Honduras

Temporary protected status has long been used as a humanitarian solution for migrants who are unable to return home safely, but efforts to give them a path to citizenship have reignited the debate around the U.S. immigration policy.  

The United States continues to seek strategies for responding to the growing number of migrants fleeing poverty, violence, and other challenges in the Central American region.

Welcome to “Women Around the World: This Week,” a series that highlights noteworthy news related to women and U.S. foreign policy. This week’s post covers June 17 to June 23.   

Thousands of people are arriving at the U.S. southern border after fleeing the Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. President Biden is reviving efforts to tackle the problems that are prompting them to migrate. 

Pervasive corruption has long stymied development and fueled emigration from some of Central America’s poorest countries. The recent disbanding of antigraft commissions makes their prospects for reform gloomier.

Political and economic unrest in Nicaragua could stoke the flames in a region where insecurity has forced tens of thousands to flee in recent years.

In the wake of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s historic victory, the markets are focused on Mexico’s economic prospects, keenly sniffing for any whiff of either pragmatic promise or populist calamity. Yet while a financial crisis is possible, Central American migration may prove the new administration’s biggest first challenge. Since 2014, hundreds of thousands of Central American men, women, and children, mostly from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, have fled their homes. Driven by violence, extortion, poverty, and a drought that has decimated subsistence farming, and pulled by family connections and the hope of safe haven, they mostly head north. This desperate exodus brought some 280,000 migrants to the southern U.S. border in 2014, driving a media storm and political reckoning. Images of young children spurred churches into action, political demonstrations across the country, and even conservative talk show host Glenn Beck to drive to the border with a truckload of teddy bears and soccer balls. Congress doled out extra money to care for more than 50,000 Central American “unaccompanied alien children,” or UACs in the Department of Homeland Security’s parlance; the Obama administration worked with the presidents of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras to launch the Alliance for Prosperity, a two-year $1.4 billion dollar plan to spur better governance and economic development. In 2015 the massive migrant wave to the U.S. border diminished, and the cameras largely turned away. Yet the precipitous decline wasn’t because Central Americans stopped leaving their homes. It was because Mexico stopped letting them through. Backed by more than $150 million in U.S. funding, Mexico tightened its southern border, expanding checkpoints, boosting manpower, and using fingerprinting and facial-scanning to identify and detain crossers. The government even cracked down on the infamous La Bestia (“the beast”) freight trains that carried thousands from the southern border city of Tapachula north. That year, Mexico apprehended and deported more Central Americans than its northern neighbor. This status quo of Mexico stopping tens of thousands of families each year may soon end. On the campaign trail, Lopez Obrador promised to loosen Peña Nieto’s southern border defense, refusing to “continue the dirty work” of the United States by detaining Central American migrants who are fleeing violence. As Mexico looks to ease up on its southern border, the U.S. is strengthening enforcement. President Trump’s pullback from separating young children from their parents at the border — spurred by negative media coverage — is just a brief hiatus from an ever-hardening position toward Central American migrants and asylum seekers. The Department of Justice has rewritten the asylum guidelines, raising the credible fear bar asylum seekers must reach, and all but disqualifying those fleeing criminal and domestic violence, thereby denying most Central American claims. The administration has slashed refugee spots by more than half, and tinkered with rules to deny many their day in court. And the U.S. is threatening to impose its own version of the European Union’s Dublin Regulation, under which those seeking asylum must generally do so in their first country of arrival, thereby rendering moot the asylum claims of Central Americans crossing through Mexico. The net result: Tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of Central Americans will likely get stuck in Mexico. There, these migrants will have expansive protections — at least on paper. A 2011 legislative reform guarantees asylum seekers quick and comprehensive consideration, legal representation, and an appeal. While in Mexico they have the right to apply for access to medical care and education. In reality, these rights are at best uneven. Amnesty International found that three out of every four migrants weren’t informed of their right to seek asylum, as the law requires. Although the process has slightly improved, many asylees were detained for months, also in violation of the law. One of the problems is that Mexico’s Commission for Refugee Assistance has two offices outside of the capital; its skeletal staff was able to process fewer than 5,000 cases last year. Another is the widespread corruption and violence targeting migrants, often from the agencies and officials mandated to protect them. And Mexican society isn’t ready for the influx. Not unlike the United States, some Mexicans worry immigrants will take their jobs, depress wages, or commit crimes. Violence against these newcomers has been on the rise: In 2016 alone, the Mexican government found more than 5,000 cases of crimes against migrants, nearly 20 percent at the hands of government officials. In short, Lopez Obrador may well be caught between his promises to be more open and humane to those fleeing and the desire to no longer do president Trump’s bidding, and the huge potential costs this shift could entail for his larger domestic agenda. With Mexico’s migratory agencies and services so ill-equipped, absorbing an influx would take away resources away from his efforts to lift up Mexico’s poor. On the other hand, if Lopez Obrador allows more Central Americans to flow north, Trump could well respond by clamping down further, creating a greater burden for states in northern Mexico. Mexico has long been a sending country, with millions of its citizens living abroad, mostly in the United States. It is now increasingly a receiving nation, caught between desperation to the south and xenophobia to the north, with few tools to safely manage these inflows. Lopez Obrador’s team already faces the burden of realizing his expansive campaign promises. Resolving a migration crisis on its southern border may not have been high on its list. But part of governing, of course, is preparing for unpleasant surprises. View article originally published on Bloomberg.

