The Migrant Crisis in the US is very acute right now … and very sad. Underlying to this drama, is the concern over Homeland Security and decency while ensuring Human Rights.
In the Caribbean, many of our member-states are affected by this crisis, either on the supply-side or the demand-side.
- On the supply-side, we have countries that border the US territories – think: Bahamas, Belize, Dominican Republic, British Virgin Islands – so people flee to these member-states – as an intermediary step – in an attempt to “pursue refuge or asylum” in the US. (The US now wants asylum-seekers to apply only in these 3rd-Party countries).
- On the other hand, on the demand-side, we are also involved in this drama. Many of those who seek refuge in the US are from Caribbean states – think: Cuba, Haiti, etc.. In fact, in some member-states our societal emigration-abandonment rates are so high that we have lost 70 percent, on the average, of our professional citizens to foreign shores – many have emigrated to the US.
Is the grass greener on the American-side, so as to impact the demand in our region for our citizens to want to migrate there?
Our Caribbean people do leave … due to “Push and Pull” reasons. “Push” refers to the societal defects in the Caribbean that moves people to want to get way, while “pull” refers to the impressions and perceptions (true or false) that America is better.
The purpose of this commentary is two-fold:
- to dissuade the high emigration rates of Caribbean citizens to the American homeland.
- to structure our societal engines – economics, security & governance – to better avail the economic opportunities related to America’s homeland security.
Migrants have been told that they are not invited and not welcomed in the US; yet they still come anyway; the audacity of Human Rights!
What’s a country, in this case the United States, to do?
Answer: Throw money at it!
We can benefit our regional economy more by facilitating the engines to deliver on the Homeland Security needs of the US; while optimizing concern for Human Rights.
Can we do more on the supply-side to avail the opportunities associated with this immigration crisis? Yes; yes indeed – remember, our previous proposition on Prisons 101.
This rich country – USA – needs lots of help. So far their delivery has been so poor – think: separating small children from mothers and “kids in cages” – that there have been comparisons to the “Concentration Camps” by Nazi Germany during World War II.
“Concentration Camps”?!?!
This is not our words alone; rather this is the assessment by “Concentration Camp” survivors. See the news story here:
For the past two weeks, Americans have debated whether the notoriously cramped and dirty detention centers on the southern border can be called “concentration camps.” For at least one Holocaust survivor, the answer is a resounding yes.
Ruth Bloch was 17 years old when she was separated from her family. While living in Holland in 1942, her father, mother, and brother were arrested and sent to concentration camps, where they were eventually killed. Bloch remained in Holland working as a seamstress at a fur factory, sewing fur-lined coats for German troops. She was eventually sent to Vught concentration camp in Holland in 1943, before being eventually transported to Auschwitz.
Now, at 93, she told The Daily Beast that she looks back at that time and can relate to the thousands of migrants, including small children, being held at camps after crossing the border into the U.S. to seek refuge.
See the full story here; posted by The Daily Beast on July 8, 2019 : https://www.yahoo.com/news/holocaust-survivor-yes-border-detention-084846706.html
Accompanying VIDEO:
We can do better than “Concentration Camps”!
The movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean asserts that we should look, listen and learn from this full drama; then we should lend-a-hand. In this case our lending-a hand can be building “optimized” Detention Centers in our Caribbean communities and servicing these “patrons” for the US … for a profit.
(The 5 L’s of leadership progression is defined as 1. Look, 2. Listen, 3. Learn, 4. Lend-a-hand and 5. Lead).
Homeland Security is traditionally a big area for spending. So “Yes we can” profit from this crisis; other countries have done so – ‘catered’ a foreign Detention Center and made money – think: Nauru on behalf of Australia. This is the model we want to emulate here in the Caribbean, outside the US borders.
We have discussed Nauru before; it is only apropos to re-consider or Encore that discussion now. See how the prospect of this business model was presented in this Encore of the previous blog-commentary from July 9, 2014 – 5 years ago:
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Go Lean Commentary – Obama’s Plans for $3.7 Billion Immigration Crisis Funds
If only we were ready now!
$3.7 Billion in new spending in communities that really do not want the activity.
This, according to the below article, is the ground situation regarding the current immigration crisis on the US-Mexico border with children from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. The US government, Obama Administration, is requesting additional funding from Congress of $3.7 Billion to better interdict and respond during this crisis. The biggest part of the expense will be the detention functionality for the apprehended trustees.
This is a crisis … and this crisis is a terrible thing to waste!
By: Mary Bruce
Detainees sleep and watch television in a holding cell where hundreds of mostly Central American immigrant children are being processed and held at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Nogales Placement Center on June 18, 2014, in Nogales, Arizona. Ross D. Franklin-Pool/Getty Images
President Obama today is requesting $3.7 billion to cope with the humanitarian crisis on the border and the spike in illegal crossings by unaccompanied minors from Central America.
Roughly half of the funding would go to the Department of Health and Human Services to provide care for the surge of children crossing the border, including additional beds.
The rest would be split between several departments to tackle the issue on both sides of the border, including $1.6 billion to the Departments of Homeland Security and Justice to boost law enforcement at the Southwest border and pay for additional immigration judge teams, among other things, and $300 million to the State Department to tackle the root causes of this crisis and to send a clear message to these countries not to send children illegally to the U.S.
