Compassionate Migration and Regional Policy in the Americas

Frontmatter

1. Introduction

Abstract

Based on the pressing need for more compassionate and human rights-based approaches to immigration, the introduction summarizes the key points of this volume that address the political, legal, and related hardships that irregular migrants confront in the Americas. Chapters 2–6 examine the history of today’s U.S. closed-door policies that exclude migration from the South. Chapters 7–13 examine the relationships between Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and the state as they engage in domestic and regional dialogues to prevent human rights abuses of migrant workers, transmigrants, irregular migrants, and refugees. Chapters 14–19 tackle the debates on how compassion is defined and practiced. They also examine how compassion can become policy and from where the push for compassionate migration actions and policies comes. Finally, the authors propose and articulate their own conceptualization of compassionate migration.

Steven W. Bender, William F. Arrocha

2. So Far From Compassion: The U.S.-Centric and Exclusionary Framework of Current and Past Immigration Policy

Abstract

Before examining the possibilities and sources for compassionate regional migration policy in later chapters, in the first set of chapters we lay the historical foundation of restrictive U.S. immigration law and its administration, both nationally and subnationally. In sum, U.S. immigration law has been patchwork, inconsistent, arbitrary, and demonstrably steeped in racism from at least the late nineteenth century forward.

Steven W. Bender

3. The Power of Exclusion: Congress, Courts, and the Plenary Power

Abstract

This chapter explores three important themes in constitutional immigration law. First, as creators and executors of U.S. immigration policy, Congress and the President have virtually limitless power over designating who may enter the country, under what terms, and when they must leave. Second, this plenary power over immigration law was created by a complicit U.S. Supreme Court and has never been constitutionally repudiated. The plenary power doctrine thus enjoyed the Court’s imprimatur, guaranteeing considerable political branch latitude even if laws resulted in systemic exclusion based on invidious criteria like race or national origin. Third, notwithstanding this historical deference to the political branches, the Court has provided an occasional yet essential check on legislative and executive overreaching.

Victor C. Romero

4. The Subnational Response: Local Intervention in Immigration Policy and Enforcement

Abstract

This chapter examines the history of promise and ultimately failure by the U.S. federal, state, and local governments to develop and implement compassionate immigration policies within their boundaries and the new opportunities for localized compassion presented by the current humanitarian crisis of transmigrant women and unaccompanied youth. The federal government’s inaction has, in part, led to an increase in xenophobic sentiments which caused the proliferation of varied state and local legislation targeting Latina/o immigrants. This chapter ultimately addresses how we can learn from the proliferation of state and local immigration laws to move toward developing compassionate migration policies that acknowledge the complex realities of migration while developing a form of cooperative federalism.

Karla McKanders

5. Federal Regulatory Policymaking and Enforcement of Immigration Law

Abstract

Since the executive branch is charged with the responsibility to enforce immigration laws, the executive has vast discretionary authority to enforce those laws in a manner that is comparable to Congress’s plenary power over immigration legislation. The basis for federal policymaking on enforcement—through executive action, prosecutorial discretion, or deferred action—is the recognition that the executive is the “one voice” that decides the appropriateness of whether a particular noncitizen should be subject to removal or deportation. One example is the Deferred Action Program for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). Whether the president’s broad deferred action programs are constitutional was left unanswered by a deadlocked Supreme Court in United States v. Texas (2016), leaving the precise answer to the question of the president’s authority for a later day.

Bill Ong Hing

6. Short-Hoeing the Long Row of Bondage: From Braceros to Compassionate Farm Worker Migration

Abstract

This chapter explores the history of the exploitation of farm workers in the U.S., beginning with the infamous bracero program and continuing through the more recently enacted H-2 guest worker programs. It recounts the many cases of abuse of human rights associated with these programs and describes the institutionalized slavery that they reflect. Although partial solutions have been adopted, this chapter proposes more systemic and effective reforms that could be accomplished through a bilateral agreement with Mexico as well as by legislation that would bring the U.S. more closely in line with a policy of compassionate migration for farm workers.

