It was at the beginning of June
2019, when the New York Times was asking: ‘When Will the Congress Get
Serious about the Sufferings at the Border? And a week later, the U.S. President Donald Trump announced that ‘next week the ICE [Immigration and Customs
Enforcement] will begin the process of removing the millions of illegal aliens
who have illicitly found their way into the United States.’
Although the U.S.
President used every single public opportunity he had to remind the
Congress to get rid of the loopholes in the immigration laws and to fix the
‘broken’ American asylum law, the U.S. southern border crisis saga rolled on
reaching the point of humanitarian crisis and threat to the national
security. However, it seems that the problems existed long before Trump’s
Administration. For example, the Obama Administration deported 409,000 people (2012), while the highest number of deportees made by the Trump
Administration is 256,000 (2018). In April
2019 around 100,000 were apprehended crossing
into the U.S. from Mexico – the third consecutive month topping 100,000
apprehensions. And at the end of June 2019, almost a quarter of the Americans
(23%) – but more than ever – named in a Gallup poll the illegal
immigration as a threat to the American security and a burden for the American
taxes system.
The U.S. southern
border crisis is a complex saga of, on the one side, sexual assaults (on women
and children), of drug smuggling and human/children trafficking; and, on the
other side, a rolling on saga of political bureaucracy, of long and expensive
research to impeach the president. When politics is human-centered and it is
about efficient decision-making in the best interest of the people, I wonder: Who’s
the man in this huMANitarian crisis?
The United States of America has
a so-called ‘limited presidential executive’ system, usually referred to as a
‘presidential system’. In the U.S. political system, the president is both head
of state and of government. And for each of these political positions, he has
precise attributions. As a head of government, he is the main legislative
initiator, as well as the Commander-in-Chief and he is in charge with the
American foreign policy. The President of the United States, as head of
government, governs through a cabinet of advisers, appointed by the president and
directly accountable to him. The President himself has a 4-year mandate and
cannot be removed unless impeached.
The
legislative power is represented by the 2-Chamber Congress (House of
Representatives and the Senate) whose election procedure, mandate and
organization are settled by the U.S. Constitution. Although the Congress has
legislative power, the President alone can veto its decision, but the veto can
be overruled by 2/3 of the Congress. Therefore, any legislative initiative of
the U.S. President is ‘limited’ by the approval of the Congress.
A
Republican party majority in both chambers of the Congress would have
definitely been of a greater support for the laws initiated by the (Republican)
President, Donald Trump. The Republicans still have the majority in the U.S.
Senate, but not anymore in the House – elected every two years. The U.S. House
of Representatives belongs to the Democrats and is chaired by the Speaker Nancy
Pelosi. U.S. Constitution obliges the U.S. President to present a state of the
nation in front of the Congress. And in his last address in 2019, the U.S.
President Donald Trump named the safe and legal immigration policy second on
his mandate’s priority list after the booming economy.
At the southern border the weak
spots are used by drug cartels to smuggle drugs in the United States, in a
context in which drug addiction is already a devastating epidemic in the U.S. The
loopholes in the American immigration and asylum laws encourage human
trafficking. Children are used and reused, in order for illegal migrants, to pose as a family and be released from
detention centers into the United States in a matter of days, rather than of
months as for the single adults. In order to pose as a family children are either robbed from their mothers,
without any sense of conscience, or they are bought. The price of a child? 7,000
pesos or 350 USD! One-third of women are raped by the paid smugglers without
any sense of humanity; all girls over 10 years old are given pregnancy tests
(which does not mean that girls under 10 were not rapped). The Washington Examiner reported on June 20th, 2019 that nearly 170,000 children have surrendered at the U.S. southern
border in the last seven months, more than 50% of them being under the age of 12.
Fox News reported on May 22nd that
‘Border Patrol estimates its agents have
apprehended 44,835 unaccompanied minor children this fiscal year alone’.
This
overstretching of the facilities and programs did not remain without consequences:
the Department of Health and Human Services – mainly responsible for providing
shelter to the thousands of unaccompanied migrant children – ran out of
financial resources; the Border Patrol – saving lives with the limited human
resources – need more personnel; the Office for Refugee Resettlement – a U.S.
agency in charge with the (English) education, recreational programs and legal
procedures of the unaccompanied migrant children – ran out of funds.
The U.S. President
as head of state and government issued in February 2019 a national emergency
declaration due to the constant growing humanitarian and security crisis at the
southern border with Mexico. On May 1st, 2019 Donald Trump called
for the Congress to immediate a USD 4,6 billion aid for humanitarian assistance
(to increase shelter capacity, to feed, care and transport migrants) and for
border operations (personnel expenses, combating human smuggling and
trafficking and upgrading the information and technology systems – to read the
whole call of the President, click here) (to be continued)
No comments:
Post a Comment