Today’s funding request is separate from policy changes that the administration is also seeking to speed up the deportation of the children, most of whom are from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. The White House sent a letter to Congressional leadership last week requesting the legal changes to make it easier to send them home.
According to a White House official, greater administrative authority as well as the additional resources will help make it more efficient and expeditious to process and return the children.
What remains unclear is how much faster this additional funding would make the process to send children back to their home countries. White House officials today declined to speculate on such timing, but the administration has said that most of the unaccompanied minors will likely be “sent home.”
“Based on what we know about these cases, it is unlikely that most of these kids will qualify for humanitarian relief. And what that means is it means that they will not have a legal basis for remaining in this country and will be returned,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Monday.
The White House has yet to say how many of the roughly 52,000 children that have been apprehended this year have been sent back to Central America. Today, officials offered only the total figure, including adults. So far this year, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has removed almost 233,000, that includes over 87,000 to Central American countries.
Here’s a detailed look at some of the ways the president wants to spend $3.7 billion to deal with the influx of unaccompanied minors, according to the White House.
$364 MILLION:
To pay for operational costs of responding to the significant rise in apprehensions of unaccompanied children and families, including overtime and temporary duty costs for Border Patrol agents, contract services and facility costs to care for children while in CBP custody, and medical and transportation service arrangement.
$39.4 MILLION:
To increase air surveillance capabilities that would support 16,526 additional flight hours for border surveillance and 16 additional crews for unmanned aerial systems to improve detection and interdiction of illegal activity.
$109 MILLION:
To provide for immigration and customs enforcement efforts, including expanding the Border Enforcement Security Task Force program, doubling the size of vetted units in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, and expanding investigatory activities by ICE Homeland Security Investigations.
$879 MILLION:
To pay for detention and removal of apprehended undocumented adults traveling with children, expansion of alternatives to detention programs for these individuals, and additional prosecution capacity for adults with children who cross the border unlawfully.
$45.4 MILLION:
To hire approximately 40 additional immigration judge teams, including those anticipated to be hired on a temporary basis. This funding would also expand courtroom capacity including additional video conferencing and other equipment in support of the additional immigration judge teams. These additional resources, when combined with the FY 2015 Budget request for 35 additional teams, would provide sufficient capacity to process an additional 55,000 to 75,000 cases annually.
ABC News Online News Video Source (Retrieved 07/08/2014) – http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2014/07/obamas-plans-for-3-7-billion-immigration-crisis-funds/
ABC News | ABC Sports News
The overriding theme of the foregoing news article is the need for professional detention capabilities. Within this crisis, the publishers of the book Go Lean…Caribbean see opportunities for commerce.
The book posits that the region must prepare its own security apparatus for its own security needs. But while we are building facilities (prisons, jails, detention centers, etc) for our own needs, we can employ the strategy of over-building and insourcing for other jurisdictions. Had we been ready now, with this Go Lean plan, we would have been able to embrace the opportunities presented by this Central American Children Crisis. This point is pronounced early in the book with the Declaration of Interdependence (Page 12) that claims:
x. Whereas we are surrounded and allied to nations of larger proportions in land mass, populations, and treasuries, elements in their societies may have ill-intent in their pursuits, at the expense of the safety and security of our citizens. We must therefore appoint “new guards” to ensure our public safety and threats against our society, both domestic and foreign. The Federation must employ the latest advances and best practices of criminology and penology to assuage continuous threats against public safety. The Federation must allow for facilitations of detention for convicted felons of federal crimes, and should over-build prisons to house trustees from other jurisdictions.
xvi. Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. Since economic crimes … can imperil the functioning of the wheels of commerce for all the citizenry, the accedence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdictions.
The Go Lean roadmap facilitates the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). With 2 American territories in the Caribbean (Puerto Rico & the US Virgin Islands), it would be a simple proposal to Washington to offer to house these Central American Children in a Caribbean detention center, until some disposition is finalized regarding their individual cases. Then portions of that $3.7 Billion could be earned here, in the Caribbean.
The book asserts that the CU can copy the model of the small Pacific island country of Nauru (Page 290). As of July 2013 the detention center there was holding 545 asylum seekers on behalf of Australia … for a fee, assuaging an immigration crisis for Australia.
In addition to government spending, there will be the bonus of private spending from the visitors and family members of the detainees.
Just like that: Commerce!
This is the goal of Go Lean…Caribbean, to confederate under a unified entity made up of all 30 Caribbean member-states. Then provide homeland security for “our neighborhood”, contending with man-made and natural threats. The CU security goal is for public safety! The CU is set to optimize Caribbean society through a number of missions. The Go Lean roadmap has 3 prime directives:
- Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
- Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines.
- Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines.
In recent blog submissions, this commentary highlighted the security provisions that must be enacted to improve homeland security, as soon as possible:
| http://www.goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1554 | Status of Forces Agreement = Security Pact |
| http://www.goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1076 | References to the Caribbean Regional Security System |
If only those provisions were in place already!
We console with the communities dealing with this crisis; already there have been protests from townspeople where the existing American detention facilities are located. We also console with the refugees fleeing the crime, violence and despair in their homeland; this Go Lean roadmap is the Caribbean’s aspiration to mitigate against a similar Failed-State status (Page 134).
Underlying to the prime directive of elevating the economics, security and governing engines of the Caribbean is the desire to make the Caribbean homeland, a better place to live, work and play (Page 131) and to impact the Greater Good (Page 37) because “the needs of the many should outweigh the needs of the few”.