The new administration has emphasized the need to curb security threats from Latin America: bad hombres, rapist Mexicans, and the wall are among the wrenching rhetorical symbols that President Trump has used to signal his goals. Five data points highlight the challenges the administration will face as it moves to secure the southern border. Crime directly consumes 3.55 percent of GDP in Latin America, on average. This is about twice the average cost in developed nations, and exceeds the annual income of the bottom 30 percent of the regional population. Corruption may consume an additional 3 percent of GDP, on average, with illicit financial outflows in some countries suggesting even higher costs. Impunity reigns. Latin American nations are near the top of a global impunity index, with Mexico, Colombia, Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador among the world’s worst performers. The practical implications are significant: 9 out of 10 murders go unresolved in a region that is among the world’s most violent. Astounding levels of violence drive migration. A survey of Central American migrants conducted last year by the Inter-American Dialogue found that violence was the second major reason given for the decision to migrate. No wonder, when Latin American homicide rates are four times higher than the global average. The most common trigger for migration, the search for economic opportunities, may also be influenced by the brake crime puts on local economies. In 2014, the U.S. had 55 million self-identified Hispanics or Latinos (about 17 percent of the population). Of these, just over a third – 19.4 million – were immigrants. Latin American remittances surpassed $70 billion in 2016, continuing an upward trend in which remittances to Latin America have more than doubled over the past fifteen years. According to a study of last year’s remittances, “[t]he growth in remittances to Central America…is mostly associated with continued insecurity in the region that is driving people out.” These five data points suggest that untangling the U.S. from Latin America will be fraught with difficulty. The push factors that drive migratory flows – crime, corruption, violence, and impunity – are tangled up with the pull factors that attract them to the U.S.– family ties and economic opportunity – in ways that are not easily undone. The five data points further suggest a strictly hardline approach at the border will be self-defeating. Crime and corruption together consume roughly 6.5 percent of Latin American GDP, driven in no small part by U.S. demand for narcotics and its various knock-on effects: organized crime, violence, and a weak rule of law. The fact that the costs of crime and corruption exceed remittances in most countries in the region suggests that an effective policy set to tackle threats from the southern border must at the very least include rule of law development assistance, aimed at tackling local “push” factors that drive violence and incentivize migration. If, as a consequence of administration policies, remittances were to decline and hundreds of thousands of migrants were blocked or sent home, the economic conditions in much of Latin America – and particularly in those countries closest to the U.S. southern border – would worsen considerably, deepening the “push” factors that drive migration. Both remittances and migratory flows would be driven underground: literally, through border tunnels, and figuratively, through illicit money laundering and organized migrant smuggling. The implications for border security would be profound.

