Special Issue: The Summit of the Americas-Issues to Consider || International Migration as an Issue...

International Migration as an Issue on Today's Inter-American AgendaAuthor(s): Christopher MitchellSource: Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, Vol. 36, No. 3, Special Issue: TheSummit of the Americas-Issues to Consider (Autumn, 1994), pp. 93-110Published by: Center for Latin American Studies at the University of MiamiStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/166528 .

Accessed: 09/05/2014 13:16

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Miami is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserveand extend access to Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 195.78.108.140 on Fri, 9 May 2014 13:16:07 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=miami

http://www.jstor.org/stable/166528?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


International Migration as an Issue on Today's Inter-American Agenda

Christopher Mitchell

S a frequent concern both of governments and of the

public at large in Western Hemisphere nations, international

migration is now more prominent than at any time since 1980. The episodic flow of seaborne refugees from Haiti since 1991 has been a key factor in spurring the inter-American community to oppose Haiti's military rulers. The flotilla of rafts leaving Cuba since early August 1994 has engendered high-profile negotiations on migration between Washington and Havana. The stream of undocumented labor migrants from Mexico to the United States has regained momentum since the late 1980s and is encountering increased public criticism, especially in the western United States.

Underlying these instances of political tension is a strong, and only partially-met, demand for migration to the United States from parts of Latin America and the Caribbean on the one

hand, and a growing anxiety in the US to "control the nation's borders" on the other. Some Latin Americans suffering under

undemocratic, and at times cruel, governments, and some who

hope to earn wages three or four times higher than those that can be earned at home, are moved to try to enter the United States without visas, either as applicants for asylum or as undocumented workers. Within the United States, by contrast, both public policy and public opinion are now sharply restrictionist, irrespective of migrants' apparent motivations.

Christopher Mitchell is Professor of Politics and Director of the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at New York University. He is the editor of CHANGING PERSPECTIVES IN LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES (Stanford University Press, 1988) and of WESTERN HEMISPHERE IMMIGRATION AND UNITED STATES FOREIGN POLICY (Penn State Press, 1992).

93



94 JOURNAL OF INTERAMERICAN STUDIES AND WORLD AFFAIRS

Despite the current prominence of international migration as a Hemispheric issue, there are difficulties in making this social process the subject of political negotiations, even in a bilateral setting, much less in a multilateral framework. For a variety of reasons, which this essay will explore, the international population movement may not be addressed squarely and directly either by the sending and receiving states, nor by the inter-American community as a whole. Under these circumstances, events in the migration field may well trigger unanticipated diplomatic emergencies, and disagreements over migration issues left unresolved may spill over into other policy domains.

This essay will focus first on current migration issues in inter-American relations, emphasizing the US dealings with Haiti and Cuba about politically-motivated migrants and with Mexico on the subject of labor migration. It will then outline the obstacles to framing migration as a subject of international negotiation. After describing migration-based frictions that may influence (or erupt upon) inter-American relations, some suggestions will be advanced as to limited actions that Western Hemisphere governments might take, both individu- ally and collectively, to help defuse migration as a source of political tension.

CURRENT MIGRATION ISSUES

DURING the 1980s, migration to the United States from Latin America and the Caribbean increased notably. In

the fiscal years (FY) 1981 through (FY) 1990, some 3,458,287 legal immigrants were admitted from those regions, which represented an increase of 91% over the preceding decade (US- INS, 1993: 28). Between 1980 and 1990, in New York City alone, the Hispanic population grew by 27%: led by Salvadorans, whose numbers were up 280% from 1980; trailed by Dominicans, with an increase of 165%; who were closely followed by Mexicans, with a growth of 160% (NYC-Dept. of City Planning,



MITCHELL: INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION

1994). A major factor motivating these flows, of course, was the dramatically higher standard of living in the United States. In 1990, the United States ranked sixth - out of 173 nations in the world - on the aggregate Human Development Index developed by the United Nations (UN). By contrast, the major sending states of migrants in the Western Hemisphere ranked as follows: Mexico, in 53rd place; Colombia, 61st place; Jamaica, 69th; Cuba, 75th; the Dominican Republic, 97th, and Haiti, 137th (UN Development Program, 1993: Table 1). Within the US economy, demand for immigrant labor grew in the areas of agriculture, of industry, and in services during the 1980s.

