Remittances as Rents in a Guatemalan Town: Debt, Asylum, the U.S. Job Market, and Vulnerability to Human Trafficking

2021 ◽  
pp. 0094582X2110618
Author(s):  
David Stoll
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
El Salvador ◽  
Human Trafficking ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
The United States ◽  
Job Market ◽  
Important Challenge ◽  
Migrant Remittances ◽  
Migrant Households ◽  
The U.S

Exporting labor to the United States has become the principal industry of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. Central Americans have been moving to the United States in large numbers since the 1980s, but how they gain entry has shifted thanks to the interplay between the migration industry and border enforcement. Many Guatemalans, Hondurans, and Salvadorans are paying smugglers to deliver them to U.S. border agents so they can apply for asylum. The Trump administration’s harsh reactions have energized asylum advocates, who argue that applicants are fleeing dislocation by neoliberal capitalism. Migrant households in the Ixil Maya municipio of Nebaj, Guatemala, express an optimistic interpretation of this situation that they call their American Dream. Their wish for high wages in the United States can be seen as the latest in a series of “hope machines” that interpret disadvantageous relations of exchange as the path to a better future. Such hopes are based on the irrefutable buying power of the dollar, but migrant remittances to their families conceal the extraction of rents. U.S. asylum advocates understandably stress that the most important challenge facing irregular immigrants is their legal status. However, with or without legal status, the underlying issue for migrants will continue to be their position in the U.S. job market, because this generates household indebtedness that increases vulnerability to human trafficking. La exportación de mano de obra a los Estados Unidos se ha convertido en la principal industria de Guatemala, El Salvador y Honduras. Los centroamericanos se han estado mudando a los Estados Unidos en grandes cantidades desde la década de 1980, pero la forma en la que obtienen la entrada ha cambiado gracias a la interacción entre la industria de la migración y la industria de la deportación. Muchos guatemaltecos, hondureños y salvadoreños pagan a coyotes para que los entreguen a agentes fronterizos de Estados Unidos, pudiendo así puedan solicitar asilo. Las duras reacciones de la administración Trump han energizado a los defensores del asilo, quienes argumentan que los solicitantes están huyendo de la dislocación causada por el capitalismo neoliberal. Los migrantes en el municipio ixil maya de Nebaj, Guatemala, tienen una interpretación optimista de esta situación, la cual llaman su Sueño americano. Su deseo de salarios altos en Los Estados Unidos puede ser visto como la última en una serie de “máquinas de esperanza” que interpretan las desventajosas relaciones de intercambio como el camino hacia un futuro mejor. Dichas esperanzas se basan en el irrefutable poder adquisitivo del dólar, pero las remesas de los migrantes a sus familias ocultan la extracción de rentas. Los defensores del asilo en Estados Unidos enfatizan, comprensiblemente, que el desafío más importante que enfrentan los inmigrantes irregulares es su estatus legal. Sin embargo, con o sin estatus legal, el problema subyacente para los migrantes seguirá siendo su posición en el mercado laboral estadunidense, ya que esto genera el endeudamiento de los hogares e incrementa su vulnerabilidad a la trata de personas.

A Humanistic Approach to Outreach: Amnesty for Illegal Immigrants

1991 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 14-16
Author(s):  
David Rymph ◽  
Linda Little
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
El Salvador ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
Metropolitan Area ◽  
The United States ◽  
Illegal Immigrants ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Past ◽  
Humanistic Approach ◽  
The U.S

Washington, D.C., like many major cities in the U.S., has experienced a large influx of illegal immigrants in the past decade. Hundreds of thousands of Hispanics have entered the United States, many of them fleeing from the political violence in Guatemala and El Salvador. The Washington metropolitan area may have as many as 80,000 refugees from El Salvador alone.

scholarly journals A Dream of Dual Citizenship

Genealogy ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 56
Author(s):  
Karen Bernadette Mclean Dade
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
The United States ◽  
Dual Citizenship ◽  
Family Stories ◽  
Cabo Verde ◽  
Language Class ◽  
The Government ◽  
The U.S