Gilbert Paul Carrasco

7. Exploring New Spaces for Dialogue and Regional Cooperation in the Americas to Protect Migrants’ Human Rights

Abstract

Although the U.S. is still the largest migration receiving country in the Americas with the strongest pull factors, migration processes are more complex and diverse than the perceived unidirectional South-North flows. As the authors in Chapters 8–13 argue, it is imperative that all states in the Americas come together in a coordinated effort with organized civil society, and the existing regional institutions, to work toward the development of new spaces for dialogue and regional cooperation to protect migrants’ dignity as well as their fundamental human rights.

William F. Arrocha

8. The Need for a Compassionate Migration Regime for North and Central America: Restoring and Extending Universal Human Rights to Migrant Workers, Their Families, and “Survival Migrants”

Abstract

This chapter considers that today’s flows of mixed migration in the Americas, particularly in North and Central America, demand a shift from the criminalization and securitization of migration to a more compassionate approach. This chapter also proposes that the present migration flows should be addressed within existing regional forums, such as the Regional Conference on Migration (RCM) that includes strong bridges with civil society organizations (CSOs). Furthermore, the International Convention on the Protection of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families (ICMW) needs to be at the center stage of any regional dialogue that can evolve into a compassionate regional regime for migration.

William F. Arrocha

9. The Challenges and Potential for a Universal Human Rights Regime to Manage Migration in the Americas

Abstract

This chapter provides answers to nations’ objections to ratification of the International Convention on Migrant and Worker Rights and offers lessons for the future for a more transformative vision of migrant rights. This vision may not occur, if at all, in the traditional human rights regime but rather in the context of a growing vision of migration as an inherent part of a globalized economy. While this trend is not inherently bad, there is reason for some caution. Without a strong human rights framework, economic and other concerns such as national security are likely to obfuscate the human dignity dimensions of the migration phenomena.

Raquel Aldana

10. The Response of Government and Organized Civil Society to the Nightmare of U.S. Deportations of Mexican Migrant Women

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the economic and emotional costs suffered by Mexican women who are deported from the U.S. It emphasizes the structural gender violence that they experience during migration, including the splitting of families. The chapter also offers a glance into the complex relationships that Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) have established with Mexican state agencies to facilitate the reintegration of women, families, and children during and after their repatriation. Finally, it presents some successes and challenges that CSOs have had in persuading the Mexican state to put forward laws and policies that ensure the well-being and dignity of women, their families, and children once they return to Mexico.

Ana Stern Leuchter

11. Visible and Invisible: Undocumented Migrants in Transit Through Mexico

Abstract

This chapter describes the egregious human rights abuses that migrants in transit through Mexico suffer at the hands of gangs, narcos, abusive state authorities, and other social predators. Through statistics and concise descriptions of the types of human rights violations committed in Mexico’s detention stations, this chapter presents the paradoxes of a state that promotes human rights-based immigration policies yet prioritizes detentions and deportations. The chapter offers a concise review of Mexico’s immigration policies since the 1980s. It concludes that the magnitude of today’s flows of migrants and refugees crossing Mexico has reached a breaking point that demands further regional cooperation.

Rodolfo Casillas

12. Challenges in Building Institutions to Protect Transmigrants’ Human Rights: The Mexican Case

Abstract

The chapter describes the institutional efforts to provide protection mechanisms to transmigrants in Mexico. It argues that these institutions have had limited impact in curbing abuses against transmigrants because they engage in a top-down, fragmented, and macro-natured approach. In light of this, it proposes to redress the gap between the desire to provide protection to transmigrants, and the actual delivery of those protections, by increasing transmigrants’ legal representation rates. Doing so will increase adherence and use of the current laws by the institutions, and a means to identify ways to improve the existing systems of protection.

Evelyn Cruz

13. Toward a More Compassionate Regional Migration Regime in South America

Abstract

This chapter describes the ongoing regional dialogue within the South American Common Market (MERCOSUR), the Andean Community (CAN), and the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) to prevent human rights abuses suffered by migrants seeking new labor markets as a result of a deeper, yet not always equal regional integration. This chapter also focuses on the gains and challenges that lie ahead to ensure that the management of intra-regional migration is based on a compassionate regime founded on the respect for the human rights of all migrants. In contrast to its northern neighbors, the ultimate goal in the Southern Hemisphere is to embrace a “South American citizenship.”

