But it says SAFE third country
That doesn’t sound like a good plan.
It’s hard to overstate how insane, and how obviously illegal, this is.
Many men, women, and children will suffer horribly if it goes into effect.
We’re all overwhelmed with legal news but this is a *BFD* that deserves widespread attention, condemnation, and resistance. https://t.co/frrg55dcJe
— Joshua Matz (@JoshuaMatz8) July 12, 2019
Guatemala is a country people are fleeing from.
From @NewYorker: “More people are leaving Guatemala now than any other country in the northern triangle of Central America. Rampant poverty, entrenched political corruption, urban crime, and the effects of climate change have made large swath.”
— Joshua Matz (@JoshuaMatz8) July 13, 2019
Reading the UN Dispatch piece:
This is a guest post from Eric Schwartz, the president of Refugees International. He previously served as U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees, and Migration
In a particularly egregious violation of law and common decency, the Trump White House is pressing U.S. diplomats to negotiate a “safe third country agreement” with Guatemala. This is a terrible idea which, if implemented, will put the lives of thousands of Central Americans at great risk. It is a violation so serious, that as a former assistant Secretary of State in charge of implementing refugee and migration policies, I took the unusual step of writing a letter to the State Department’s Acting Legal Adviser Marik String, urging he and his office cease involvement in efforts to secure the agreement.
Homework assignment: explain how Canada and Guatemala differ as places offering safe refuge to asylum seekers.
A safe third country agreement is an exercise in responsibility-sharing between two governments on the handling of asylum claims, and the United States currently has only one such agreement—with the government of Canada. Under the arrangement, asylum seekers from any part of the world who enter Canada but then travel to the United States to seek asylum may be returned to Canada for asylum adjudications. Conversely, those who enter the United States and then travel to Canada to seek asylum may be returned to the United States. In other words, the agreement ensures that the asylum seeker’s claim is considered in the country that the asylum seeker has entered first.
People from south of Guatemala mostly go through Guatemala to get here, so the Trump people are playing gotcha.
[F]orcing asylum seekers into Guatemala would almost certainly run afoul of both U.S. and international refugee law, which specify that an asylum seeker may only be transported to a place where his or her “life or freedom would not be threatened on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.” In fact, it is reasonable to expect that individuals being forced into Guatemala pursuant to a safe third country agreement would constitute a particularly vulnerable social group subject to grave risks at the hands of gangs and other criminal elements. Concerns on this score result from the extraordinarily high rates of crime, including homicide, in Guatemala, gang violence, and—perhaps most significantly—the absence of capacity of the government of Guatemala to provide even a modicum of services or security for returned asylum seekers—who would likely be in highly vulnerable situations for extended periods.
Which is why many asylum seekers are seeking asylum from Guatemala. Sending asylum seekers there would be like sending people who are fleeing an erupting volcano to the vicinity of a different erupting volcano.
To be clear, in the years to come, this will be viewed as the responsibility of the United States, and all citizens thereof. This is not a stain that will wash away with assurances that someone did not vote Republican, or vote for Trump. Sending people to Guatemala is sending them into the hands of death squads.
To be clear, the mere lack of not voting for Trump or not voting Republican should not wash away a stain; but I have never been a believer in the idea that every person in a country should be held responsible for the actions of that country, even when it is a democracy. People who actively spoke out or worked against the action should not have to bear the guilt of another’s action. This is guilt by association, or actually worse, because you are not choosing to associate, it is a mere accident of birth.
Happenstances of birth should not be held as guilt. Failure to at least make an effort to make a difference could be an act of passive guilt, of collective guilt, but there are quite a number of Americans who are working to make a difference. I don’t hold the Germans who tried to help the Jews responsible for the Holocaust. I don’t hold the Soviet dissenters responsible for Stalin’s crimes. I don’t hold the abolitionists responsible for slavery.
Actually making a change in any country is difficult; in an oligarchy, such as the US (and most putative western democracies, to be honest), there may be little one can do to make the changes against the tide of opinion, the force of money, and the power of bullshit. But to not try is to accept the situation, and that is when one becomes guilty.
iknklast – I think we agree. To build on your Germans/Holocaust analogy, a generation of Germans was held collectively responsible because they knew and did nothing. The actual perpetrators were punished to the extent possible, but those who merely went about their lives were stained. That is the realm the US is crossing into with this.
Yes, Naif, but there were also Germans who fought against it and tried to help, and they were also stained. They should not have been.
I am deeply ashamed to say that Trump is following Australia’s “Death Camps for Refugees” guide. Our PM is going to meet Trump presumably to give him a hard cover copy for Stephen Miller to read.
Australia made a deal with Cambodia to accept refugees. That’s working out exactly as you’d expect.
The idea is to make seeking asylum a worse prospect than remaining. They have lumps of coal where their hearts should be.
Oh gawd, of course they are. Thank you for that piece of information.
One might look, too, at the British government’s policies regarding refugees – some locked up for months or years. Anglo-Saxondom is not very nice.