A wave of corruption scandals has roiled Latin America in recent years, from Chile’s campaign finance affairs, through Mexico’s Casa Blanca revelations. Most recently, the information divulged in the December Odebrecht settlement has sent a shudder of fear across regional politics after the Brazilian construction firm admitted to paying nearly $800 million in bribes in twelve countries. The tide of corruption revelations has contributed to massive protests, slumping incumbent polls, and political uncertainty throughout the region. Obviously, the scandals of recent years differ greatly from each other. The Odebrecht scandal was driven by a Brazilian context very distinct from the Guatemalan environment that led to President Pérez Molina’s downfall, or from the Mexican and Chilean cases. Empirical evidence about corruption trends in the region is also quite mixed, with polls showing contradictory findings about the direction of public experiences with corruption victimization and public perceptions of corruption more broadly. For all these differences, there is a common silver lining to the region-wide wave of scandal. As a perceptive study released this week by the Inter-American Dialogue argues, the region has seen declining public tolerance of corruption and a rising normative edifice that makes it easier to tackle abuses. On the public side, authors Kevin Casas-Zamora and Miguel Carter catalogue a variety of factors that are changing the accountability equation. Citizens are angry: three-quarters of the population in Latin America view their society as unjust, and fewer than two in five express satisfaction with their democracies. An economic downturn has driven down incumbents’ average approval ratings across the region. Meanwhile, citizens are not only more motivated to mobilize, they are better able to do so: the revelations come against a backdrop of improving information transparency, changing access to public information through the widespread adoption of social media, and growth of a politically active middle class. Simultaneously, a “new normative edifice” of international agreements and standards, alongside improved national laws and policies, has given teeth to previously weak anticorruption bodies (see figure below). Laws have been introduced or rewritten in ways that constrain money laundering, reduce campaign finance violations, increase fiscal transparency, and facilitate prosecution. The investigative capacities of police and prosecutors have increased. New bodies, such as governmental auditing agencies and civil society anticorruption organizations, have been created in many countries over the past two decades. Anticorruption measures adopted by Latin American countries, 1990-2015 Source: Kevin Casas-Zamora and Miguel Carter, “Beyond the Scandals: The Changing Context of Corruption in Latin America,” Inter-American Dialogue, February 2017. The authors are quick to remind us that there is a big gap between laws on the books and “their effective implementation and enforcement.” But the cautiously optimistic conclusion I draw from their analysis is that the pincer movement of greater public mobilization for effective accountability, on the one hand, and institutional changes, on the other, is having tangible effects in fighting longstanding patterns of impunity for corruption across countries as diverse as Brazil, Chile, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, and Panama. This two-pronged process may continue to cause political instability for the foreseeable future. And the list of reforms that are still needed is enormous, from structural changes, such as addressing the economic and political disparities that diminish the equality of citizens before the law, to more “technical fixes” such as improving judicial performance and enhancing political finance oversight. But overall, the trend is a largely positive one, with declining public and institutional tolerance fueling corruption revelations. These in turn often generate the political pressure for legal and institutional reforms that have the potential to create less corrupt and more accountable political systems. Whether one agrees with this hopeful conclusion or not, the report is well worth a read, marshalling substantial cross-national evidence on the evolution of corruption and accountability processes across the region.