Juan Artola

14. Envisioning Compassionate Migration: From Canada to Desert Trails and the Cities in Between

Abstract

The previous chapters established the need for compassionate migration policy, set the context of how and why it has not occurred in the U.S., and articulated the tragic human costs and other consequences within and beyond the U.S. from ongoing failures to protect human rights and promote human dignity. This final set of chapters takes up the vexing questions of how and in which venues to enact and implement compassionate migration, and from where the push for it might or must come.

Steven W. Bender

15. Is Canada a Model for Compassionate Migration Policy?

Abstract

Humanitarianism, multiculturalism, and openness to immigration are considered trademark features of Canada’s national identity. While this mythology informs the direction of immigration policy, other factors such as economic imperatives and divided public opinion on immigration create opposite pressures for a more selective approach prioritizing Canada’s interests over humanitarian needs of others. In light of projected need to increase annual newcomer intake from 250,000 to over 400,000 by 2030, issues of immigration policy are likely to enter the forefront of public debates and Canada will have to make some challenging decisions about the way it balances its economic and humanitarian objectives.

Sasha Baglay

16. The Compassion of “Compassionate Migration”

Abstract

“Compassionate migration” carries social significance and implies moral criteria. This practical notion should provide means to review, envision, and develop laws, policies, and practices for how we engage noncitizens and build political community within wider human relations. Yet “compassion” is an elastic concept; competing discourses and practices reveal conflicting meanings, assumptions, and orientations. “Compassionate migration” needs criteria upon which its “compassion” is evaluated, including how this notion evolves and what practical results it inspires—such as social cohesion, immigrant integration, strengthened community, and societal transformation. Bookending the chapter’s conceptually driven discussion are two recent, and opposite, case studies in the American immigration debate: Donald Trump’s odd rhetoric of “compassion” and Hazleton, Pennsylvania’s normative shift from a locus of “enmification” toward a community of “Thanksmas.”

John Shuford

17. Social Readiness: Care Ethics and Migration

Abstract

This chapter applies the lens of care ethics to suggest an alternative moral consideration for issues of migration. Traditional ethical approaches address rules, policies, and rights and although these are important moral markers for society, they do not account for relationships and dispositions. This discussion investigates a society’s ethical readiness to welcome and care for migrants. Ethical readiness refers to the capacity to engage in responsive caring including cognitive and emotional habits such as empathetic imagination, willingness to learn, and ability to take action. The chapter introduces care ethics emphasizing its epistemic and skill-based dimensions and develops a notion of social readiness to care applied to issues of migration in service of a culture of hospitality.

Maurice Hamington

18. The Role of Arizona Desert Humanitarians in Compassionate Migration

Abstract

Arizona desert humanitarians cultivate compassionate migration by working to bring unauthorized migrants, the discursive systems that dehumanize them, and the inhumane conditions of their migration out of the shadows. An examination of desert “counter-conducts” includes nonlinguistic modes of advancing compassionate migration inherent in Tucson Samaritan photography and in artwork fashioned from items collected walking migrant trails. Ultimately, hiking desert trails to provide migrants life-saving water serves a transformative function in allowing for the evolution of a conscious connection and community that reaches across national borders.

Rebecca A. Fowler

19. Sourcing Compassionate Migration Policies: Searching for Venues of Humanity

Abstract

Building on the demonstrated need for compassionate migration policy detailed in the rest of this volume and the sources of compassion suggested in Chapters 16–18, this concluding chapter summarizes and examines the suitable venues and blueprints of compassionate migration policy. These range from traditional immigration policymaking venues like the U.S. Congress to new interventions in compassion such as desert Samaritans. This chapter briefly surveys the landscape of the potential immigration venues in the hopeful search for compassion and sites of humanity in migration policy for the Americas, and supplies a detailed blueprint for those local governments, U.S. states, and civil society organizations (CSOs) willing to embrace and practice compassionate migration policy at the subnational level.

Steven W. Bender

Backmatter