In the Americas, however, specific flows of northward migration have their origins in a host of historical and social circumstances, as well as from a broad range of "push-pull" factors. Past public policies, the existence or absence of established national migrant communities within the United States, in addition to the US Cold War foreign policies, have all played a part. For example, the present pattern of undocumented migration from Mexico stems from US policies that began in 1942; the Mexican regions that supplied the majority of workers in the Bracero Program, initiated in that year, still remain the principal states-of-origin for Mexican labor migrants to the US (Verez, 1993: 153-155). During the 1980s, Central American migration to the United States more than tripled due to the civil and international wars that raged in the region during that period. Over the past 10 years, migration grew in response to Western Hemisphere economies that were both growing (e.g., Colombia) as well as shrinking (e.g., Jamaica). Thus, there is no broad, or simple, explanation for inter- American migration.

At the present time, three migrant flows to the United States occupy center stage in the inter-American politics of migration: those involving Haiti, Cuba, and Mexico.

95




Haiti

Restrictionism in US immigration policy over the past 10

years has been especially clear in the case of Haiti. Following the 1980 Cuban-Haitian emergency, Washington acted ener-

getically to prevent the arrival of large numbers of seaborne Haitians in south Florida. In 1981, the United States concluded an agreement with Haitian dictatorJean-Claude Duvalier under which the US Coast Guard would patrol to intercept refugee boats bound from Haiti to the United States. The Haitian

government agreed to restrain emigration of, and to accept back without reprisals, those migrating nationals who were "interdicted" at sea and returned by US vessels. In the next 10

years that followed, the United States sent back, and repatriated, all but 28 out of more than 25,000 such migrants on the

grounds that they were economic, rather than political, emigres (Mitchell, 1994:73; Stepick, 1992). Subsequent US administrations have continued this policy, with emergency modifica- tions to cope with two major waves of emigration - in 1991 and 1994 - which followed the overthrow of elected Haitian

president Jean-Bertrand Aristide by a brutally repressive mili-

tary regime. Although President Bush ended even proforma shipboard "asylum interviews," several thousand Haitians were allowed to enter the United States as refugees via a tent

city set up at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. After more than 18 months in office, President Clinton stopped the involuntary repatriation of Haitians but announced that

refugees from Haiti would be offered "safe haven" only at Guantanamo Bay - or in other Western Hemisphere states

willing to receive them.

The Clinton administration did embrace, with greater vigor than its predecessor, a second strand in policy towards Haiti: an effort to reinstate President Aristide (democratically elected but ousted by military-backed opponents) and demo- cratic governance. Taking the historically unusual step of

recognizing a goverment-in-exile, the United States has

sought to bring pressure to bear on the regime of General Raoul Cedras through (a) imposing a trade embargo backed up by




naval patrols, (b) the freezing of Haitian assets in the US, (c) suspending most visas for entry into the United States, and (d) occasionally closing Haiti's border with the Dominican Republic. Washington has enlisted the support of the United Nations in these efforts (including a July 1994 vote authorizing possible US-led military action) but has received less-enthusi- astic backing from Latin American nations and the Organiza- tion of American States (OAS). Some of the roots of this pro- democracy campaign derive from past US policies that favored human rights and democracy in Latin America, dating back to the Carter and Reagan administrations (Schoultz, 1981; Carothers, 1991). However, a stronger motivation may well be the desire to legitimize the US rejection of Haitian refugees. Since the overthrow and exile of President Aristide, the vigor with which the US government has opposed Haiti's de facto military government has been in direct proportion to the outflow of seaborne refugees.