Many problems exist for United States (U.S.) descendants of Cabo Verde (In 2015, the government of Cabo Verde asked in the United Nations that the official name be Cabo Verde in all documents, opposed to the colonial version, “Cape Verde”) Islands seeking dual citizenship. Much of this is due to multiple 20th century racial discriminatory practices by the U.S. in soliciting cheap labor from Cabo Verde Islands, including changing the birth names of Cabo Verdean immigrants when they entered the United States. Without knowing the true birth names of their ancestors, descendants such as myself have no access to proof of birth in the dual citizenship process. Years often pass by as Cabo Verdean Americans search for clues that may lead to proving their legal status through family stories, and track related names as well as birth and death records. For many, dual citizenship may never be granted from the Cabo Verdean government, despite having U.S. death certificates that state that the family member was born in Cabo Verde. This autobiographical case study explores why so many Cabo Verdean Americans seek dual citizenship with a strong desire to connect to their motherland. Moreover, issues related to language, class and colorism discrimination between Cabo Verdean-born immigrants and descendants in the U.S. are explored. In so doing, the researcher hopes to ameliorate the divisions between the current government policies and Cabo Verdean American descendants, as well as build greater intracultural connections between those born in the Cabo Verde Islands and those born in the U.S. and elsewhere.

The “Hearts and Minds” Fallacy: Violence, Coercion, and Success in Counterinsurgency Warfare

2017 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 80-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacqueline L. Hazelton
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
El Salvador ◽  
The United States ◽  
State Building ◽  
Military Strategy ◽  
The Government ◽  
Zero Sum ◽  
Hearts And Minds ◽  
Government Benefits ◽  
The U.S

Debates over how governments can defeat insurgencies ebb and flow with international events, becoming particularly contentious when the United States encounters problems in its efforts to support a counterinsurgent government. Often the United States confronts these problems as a zero-sum game in which the government and the insurgents compete for popular support and cooperation. The U.S. prescription for success has had two main elements: to support liberalizing, democratizing reforms to reduce popular grievances; and to pursue a military strategy that carefully targets insurgents while avoiding harming civilians. An analysis of contemporaneous documents and interviews with participants in three cases held up as models of the governance approach—Malaya, Dhofar, and El Salvador—shows that counterinsurgency success is the result of a violent process of state building in which elites contest for power, popular interests matter little, and the government benefits from uses of force against civilians.

The Imperial Republic: A Comparison of the Insular Territories under U.S. Dominion after 1898

2002 ◽  
Vol 71 (4) ◽  
pp. 535-574 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lanny Thompson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Puerto Rico ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
The Body ◽  
European American ◽  
Military Government ◽  
The U.S

The doctrine of incorporation, as elaborated in legal debates and legitimated by the U.S. Supreme Court, excluded the inhabitants of Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Guam from the body politic of the United States on the basis of their cultural differences from dominant European American culture. However, in spite of their shared legal status as unincorporated territories, the U.S. Congress established different governments that, although adaptations of continental territorial governments, were staffed largely with appointed imperial administrators. In contrast, Hawai'i, which had experienced a long period of European American settlement, received a government that followed the basic continental model of territorial government. Thus, the distinction between the incorporated and unincorporated territories corresponded to the limits of European American settlement. However, even among the unincorporated territories, cultural evaluations were important in determining the kinds of rule. The organic act for Puerto Rico provided for substantially more economic and judicial integration with the United States than did the organic act for the Phillippines. This followed from the assessment that Puerto Rico might be culturally assimilated while the Phillippines definitely could not. Moreover, religion was the criterion for determining different provincial governments within the Phillippines. In Guam, the interests of the naval station prevailed over all other considerations. There, U.S. government officials considered the local people to be hospitable and eager to accept U.S. sovereignty, while they largely ignored the local people's language, culture, and history. In Guam, a military government prevailed.

