About that caravan in Mexico …
Back on April 1st, Trump tweeted that [it’s] “Getting more dangerous. “Caravans” coming. Republicans must go to Nuclear Option to pass tough laws NOW. NO MORE DACA DEAL!”
So who are these people that so terrify Trump? For ten years the organization Pueblo Sin Fronteras has been working with Central American refugees and migrants to provide humanitarian aid. This year one effort Pueblo Sin Fronteras is making is to help the migrants tell their own story. Here is a brief video made several weeks ago at the beginning of April.
We've partnered with @PuebloSF to place storytelling directly in the hands of migrants traveling through Mexico to seek refuge in the U.S. Currently, about 1,500 of migrants from Central America are traveling in the caravan.
Here is the first dispatch from the migrants. pic.twitter.com/2WvINh3Zwz
— Neta (@netargv) April 3, 2018
According to Reuters, since then, the journey for nearly half the caravan ended in Mexico City, but several hundred have decided to continue on and attempt to seek asylum in the United States.
Since our platform is about expressing ideas and ideals instead of cash flow, clicks, or fundraising, we have the freedom to include a wide range of topics and formats that might not work elsewhere. We don’t need or want paid content, promotional materials, or story lines designed to please donors.
So the idea here is to present videos one or more of the editors feel speaks to them. Sometimes it will be news. Sometimes it will be history. And a lot of the time it will be culture. You can not and should not separate these things: it is diversity and intersectionality that makes our movement strong.
Rich Kacmar
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I thought that a claim of asylum was only legitimate in the first safe country you got to after fleeing your own country. So, doesn’t this “caravan” ipso facto HAVE asylum…ALREADY?
I mean… Mexico let them IN… right?
Does Mexico take any (I know, radical term) RESPONSIBILITY for letting them in?
Does Mexico…KNOW they let them in?
Did they break Mexican LAW by coming in? Apparently not, since Mexico is doing nothing about it.
So what does Mexico’s letting them in… and, apparently, THROUGH…mean? Co-conspiracy to violate America’s borders?
I mean, the possibilities are quite few: either the Hondurans were PERMITTED into Mexico legally…which means Mexico takes responsibility as the country of refuge, or the Hondurans entered Mexico illegally, in which case their marching on to America doesn’t make it any LESS illegal, o-o-o-or… Mexico is actively, cynically, insidiously USING these Hondurans in a geopolitical PR stunt.
But it seems to me that when a concerted PR stunt cynically stage-managed by a foreign state shows up at the American border, the very concept of “asylum” is ipso facto null and void. It makes a mockery of everything asylum at its best is supposed to be.
Analogy: a “caravan” of, say, Syrians is allowed to enter Canada, then given perfectly extra-judicial carte blanche to trek across the United States as status-free entities all the way down to the Mexican border where (having been well rehearsed) they demand asylum in Mexico. So…what do you say? Is Mexico legally, morally, humanly obliged to concur? Or does even questioning the validity of this whole show make Mexico some sort of Nazi regime? Hmm?
https://www.uscis.gov/i-589
Above is the link to view the USA’s Application for Asylum form I-589 – worth a read to better understand what asylum “at its best is supposed to be.”
Page 7 (of this 12-page document) has two specific questions Asylum seekers must answer in Part C of the form:
2.A. After leaving the country from which you are claiming asylum, did you or your spouse or child(ren) who are now in the Unites States travel through or reside in any other country before entering the United States?
2.B. Have you, your spouse, your child(ren), or other family members, such as your parents or siblings, ever applied for or received any lawful status in any country other than the one from which you are now claiming asylum?
If “Yes” to either or both questions (2A and/or 2B), provide for each person the following: the name of each country and the length of stay, the person’s status while there, the reasons for leaving, whether or not the person is entitled to return for lawful residence purposes, and whether the person applied for refugee status or for asylum while there, and if not, why he or she did not do so.
(I’m sure you are a very intelligent person, Mr. Sears. However, your post above shows that how you “thought” asylum works, is neither intelligent, nor correct.)