This is a guest blog post by Dr. Richard Messick, an anticorruption specialist. It is based on a CFR roundtable discussion on March 24 hosted by Matthew M. Taylor, adjunct senior fellow for Latin America Studies. One of the most promising developments in U.S. foreign relations is the all-out war on corruption being waged across Latin America. From “Operation Car Wash” in Brazil to investigations of presidential wrongdoing in Bolivia, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, and Panama, across the region independent, tenacious prosecutors and investigators are out to end the massive theft of state resources that for so long has hobbled political development and throttled economic growth. The United States should be cheering for these corruption warriors, for we have much to gain if they succeed. Less corruption translates into more stable, reliable political allies; it means faster, more equitable growth and that means shared prosperity and less northward migration. Finally, less corruption in government will offer U.S. firms new opportunities. Think what the end of corruption in Brazilian public works would mean for U.S. engineering and construction companies. But given the stakes in Latin America’s corruption war, the United States should be doing more than cheering from the sidelines. It should be doing everything it can—without infringing the sovereignty or sensibilities of Latin American neighbors—to see its corruption warriors succeed. Here are five things to start with: Fund the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of International Affairs (OIA) budget request. If a Latin American investigator learns an official he or she is investigating has a bank account in the United States, the investigator can ask the OIA to obtain the account’s records to see if corrupt money is being parked there. But the office had at latest count more than 11,000 requests pending and was receiving 3,000 plus new ones each year. Unless the investigator gets lucky and the request finds its way to the top of the pile, he or she will be long retired, and the suspect long dead, before the OIA responds. For years the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has asked Congress, without success, for funds to hire more staff to speed requests. This year it requested $10 million to add 97 positions, 54 attorneys, and 43 paralegals and support staff. Isn’t it time Congress said yes to this modest request? Name a single focal point to help Latin American law enforcement agencies. When looking to the United States for assistance, Latin Americans face a bewildering number of agencies, bureaus, and offices: the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the U.S. Secret Service, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), the 92 U.S. Attorney’s offices, and these are just at the federal level. There are hundreds, if not thousands, at the state and local level. It takes experienced U.S. law enforcement officers years to figure out where to go for information. Why not make it easy for Latin Americans who don’t have years to decipher the complex and bewildering U.S. system? Create one office, staffed with personnel fluent in Spanish and Portuguese from across the federal and state governments who can serve as a “one-stop shop” for Latin American police, prosecutors, and judges needing information from their U.S. counterparts. Create an interagency task force to work with Latin American counterparts to target corrupt Latin American officials. Whenever a corrupt Latin American official uses the proceeds of a bribe to buy an apartment in Miami or open a bank account in Houston or Los Angeles, he or she has violated U.S. antimoney laundering laws. Depending upon whether they traveled in the United States, used U.S. mail services, or U.S. email servers, they may have also committed wire fraud or violated the laws forbidding travel across state lines in furtherance of fraud or corruption. A task force of U.S. personnel drawn from ICE’s Foreign Corruption Investigations Group, DOJ’s Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) unit, the U.S. Attorney’s offices in Miami, the FBI’s international corruption squads, DOJ’s kleptocracy unit, and other relevant agencies should be available to work with Latin American counterparts on possible violations of U.S. law committed by corrupt Latin American officials. Greater intelligence sharing and joint investigations in association with Latin American anticorruption agencies and prosecutors would enhance both regional and domestic efforts against corruption and ill-gotten gains. Enact the Incorporation Transparency and Law Enforcement Assistance Act. Introduced by Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney and colleagues in the House of Representatives and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and colleagues in the Senate, this would end the ability of corrupt officials, as well as drug traffickers and other unsavory individuals, to keep investigators from learning how much money they have and where it came from. Under current law, a corrupt Latin American official can open a bank account in the United States in the name of a Delaware limited liability company. He or she can own the company anonymously, that is, without anyone, in Delaware or elsewhere, knowing his or her identity. If Global Witness’s exposé of U.S. lawyers counseling an investigator posing as the agent of a corrupt minister weren’t enough to persuade lawmakers of the need for the legislation, the April 3 revelations of massive abuses in the use of anonymous shell companies by the International Center for Investigative Journalism (ICIJ) should lay to rest any lingering doubts about how critical this legislation is to the fight against not only corruption but terrorism and organized crime as well. End secrecy in the U.S. real estate market. Thanks to gaps in U.S. antimoney laundering regulations, corrupt officials in Latin America (and elsewhere) can use the proceeds of corruption to secretly buy property in the United States. Requiring real estate agents, title insurance companies, and others involved in the purchase and sale of condominiums, houses, and other U.S. real estate to comply with the antimoney laundering rules will expose attempts by corrupt officials to create a “safe haven” for when they leave office. The U.S. Department of the Treasury took a small, first step in this direction in January when it issued an emergency order (in response to a New York Times’ exposé) requiring title insurance companies in Manhattan and Miami-Dade Country to apply antimoney laundering rules to all real estate purchases over $1 million in cash for the next six months. The rule should be made permanent and extended to all regions. Since 2002 the Treasury Department has given real estate brokers a “temporary” exemption from the antimoney laundering rules while it studies their situation. The time for study is over. The Treasury Department should follow the European Union’s lead and require brokers to comply with the antimoney laundering rules. The burden of ridding Latin America of the corruption that infests so many of its governments remains first and foremost the responsibility of its governments. But the United States has much to gain if they succeed, and there is much it can do to help them. The steps above are a modest beginning; it should move on them expeditiously. This piece also appeared on the Global Anticorruption Blog.

Despite the standstill in Congress on immigration reform, state and local governments have been very active in passing their own immigration legislation. In this article for Foreign Policy, I look at what different states and cities are doing regarding immigration and the effects of their policies. You can read the beginning of the piece below:  With all the mudslinging and acrimony in Washington over unaccompanied minors and unauthorized immigrants, you might have missed it. Immigration reform has already happened -- in fact, hundreds of times. With the federal government incapacitated, states, cities, and municipalities have stepped into the fray. In 2013 alone, forty-five of the fifty state legislatures passed over four hundred laws and resolutions on everything from law enforcement and employment to education and public benefits. Among this flurry were a few in the Arizona SB 1070 style -- bills making life more miserable for undocumented immigrants. These laws ranged from blocking access to health care and schools to criminalizing common activities such as driving cars or buying homes. But the majority are actually designed to find ways to integrate undocumented immigrants -- funding English language and citizenship classes and providing access to medical care and other social services. You can read the rest of the piece here on ForeignPolicy.com.