Cuba

In the complex, long-standing inter-American diplomacy over Cuba's revolution and its political consequences, migration has become a major issue largely because it is a political resource that is sometimes available to the Cuban government. In struggling against the US economic blockade, Fidel Castro's government has been able to help shape US immigration policy towards Cuba by manipulating the ability of Cubans to leave the island for the United States (Dominguez, 1992). At three different points in his tenure (in 1965, 1980, and 1994), Castro has permitted Cubans to emigrate more freely. In the first two instances, the United States was virtually obliged to welcome the new arrivals under constraints imposed by US law at the time, as well as by the domestic pressure from anti-Castro groups. By the 1990s however, a long-developing restrictionism in Washington, even towards emigrants from Cuba, reached full maturity. Under the policy leadership of Attorney-General Janet Reno, a former public prosecutor in Miami, the US government announced in August 1994 that it would detain

97




arriving Cubans and intern them at Guantanamo Bay (Cuba), only a few miles from the camp housing thousands of Haitians. On 1 September 1994, the two governments entered into negotiations in New York, with the United States intending to restrict the talks to migration questions alone, while Cuba hoped to gain concessions that would ease the economic suffering and political isolation of the Castro regime.

The current multilateral diplomacy of the Cuban migration issue differs notably from that which surrounds the flow of refugees from Haiti. The United States - and many other nations in the Hemispheric nations, most notably Venezuela and Canada - are willing to address the Haitian issues jointly, acting through the OAS, UN and other fora. In the case of Cuba, the US favors tackling only very limited parts of the migration issue multilaterally. Washington would like to find "safe havens" in varied countries for Cubans, just as it would for Haitians, but the United States is not anxious to heed the oft- repeated advice of most Latin American and Caribbean states to normalize its relations with Cuba. Most other Western Hemisphere governments argue that the 32-year-old US economic blockade could be "traded" for political liberalization in Cuba which might, in turn, lessen that state's domestic pres- sures for emigration. Nevertheless, the Clinton administration believes it must maintain a harshi anti-Castro position and stiffen its economic measures against the Cuban government, in part to persuade Cuban-American lobbying groups to accept its policy of intercepting Cuban emigrants at sea.

Mexico

In 1986, the United States Congress passed the Immigra- tion Reform and Control Act (IRCA), whose intent was to slow the influx of undocumented migrants by (1) forbidding employers to hire such workers and (2) granting amnesty to some of the unauthorized migrants already in the United States. IRCA was intended primarily to deal with migration from Mexico, and some 2,297,000 Mexican migrants applied for amnesty




under the new law. However, by the early 1990s unauthorized migration from Mexico had resumed on a large scale. The US Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) has estimated that 3.5 million unauthorized migrants live in the United States at the present time. Of this number, 40% live in California (New York Times, 1993); and probably well over a majority have come from Mexico.

Since expiration of the Bracero Agreement in 1964, both the United States and Mexico have largely avoided dealing with migration as an issue in state-to-state relations. Even during the lengthy debate (1977-86) within the United States that eventu- ally resulted in passage of the IRCA, Washington and Mexico City never used population movement as a bargaining chip in their relationship (Rico, 1992). Nor did migration figure as a topic of open concern in the more recent, and complex, negotiations over the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), ratified in 1993. The NAFTA has virtually nothing to say about this theme directly (Hufbauer and Schott, 1993:25), although both the United States and (more openly) Mexico anticipate that expanding trade will create new prosperity in Mexico which, in turn, will provide more and better jobs there and thus diminish the attractions of migrating northward. However, most estimates by experts agree that it will be at least 10 years before this process will take effect to any significant degree (Cornelius and Martin, 1993: 19), while other observers feel the NAFTA may work to accelerate migration, at least in the short term (Commission, 1990).

Domestic Politics and US Immigration Policy

Despite this lack of salience in the realm of foreign policy, it is a different story in the area of domestic US politics where, in certain states, Mexican migration has become a major issue. Whereas in some states, like Texas, there has been only limited social and political objections expressed regarding this flow of labor, the situation is very different in California. Here, public opinion across the state tends to hold the illegal migrants

99




accountable for many of the state's ills: unemployment, high taxes, urban decay, and crime. California's Governor Pete Wilson, a Republican up for re-election in 1994, supports an initiative on the California ballot that would deny extending education and medical care to illegal aliens (except in emergencies). By mid-1994, public opinion polls indicated that this proposal - known as "Save our State" (SOS)- had the support of 69% of California resident-respondents (National Immigra- tion Forum, 1994: 1).

