constantly needed labor. However, in 2017 the alarms went off when the first caravan left, from Honduras, with thousands of migrants in a single block. Now the caravans do not leave every year, but leave daily, from all corners of the world, especially Central America and the Caribbean, heading towards the United States.
It is already common to see in the parks of many cities in Central America, hundreds of migrants, without bathing, hungry, with their backpacks on their shoulders, quickly eating what they find cheapest, looking for taxis and buses to get to the nearest border and continue. his odyssey to the United States. Along the way they are often robbed, scammed, kidnapped and even murdered.
The immigration crisis at the borders of the United States has ceased to be an occasional phenomenon and has become a permanent problem. According to U.S. Customs and Border Enforcement (CBP), between 2021 and July 2023, Border Patrol agents apprehended 6,086,772 undocumented immigrants along the U.S.-Mexico border. Of that total, 5,580,146 were deported, that is, 91.2%. Many of them return and try to enter the United States again.
The crisis is of such magnitude that the Biden administration has had to apply the same policies as the Trump administration to contain the migratory hemorrhage. However, Biden’s strategy has a different component: he has chosen to grant temporary entry to workers, according to the labor needs of the United States. The “humanitarian parole” is a temporary work visa, which does not allow immigrant workers to have the right to permanent residence and therefore citizenship. It is a restrictive immigration reform in fact.
The migratory waves of hundreds of thousands of people who must pass through Mexico directly affect the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), a contradictory and unstable ally of the United States. Recently, AMLO convened a Summit of Presidents in Palenque, State of Chiapas, Mexico, attended by presidents of Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Panama and Venezuela, and a representation of the government of Belize, to discuss how to contain the migratory flow.
The participants in the Palenque Summit issued a Declaration on October 22, in which, among other things, they called for “unilateral coercive measures imposed on countries in the region (sanctions, blockades or terrorism lists) to be lifted.” , in a clear allusion to Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua (which by the way did not attend) with the illusion that these measures can stop the flow of migration from these countries.
In a pleading tone, they requested “(…) to rethink the international financial architecture of sovereign debt, in order to allow countries, particularly middle-income ones, to achieve higher levels of development, close social gaps and reduce the intention to migrate such such as the change from universal debt to food self-sufficiency, environmental services and climate action.”
They asked North American imperialism to loosen the financial noose that is suffocating the countries of the region, something unlikely.
But, the most important point was the one referring to “requesting destination countries to expand regular, orderly and safe migration routes with special emphasis on labor mobility and promoting the reintegration and return of temporary workers.”
Because they can no longer contain the migratory flow, they aligned themselves with Biden’s policy of granting temporary work visas, promoting mobility and return to their countries of origin.
In short, free zone workers can go to work in the United States, but return to their countries of origin. If this immigration policy becomes widespread, the result will be that temporary migrant workers will lower the real salary of North American workers, provoking a conflict with them.
As long as there is no work and decent wages in our countries, migration must be with full rights and not temporarily, without legal restrictions.
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Source Central American Socialist Party (PSOCA)