Innovations in Intervention: El Salvador’s Role as a U.S. Strategic and Tactical Laboratory

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (7) ◽  
pp. 159
Author(s):  
Matthew James Hone
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
El Salvador ◽  
The United States ◽  
Sufficient Evidence ◽  
Special Operations ◽  
The U.S

The United States, amongst other motives, utilized their intervention into El Salvador as a laboratory for strategic, tactical and technological military techniques. The extent of the experimentation has not been fully divulged due to the continued classification of documentation and the secretive nature of U.S. special operations. However, there is sufficient evidence available to reveal that the U.S. participation in El Salvador initiated or expanded on a number of practices that would be incorporated well after the conflict

scholarly journals Influencing Clients in Counterinsurgency: U.S. Involvement in El Salvador's Civil War, 1979–92

2016 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter C. Ladwig
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil War ◽  
El Salvador ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
The United States ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
Focus Of Attention ◽  
The Government ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
The U.S

After a decade and a half of counterinsurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. policymakers want to change their approach to COIN by providing aid and advice to local governments rather than directly intervening with U.S. forces. Both this strategy and U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine in general, however, do not acknowledge the difficulty of convincing clients to follow U.S. COIN prescriptions. The historical record suggests that, despite a shared aim of defeating an insurgency, the United States and its local partners have had significantly different goals, priorities, and interests with respect to the conduct of their counterinsurgency campaigns. Consequently, a key focus of attention in any future counterinsurgency assistance effort should be on shaping the client state's strategy and behavior. Although it is tempting to think that providing significant amounts of aid will generate the leverage necessary to affect a client's behavior and policies, the U.S. experience in assisting the government of El Salvador in that country's twelve-year civil war demonstrates that influence is more likely to flow from tight conditions on aid than from boundless generosity.

The Precarious Position of Latino Immigrants in the United States

2016 ◽  
Vol 666 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas S. Massey ◽  
Jorge Durand ◽  
Karen A. Pren
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Labor Market ◽  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
The United States ◽  
Latino Immigrants ◽  
Mexican Migrants ◽  
Mexican Migrant ◽  
Wage Penalties ◽  
The U.S

A majority of Mexican and Central Americans living in the United States today are undocumented or living in a marginal, temporary legal status. This article is a comparative analysis of how Mexican and non-Mexican Latino immigrants fare in the U.S. labor market. We show that despite higher levels of human capital and a higher class background among non-Mexican migrants, neither they nor Mexican migrants have fared very well in the United States. Over the past four decades, the real value of their wages has fallen across the board, and both Mexican and non-Mexican migrant workers experience wage penalties because they are in liminal legal categories. With Latinos now composing 17 percent of the U.S. population and 25 percent of births, the precariousness of their labor market position should be a great concern among those attending to the nation’s future.

Baby Robbers, Mad Bombers, and Other Assorted Criminals

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matt Eisenbrandt
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil War ◽  
El Salvador ◽  
The United States ◽  
Truth Commission ◽  
Commission Report ◽  
To Come ◽  
The U.S

As the chapter describes the legal team’s continuing search for Alvaro Saravia, it provides the background on Saravia’s criminal past in El Salvador that led him to come to the United States. Salvadoran authorities finally launched a serious investigation into the Romero assassination leading to the testimony of the getaway driver, Amado Garay, and the arrest of Saravia in Miami. Roberto D’Aubuisson and others infuriated the U.S. government by undermining a case to have Saravia extradited to stand trial in El Salvador. With Saravia still facing immigration problems, a U.S. embassy official took advantage of Saravia’s predicament to get information from him about Romero’s murder. Those details largely matched the findings of a Truth Commission report issued a few years later, after the end of El Salvador’s civil war.

A Migration Becomes an Emergency

2018 ◽  
pp. 60-80
Author(s):  
Roberto Suro
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
El Salvador ◽  
Central America ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
The United States ◽  
Family Reunification ◽  
Labor Migrations ◽  
Women And Children ◽  
Crisis Responses ◽  
The U.S

This chapter examines the circumstances that produced repeated migration surges from the Northern Triangle of Central America—El Salvador, Honduras to Guatemala—to the United States. Dominated by women and children fleeing poverty and violence, since 2014 the surges have challenged the U.S. asylum system, prompted crisis responses at the border and provoked ongoing political controversies. This chapter argues these surges are an outgrowth, really a kind of mutation, of long-standing migrations that have been dominated by labor and family reunification flows in recent years. Moreover, the surges were facilitated by migrations channels, including criminal smuggling networks, that had developed to transport what was once a far larger Mexican flow. The surges serve as a warning that seemingly stable labor migrations can transform into sudden, large scale movements of humanitarian migrants due to changing circumstances in sending communities.

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