Republican Governor Wilson also favors amending the US Constitution so that the US-born children of unauthorized migrants would be denied US citizenship. As William Schneider, a public opinion analyst, observed early in 1994,

This issue [of denying public aid to the undocumented] has a lot of resonance . . . It's not just an ideological issue. It will be harder to explain to your constituents why you supported aid to illegal immigrants than why you opposed it. And [elected officials] always do what's easier to explain (Los Angeles Times, 1994).

Growing restrictionism is a nation-wide phenomenon. For example, a national survey conducted in 1993 found that 60% of those interviewed considered immigration a "bad thing," while only 20% viewed immigration in a positive light (Newsweek, 1993). Former Texas Congresswoman Barbara Jordan, now chair of a federal Commission on Immigration Reform, observed in April 1994:

I should not call what we are hearing today a 'debate' but rather a 'furor.' [There is] a heightened anti-immigrant sentiment that is so discernible and identifiable that you can almost smell it (Washing- ton Post, 1994). The importance of immigration issues in the electorally

crucial states of California and Florida now acts as a major influence that conditions the policies of the present Demo- cratic administration in Washington on that subject. President Clinton's administration assumes it cannot afford to be seen as markedly more "soft," or less restrictionist, than either Gover- nor Wilson (R) of California or Governor Lawton Chiles (D) of




Florida since Republican victories in either of these two pivotal states in 1994 might work against President Clinton when he runs for re-election in November 1996.

The Clinton administration has sought to find a middle ground: establishing as "routine" immigration policies that will be perceived as balanced and vigorous on the one hand, stressing restrictionism but avoiding xenophobia on the other. Most of these measures are designed to deal with labor migrants from Mexico. A highly qualified new commissioner, Doris Meissner, was appointed to the INS in mid-1993. At her confirmation hearings, Ms. Meissner placed a high priority on reforming and modernizing the agency's administration and advocated a policy of "control with compassion." In February 1994, the administration submitted a "package" of new immigration measures to Congress, in which it requested that a total of $541 million be allocated to increase border control, remove criminal aliens, reform the asylum system, enforce IRCA- mandated sanctions against employers more vigorously, and promote naturalization. Deportation of criminal aliens began in early 1994 when a group in this category was repatriated from Florida prisons. The US Border Patrol has adopted new tactics for controlling the US-Mexico border, in which it has stepped up monitoring of "the line" itself rather than waiting to apprehend migrants after they have crossed into the United States. The model for this approach - originally dubbed "Operation Blockade," but later renamed "Operation Hold the Line" - was highly praised by the general public in El Paso (TX) when it was first tried there in late 1993.

These new measures face daunting obstacles from within the United States itself: government agencies that are rickety and fragmented, inadequate funding, and low morale in those agencies entrusted with carrying out migration policy. The initiatives of the Clinton administration also bear the additional burden that they are, for the most part, unilateral. They neither seek, nor include, any dialogue or interaction with the nations from which migrants come. It is logical to ask: could US policy goals and/or broader inter-American migration concerns be better advanced through international negotiations?

101




OBSTACLES TO INTER-AMERICAN NEGOTIATION ON MIGRATION

S US-Haitian bargaining of the early 1980s and the more Lrecent US-Cuban talks demonstrate, there are times when

negotiations on migration are feasible. However, such parleys have been relatively rare. At least five factors have limited the prospects for bilateral (or multilateral) negotiations over migration from Latin America to the United States:

1. Perceived National Interests

Many Latin American sending nations have been reluctant to negotiate with the United States over migration because they tend to be satisfied with the status quo. To many of the sending states, a significant flow of migrants, both legal and illegal, has often appeared to be at least a partial solution to social and economic ills. In recent years, for example, money sent to families in the Dominican Republic by the more than 600,000 Dominicans in the United States has constituted either the 2nd or 3rd largest source of foreign exchange for that hard-pressed economy. For some states in Mexico's west central region, between a third and a half of all first jobs for young workers have been obtained in the United States (Vernez, 1993: 161). Not surprisingly, the Mexican government was careful to avoid entering into negotiations over migration with the United States during the most recent period (late 1970s) when Washington expressed an interest in doing so (Asencio, 1990:86). Most Latin American and Caribbean governments have been so uninterested in conferring with the United States on migration issues that, as in the Dominican Republic, their foreign ministries generally know little about such issues and have never trained any diplomatic specialists on migration.




