Central American refugees are fleeing terror, qualify for sanctuary

Claims that Central American refugees are coming northward seeking jobs, not sanctuary, are misleading. Those refugees face political, economic, religious, and criminal terror that drives them, mostly women and children, to walk thousands of miles to apply for asylum in the United States. They, too, are making, an arduous journey, looking for a life to rebuild in a safe, free environment. They, too, never wanted to leave their homes but were given little choice.

Like Eastern European Jews, many other Europeans were driven out by severe forms of terror and dispossession over the 19th and 20th centuries. For example, my Danish grandfather’s family was dispossessed of their farm in Danish Schleswig when the Germans marched in and drove out all ethnic Danes. His family moved north into the Danish Jutland peninsula, but no farmland was available. He turned to the trades and become a cabinetmaker. Just as he finished his journeymanship, manufactured furniture came along and destroyed his occupation. He took a one-way free passage to the U.S. to work on the railroads in southern Minnesota. He was a victim of both terror and economic change.

Many of those Jews who reached the U.S. were economic migrants as much as any other group of immigrants. They needed jobs, and took up their European trades, such as tailoring and peddling, because schooling and professional jobs were often closed to them. Some became gangsters. Many others worked hard to start businesses and form labor unions.

Thanks to American investigative reporters, we know a lot about recent refugees from Central America. The Washington Office on Latin America reports that El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras are facing unparalleled levels of violent crime, with El Salvador and Honduras ranking among the top five most violent countries in the world. In their report, Maureen Meyer and Elyssa Pachico quote former Trump White House Chief of State John Kelley: “The mass migration from Central America to the U.S.-Mexico border primarily consists of parents who are trying to save their children.”

Meyer and Pachico also document how U.S. immigration officials and courts have “failed to recognize circumstances in which large numbers of people are legitimately seeking political asylum, and thus have contributed to humanitarian tragedies … From turning back German Jewish refugees in the late 1930s, to denying asylum status to Haitians fleeing the Duvalier dictatorship, to opposing the asylum claims of Salvadorans fleeing political violence in the 1980s, successive administrations have repeatedly underestimated the seriousness of human rights abuses, with political calculations overtaking humanitarian concerns.”

Sofia Martinez writes an in-depth review of Central American migrants in “The Atlantic,” and argues that today’s migrant flow is different. “Poverty has driven many previous waves of migrants from their homes. What’s new now is the rise of the gangs.” She details the terror: “The killing of a loved one. An attempt at gang recruitment. A rape. Harassment by a police officer. A death threat over an outstanding extortion payment … Confiscation of houses … When I have asked displaced people over the past few months if U.S. migration policies deter them from fleeing, they usually reply that the prospect of being caught by U.S. migration officials makes them anxious, but that ‘there is no scarier place’ than their home countries.”

Our economy has benefited from Latin American immigration over the past half-century. Latinos have been willing to perform the most arduous jobs: farmwork, low-skilled (and low-pay) jobs in meatpacking and apparel, housekeeping, home health care, and more. Some have returned home to Mexico and elsewhere to start local businesses with their earnings. Many others have worked their way into our middle class, learning English (just as our European ancestors did), building churches, enriching our music and arts, and participating in elections.

The demand for hardworking low-wage workers is quite robust. Perhaps you have read about the Wisconsin dairy farmers who are losing their Latino milkhands. Or the southern Minnesota meatpacking plants who cannot find non-migrants willing to working in squalid circumstances for low wages. People who perform these jobs spend their incomes locally, benefiting businesses and higher income workers.

On both humanitarian and economic grounds, we should welcome Central American immigrants seeking asylum in America.

Ann Markusen is an economist and professor emerita at University of Minnesota. A Pine Knot board member, she lives in Red Clover Township north of Cromwell with her husband, Rod Walli.

FYI

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Check out these links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish-American_organized_crime

https://www.wola.org/analysis/fact-sheet-united-states-immigration-central-american-asylum-seekers

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/06/central-america-border-immigration/563744