Caravans

[The Grand Nudger]

Over the last few years, increasing numbers of individuals fleeing gang violence in Central America, and specifically El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico, have fled to the United States in search of protection. UNHCR has worked to understand this refugee crisis, publishing reports in 2014 and 2015 examining why children and women are fleeing the region. These reports, Children on the Run, Uprooted and Women on the Run, all found that individuals fleeing El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras (a region collectively referred to as the Northern Triangle of Central America (“NTCA”)), and Mexico faced startling degrees of violence presenting a clear need for international protection.

http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/claims-from-c...erica.html

So, since they are refugees..both as the UN defines them and as economic refugees.........what?

Not only is the un commission for refuges weighing in on this issue and our policies, so is the un commission for human rights, the world food program, the un childrens fund, the world health organization, and the un development program.

Then there's this, from the brookings institute....(in case the un seems too blatantly leftist and politically motivated to know what the UN position on something -really- is, those fuckin commies! )

t is an outdated notion that people from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras are primarily looking for economic opportunity in the United States and, therefore, should wait in line for a visa. For people fleeing these countries, waiting for a visa can result in death, rape, or forcible recruitment into crime.

Author

Sarah Bermeo
Associate Professor of Public Policy and Political Science; Faculty Affiliate, Duke Center for International Development - Duke University
SarahBBermeo
A recent report from Doctors Without Borders (MSF) states that these Northern Triangle countries are experiencing “unprecedented levels of violence outside a war zone” and that “citizens are murdered with impunity, kidnappings and extortion are daily occurrences. Non-state actors perpetuate insecurity and forcibly recruit individuals into their ranks, and use sexual violence as a tool of intimidation and control.”

These countries rank in the top 10 in the world for homicide. White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, as leader of U.S. Southern Command in 2014, said that cartels and gangs, fueled by the U.S. demand for drugs, “have left near-broken societies in their wake.”

The U.S. government argues that people fleeing these places do not fit the technical definition of a refugee, so the U.S. is not obligated to offer them asylum. Yet they fit the spirit of agreements on refugees adopted after World War II. The U.N. refugee agency has concluded “that a significant percentage of those fleeing… may be in need of international protection, in line with the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees.”

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/future-de...l-america/