2. Limited Government Capacity

Not only does the ability of governments, both sending and receiving, to control the social process of migration vary greatly, but it is often quite limited as well. Certainly some island governments - especially those that are very authoritarian (as in Cuba) or very brutal (as in Haiti) - can restrain emigration if they so choose. On the other hand, governments on the mainland, such as those in Mexico, El Salvador or Guatemala, would likely find it quite difficult to stem the outward flow of migrants, just as the US government has found itself thwarted in its attempts to halt illegal immigration overland. Even on an island, so long as a regime observes some limits to its own authority, as does the government of the Dominican Republic for example, emigration can be slowed but not stopped. Governments are generally reluctant to enter negotiations in which they might have to make promises they are unable to keep.

3. Legal Constraints

Migration policy within the United States, as in many nations, is subject to a network of legal provisions that would tend to tie the hands of international negotiators. For example, only a keen interest at the highest political levels in the United States spurred Washington's offer (in September 1994) to increase the number of legal Cuban migrants it would accept in return for Havana's commitment to impede the flow of balseros (rafters) to its shores. [In fact, the intricacies of US immigration law may have helped to bring on the 1994 "raft crisis." Although the Cuban government had expected the US would admit about 20,000 legal migrants annually after 1987, only about 10% of that number were readily qualified each year due to the complex US legal and bureaucratic requirements.] Moreover, the US public tends to perceive (especially now) desirable immigration policy along legalistic lines. In this view, "controlling America's frontiers" should suffice without the concessions that would, almost inevitably, stem from international bargaining.

103




4. Difficulties in Defining the Scope of Talks

Even when bilateral negotiations begin, it is difficult to strike an optimum balance between the discussion of migration and of other issues of equal concern to the participants. In theory, bargaining over migration may be facilitated if "side payments" are available regarding other interests that involve the two governments. [Haiti's continued receipt of US economic aid in the early 1980s may have resulted, in part, from the Duvalier government's consent to the 1981 migration accord.] However, the US government is usually quite reluctant to broaden the scope of "migration talks" for fear that this might be interpreted as negotiating under duress. In turn, the sending states (like Cuba) are likely to discern few incentives for slowing the rate of emigration if that is the only issue at hand.

5. Diverse Migration Situations Among Sending States

The factors that encourage migration to the United States - the background, impact, and social context - tend to differ significantly from one sending state to the next. For example, the Anglo-Caribbean sends a highly diverse labor force to the United States, ranging from apple-pickers to trained nurses, who may either return home in a matter of weeks after their contract ends or, alternatively, may remain for a period of years. The migrants from Mexico, on the other hand, are predomi- nantly low-skilled and have tended (at least until recent years) to return to their home regions on a cyclical basis measurable in months. Cuba has sharply restrained emigration for nearly 15 years; El Salvador has never exercised any restraints.

This heterogeneity presents a major obstacle to conduct- ing multilateral talks on migration and, in fact, the United States has never held such negotiations with Latin American nations. The sending states hesitate to begin discussions on population flows in which they might find themselves having to adhere to arrangements that provide greater benefits to other nations




than they themselves receive. Consequently, if they must negotiate at all, they will probably prefer bilateral dealings directly with the United States.

A SPREADING IMPACT: MIGRATION FRICTIONS AND INTER-AMERICAN RELATIONS

W TITH tensions over the movement of populations running high, and with negotiations over migration a

difficult remedy to apply, the migration issue tends to inject two sorts of friction into inter-American relations. First, the increasingly common "international migration emergencies" force Western Hemisphere governments into adopting hurried measures in haphazard fashion. In attempting to cope with the upsurge in emigration from Haiti and Cuba since 1991, both the US and a number of countries in the Caribbean and Central America have had to undertake risky policy experiments in the full glare of publicity and with little time for reflection. As a result, inconsistencies among policies chosen and misunderstandings about motives and promises have, not surprisingly, abounded. A prime example was the discord that arose (inJuly 1994) between the US and Panama over whether the latter would provide a "safe haven" for Haitians. Subsequently, a new Panamanian government agreed to permit the United States to house 10,000 Cuban emigrants at the US bases in Panama - but just for six months, after which new disagreements may develop.

