MCALLEN, TEX.—Sister Norma Pimentel, the Catholic nun who directs the Humanitarian Respite Center in the Rio Grande Valley, surprised me when I asked about right-wing commentators and politicians using the baby formula shortage to vilify immigrants. Fox News, Texas Governor Greg Abbott, and others claim that “illegal” migrant kids are getting formula while American children are not. “Our guests don’t want baby formula,” Sister Norma explained. “They’ve spent months walking and riding buses through Central America and Mexico, and their kids got used to drinking ordinary milk.”
Republicans and Fox News are distorting the truth about the southern US border, and the rest of the US mainstream media is failing to clear it up. On May 20, a Trump-appointed federal judge effectively ordered the Biden administration to continue violating the US Refugee Act of 1980, which guarantees the right to apply for asylum. Judge Robert Summerhays, directed the US to keep using a public health measure called Title 42 to immediately deport migrants without letting them plead their cases. (The purported justification is to stop the spread of Covid-19, but the Centers for Disease Control says there is no epidemiological reason to keep Title 42 in effect.) Over the past two years, the United States has used Title 42 to carry out 1.8 million expulsions. It was due to expire on May 23, but Summerhays extended it indefinitely. As a result, many thousands of people remain in refugee camps in Mexico. Many migrants thought that Title 42 would end and that they would be allowed to apply for asylum. But for more than two years, Washington has blocked efforts to claim asylum, creating a backlog. If you essentially shut down any US government agency for that long, the Passport Office for instance, the number of people demanding their documents would surge. The refugee crisis at the border is a direct consequence of US policy. Sister Norma said cartels target refugees by their non-Mexican accents. Migrants have long known that if they have US contacts, they should hide those phone numbers, because the criminals in Mexico will raise their extortion demands. A young women named Esperanza Ramirez told me back in 2014 that she concealed a tiny piece of paper with the number of her sister on Long Island in case the cartels kidnapped her and her 3-year-old daughter on the road north. Sister Norma told me that the situation is even more dangerous today: “Now, the criminals force them by saying, ‘I’m going to kill your son if you don’t tell me who your contacts are.’ They put a gun to the child’s head. ‘Call your relatives in America and tell them to send the ransom or else.’” A study last year by Human Rights First, an advocacy group, reported more than 6,000 kidnappings and violent attacks against asylum seekers after the US sent them back to Mexico—in only the first seven months of the Biden presidency. At least the Biden administration is admitting families with children, instead of continuing the cruel Trump family separation policy. The Respite Center in McAllen was once a night club, with dark purple walls, and now welcomes 400 to 500 arrivals every day, nearly all families with children. The former bar dispenses toiletries, clothing, and diapers. On one wall is a large US map. Respite Center workers, many of them volunteers, put the migrants in touch with family members who are already in the country, who then send money to buy bus tickets to their final destinations. There they will await hearing dates in immigration courts for their asylum applications. Patrick Déjean, originally from Haiti, will soon catch a bus to New Jersey with his wife, 5-year-old son, and 1-year-old daughter. Déjean, in his early 30s, is an electrician. He left Haiti in 2016 when it became clear to him that the country was not rebuilding after the 2010 earthquake and that gang warfare in the capital, Port-au-Prince, was spinning out of control. He was one of tens of thousands of Haitians who took one-way flights to Chile during this time. There he met his wife, who was also from Haiti, and they started a family. But Covid hit, the economy crashed, and he, like many other Haitians in Chile and Brazil, trekked northward. The most difficult stage was through the Darien Gap in eastern Panama, a rainforest area used by drug smugglers. “We didn’t eat for five days,” he said in Spanish. “Our group all survived, but we did pass many people who died along the way.” The Déjeans reached the United States and, because they had children with them, they were allowed to enter. Under Title 42, migrants without kids are nearly always turned back. Mexico will not accept returnees from Haiti, and so the US deports them by the planeload. There were 15 expulsion flights to Haiti in the week leading up to May 23. It is a painful irony that the US sent Haitians back to a nation torn by gang warfare and lashed by hunger on the same week that The New York Times ran a series of articles showing how Haitians had to pay crippling indemnities to France to maintain their freedom during the 19th century and beyond. Mexico’s Supreme Court reached a landmark ruling last week, overturning a legal provision allowing immigration agents to stop anyone and demand proof of their legal status. The ruling came after years of litigation by human rights groups and could have a profound impact on Mexico’s enforcement-heavy immigration policy, driven by pressure from the US to stop migrants from reaching the border.