Second, the rise of restrictionist sentiment in the United States may undermine public support there for taking important constructive steps in other areas of inter-American affairs. The broadening of free trade in the Western Hemisphere beyond NAFTA, for example, is a goal strongly sought by major Latin American nations, including Chile, Argentina, and Venezuela. Caribbean and Central American nations seek, with perhaps even greater urgency, to codify a new trade relationship with the United States to ward off, or at least limit, any damage to their economies that might stem from the current NAFTA. Neverthe-

105




less, it is difficult to imagine that, within the United States, congressional doubts about the broadening of free trade will not gain reinforcement from the present concern regarding undocumented immigration. The sending nations, whose ability to restrain movement of their populations is quite limited, may find themselves pressured to do precisely that if they want to maintain, or expand, access to the US market for imports.

MODEST STEPS TO DEFUSE INTERNATIONAL TENSION OVER MIGRATION

ARADOXICALLY, migration is an international political issue with very complex causes and roots of long standing

that present problems for which both politicians and the public at large often demand rapid, sweeping solutions. Today's Cuban migration continues an outflow that began back in 1960, shortly after the Cuban revolution. Some of Mexico's states have relied on US jobs for their young workers for over 50 years. Modem migration from the Dominican Republic dates back to 1961 when the United States increased the number of visas available to its nationals. Haiti's "boat people" first began their odyssey, embarking for Florida, in 1972. It is illusory to expect rapid or simple remedies for the state-to-state political tensions that migration can imply. However, there are three kinds of limited actions that government can take to help moderate potential political disagreement:

1. Negotiations to Address Underlying Causes of Unauthorized Migration

As we have noted, bilateral negotiations limited to the issue of migration alone offer few payoffs that are apparent to the sending nations. However, talks that "place on the table" broader economic issues or political differences which have served to "push" the migrants to leave may help to soften those differences over the long term and, hopefully, deter unauthorized flows of people. In effect, this is what the NAFTA negotiations between the United States and Mexico sought to




do, though without trumpeting that fact. The hope is that, over time, Mexican workers will become sufficiently optimistic about job opportunities at home to forego the inclination, or the need, to migrate northwards. Advocates of a new, wide- ranging dialogue between the US and Cuba are calling, quite cogently, for a similar pattern of bargaining (Inter-American Dialogue, 1994), with the exception that the core of US-Cuban differences is political, rather than developmental. It must be noted that it takes considerable political fortitude for a receiv-

ing government to wait the fully 5-10 years that may be required before a slow-down in the flow of migrants begins to appear. While the NAFTA seems to be the best available strategy for slowing migration from Mexico, many candidates for public office in the United States (at both state and national levels) may, in the interim, find themselves being punished by the voters for not producing more rapid results and a perma- nent reduction in migration.

2. Using Multilateral Channels and Remedies Where Available

While multilateral negotiations on migration may be very difficult to organize, perhaps policy steps that are only partially multilateral may prove more attainable. Such steps offer significant advantages. For example, some Western Hemi- sphere nations have recently displayed a new willingness to provide "safe havens" for the seaborne emigrants from Haiti and Cuba. In addition to the present offer from Panama, Honduras has also reportedly agreed to house 5,000 Cuban detainees on a temporary basis, and both Mexico and Venezu- ela have volunteered to accept smaller groups from Cuba. Under the current pressure of the Cuban migration emergency, the value of such multilateral remedies may now be more apparent to the US than was true even as recently as early August of this year. At that time, Washington announced that it would not be "cost-effective" to house Haitian emigrants in other nations - including Surinam, Dominica and St. Lucia - that had agreed to take them in (New York Times, 1994).

107




3. Improved Observance of the Human Rights of Politically-Motivated Migrants

Hastening to deflect thousands of Haitian and Cuban seaborne migrants away from its shores, the US government has established large camps at Guantanamo Bay which may ultimately house up to 60,000 refugees. Clearly safer than the open sea, these detention camps have had to be constructed by hard-pressed US soldiers and sailors under emergency conditions. However, as of early September 1994, they are grim locales indeed, providing an absolute minimum of shelter, poor food and sanitation, little recreation and no schooling. These bleak enclosures fall far short of what should be expected from a wealthy nation that has embraced human rights as a centerpiece of its Western Hemisphere policies for nearly 20 years. The harshness of these camps hardly adds to that image of itself as a just, forbearing nation, which the United States would like to maintain in seeking the support of other nations for its immigration policies. Commissioner Meissner, of the US Immigration and Naturalization Service, has under- taken laudable human-rights reforms in other areas of US immigration policies, extending even to the proposal that a representative of the Mexican government be included on a new citizens' panel to review the work of the Border Patrol. The US military services in charge of the camps at Guantanamo Bay might well gain by emulating her efforts.

REFERENCES

ASENCIO, D. (1990) "The Anticipated Effects ofIRCA on US Relations with Mexico," pp. 86-89 in George Vemez (ed.) Immigration and International Relations: Proceedings of a Conference on the International Effects of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA). Santa Monica (CA) and Washington (DC): The RAND Corporation and the Urban Institute.

CAROTHERS, T. (1991) In the Name of Democracy: US Policy toward Latin America in the Reagan Years. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.




Commission for the Study of International Migration and Cooperative Economic Development. (1990) Unauthorized Migration: An Economic Development Response. Washington, DC: Com- mission for Study of International Migration and Cooperative Economic Development.

CORNELIUS, W., and P. MARTIN (1993) The Uncertain Connection: Free Trade and Mexico-US Migration (Current Issue Brief Series No. 5). La Jolla, CA: Center for US-Mexican Studies, University of California at San Diego.

DOMINGUEZ, J. (1992) "Cooperating with the Enemy: US Immigra- tion Policies toward Cuba," pp. 31-88 in Christopher Mitchell (ed.) Western Hemisphere Immigration and United States Foreign Policy. University Park, PA: Penn State Press.

HUFBAUER, G. and J. SCHOTT (1993) NAFTA: An Assessment (Revised Edition). Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics (IIE).

Inter-American Dialogue (1994) "To Washington and Havana: Change Course; A Statement of the Inter-American Dialogue's Task Force on Cuba" (24 August). Washington, DC: Inter- American Dialogue.

Los Angeles Times (1994) "Quake Brings Immigration Issue to National Forefront" (3 February): Al and A6.

MITCHELL, C. (1994) "US Policy toward Haitian Boat People, 1972- 93." Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 534 (July): 69-80.

National Immigration Forum (1994) Advocacy Matters 2, 4 (July 20).

New York Times (1993) "Study Sees Illegal Aliens in New Light" (2 September): B8.

(1994) "US Shelves Plan to Transfer Haitians to Third Countries" (3 August): A5.

Newsweek (1993) "America: Still a Melting Pot?" (9 August): 16-23.

New York City. Department of City Planning. (1994) Preliminary Estimates of Hispanics by Specific Ethnic Group, New York City, 1980 and 1990 (photocopy). New York, NY: NYC Dept. of City Planning.

109




RICO, C. (1992) "Migration and US-Mexican Relations, 1966-1986," pp. 221-283 in Christopher Mitchell (ed.) Western Hemisphere Immigration and United States Foreign Policy. University Park, PA: Penn State Press.

SCHOULTZ, L. (1981) Human Rights and United States Policy toward Latin America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

STEPICK, A. (1992) "Unintended Consequences: Rejecting Haitian Boat People and Destabilizing Duvalier," pp. 125-155 in Christopher Mitchell (ed.) Western Hemisphere Immigration and United States Foreign Policy. University Park, PA: Penn State Press.

United Nations. Development Program (UN-DP) (1993) Human Devel- opment Report 1993. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

United States. Immigration and Naturalization Service (US-INS) (1993) 1992 Statistical Yearbook (October). Washington, DC: Department of Justice.

VERNEZ, G. (1993) "Mexican Labor in California's Economy: From Rapid Growth to Likely Stability," pp. 147-163 in Abraham F. Lowenthal and Katrina Burgess (eds.) The California-Mexico Connection. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Washington Post (1994) "New Voice in Immigration Debate" (13 April): A15.



Date post:	08-Jan-2017
Category:	Documents
Upload:	christopher-mitchell
View:	214 times
Download:	0 times

Special Issue: The Summit of the Americas-Issues to Consider || International Migration as an Issue...

Documents