The court ruled in favor of members of an Indigenous Tzeltal Maya family who had been wrongfully detained and, in one case, tortured by immigration agents who suspected they were undocumented Guatemalan migrants trying to reach the US. The three siblings, Amy, Esther, and Alberto were traveling on a bus from their home in Chiapas state in Mexico’s south to work as farmhands in the north. It is common for people from Mexico’s poorer south to travel to the wealthier north for work. When the bus reached a checkpoint, immigration agents said the siblings, who speak limited Spanish, “didn’t look Mexican.” They showed IDs but the agents called the IDs “fake” and sent the siblings to detention. There, agents beat Alberto and gave him electric shocks until he signed papers – even though he cannot read or write – agreeing to be deported to Guatemala. Immigration stops and checkpoints have become common across Mexico. Soldiers and immigration agents board buses, pull over cars, stop people in airports, raid hotels, and patrol parks and plazas to apprehend undocumented migrants. Usually, they target people who are Black, brown, or Indigenous. That often includes Indigenous Mexicans or Afro-Mexicans who are frequently detained, harassed, or even wrongfully deported. Forty-one percent of Americans report worrying a great deal about the issue of illegal immigration, with another 19% worried a fair amount, according to a March 1-18 Gallup survey. The survey was conducted before the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced it will soon terminate the emergency powers given to border agents during the pandemic that have allowed them to turn migrants back without an opportunity to seek asylum.
The 41% currently worried a great deal roughly ties the percentage found a year ago but is otherwise on the high end of Gallup readings taken over the past decade. The only time significantly more Americans were this concerned was in 2007, when 45% worried a great deal as then-President George W. Bush and Congress debated comprehensive immigration reform. In addition to those worried a great deal about illegal immigration today, 19% of Americans in the March poll reported worrying a fair amount, 17% only a little and 23% not at all. Thus, six in 10 adults worry a sizable amount about the issue, while four in 10 express little to no worry. While the percentage of U.S. adults feeling highly worried about illegal immigration has varied, the percentage not worried at all has more than doubled since 2006. At the same time, the percentages worried a fair amount and worried only a little have trended down. Gallup measures Americans' concern about illegal immigration along with numerous other issues facing the country each March. As reported last month, illegal immigration ties with race relations as a public concern and ranks among the lower half of 14 issues rated this year. The 41% saying they worry a great deal about these contrasts with 59% worried about their top concern, inflation. Work permit possibilities for bringing foreign workers to Canada without having to go through the LMIA.
If you fall under one of these exemptions, you may be permitted to hire a temporary foreign worker without doing a Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA) or even bring somebody to work in Canada without a work permit. The International Mobility Program (IMP) is a work permit program run by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada to promote the country's social, economic, and cultural interests. These work permits are exempt from the LMIA because the government has concluded that the foreign worker's work will provide a "substantial advantage" to Canada, or because the exemption is based on a reciprocal agreement between Canada and the foreign worker's country. You won't have to go through the LMIA process if your hiring situation fits under one of IRCC's LMIA exemption codes or a work permit exemption. You must pay an employer compliance fee and submit an offer of employment through the IRCC's Employer Portal before hiring a foreign worker under the IMP. Employers in Quebec do not require a Quebec Acceptance Certificate (CAQ) to hire through the IMP. The following are some of the LMIA-exempt work permit and work permit exempt programs in Canada. |