Category Archives: migrants

Latin America, migrants

Faith groups band together to help Haitians camped at US-Mexico border

Haitian immigrants make their way along a rope suspended above the Rio Grande on their way to the United States Sept. 22. (Nuri Vallbona)
Haitian immigrants make their way along a rope suspended above the Rio Grande on their way to the United States Sept. 22. (Nuri Vallbona)

Ciudad Acuña, Mexico — Clusters of Haitians stood on the riverbank, removing tennis shoes, putting belongings in garbage bags and hoisting children on their shoulders. The waters of the Rio Grande had risen, and the current was gaining momentum. As they plotted their path, they found an unlikely ally that could potentially lead to a better life in the United States: a yellow rope.

The migrants clung to the nylon cord as they forged the river’s chest-deep waters between Ciudad Acuña, Mexico, and Del Rio, Texas, on Sept. 22. Ignoring a row of law enforcement vehicles and a Humvee lined up along the U.S. shore, the procession of immigrants continued toward the international bridge where an estimated 15,000 had once camped, overwhelming immigration officials in the tiny town of Del Rio.

“There was food and shade on the Mexican side, but their dream was to be free in the U.S., so it was like, ‘Oh, my goodness, this is terrible that we have this whole blockade up,’ ” said Sr. Ursula Herrera, a Benedictine Sister of Boerne, Texas. “People are just seeking a better life for themselves, for their children, and here, they are so close and yet so far.”

Recent images of immigrants crammed under the international bridge, and officers on horseback trying to grab and corral them drew outrage across the political spectrum. The threat of deportation left many migrants in limbo, too afraid to take their chances with the asylum process but stuck in Mexico without work permits or a means to support themselves.

As the number of Haitian arrivals at the border swelled, Catholic sisters, religious organizations, nonprofits and churches banded together with a common goal: provide basic services and restore human dignity.

“If God has allowed these different religions, then we need to support each other. Therefore, it doesn’t matter what your religious beliefs are. We are all God’s children. We were all created equal, so we need to treat each other with respect,” Herrera said.

On the Mexican shore, other Haitians, aid workers and journalists stood watch over those who ventured into the Rio Grande. When one man swam downstream to rescue a bag that floated off with the current, the crowd gasped. His struggle to return to the rope was fruitless. As he emerged from the bushes further down, sighs of relief arose.

“I always think, knowing the sacrifices they’re going through, they still want something better for their children, and they’re willing to sacrifice their own lives just to get their children over here where they feel they can have a better life,” Herrera said from her home in Eagle Pass, Texas.

The sister joined a team of volunteers from Casa Hogar Getsemaní, a Baptist orphanage in Morelos, Mexico, on Sept. 22 to pass out lemonade and more than 130 plates of hot dogs, rice, beans, tortillas and pork stew to the migrants milling around an immigration camp in Ciudad Acuña.

The call from the orphanage’s director, Paulina Bivens, came amid a tragic week for Herrera, who lost her friend and fellow Benedictine sister Germaine Sutton after a stroke days before.

“I just feel that if God is calling me to do something, he’s going to provide me with the means and the time,” Herrera said.

Throughout September, Matt Mayberry, a pastor at the Southern Baptist City Church Del Rio, said he was inundated with calls from churches across the country offering to support his congregation’s efforts to feed those camped under the bridge. He estimated volunteers handed out more than 16,000 sandwiches and numerous snacks to immigrants and border officials until the federal government stepped in to provide food Sept. 15.

Members from one Baptist church drove four and a half hours to deliver their sandwiches, Mayberry said.

“Our understanding of Scripture is that we were made in God’s image — all humans,” he said. “And so, regardless of our ethnicity or nationality, every human is worthy of human dignity and value. Our church and all the churches who have joined us believe the same thing.”

Herrera and Bivens’ volunteers were among dozens of aid workers feeding several hundred Haitians who were able to spread out under trees across large fields of open space in Ciudad Acuña, a contrast to the thousands who had sheltered across the river under the Del Rio bridge.

All who were interviewed said they had traveled from either Brazil or Chile, where many Haitian expats tried to make a life amid political turmoil at home. The trek to the U.S.-Mexico border took between one to three months by bus and on foot. But soon after arriving, the migrants faced a new threat: deportation.

Around 4,000 Haitians have been deported from the United States in the last two weeks, Alejandro Mayorkas, secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, told CNN on Sept. 26. His department estimated that 30,000 had been processed in Del Rio since Sept. 9 and that 8,000 returned voluntarily to Mexico. Currently, no migrants are camped under the international bridge.

After hearing expulsions were possible, some migrants had second thoughts about taking the final step across the river.

“I’m afraid to go back to Haiti,” Fredelin Jean said, leaning against the wall of a small structure that provided shade to a few of his friends. About 10 cellphones sat charging a few feet away. “Right now, Haiti is going through a difficult situation: the earthquake … political problems. I was in danger every day.”

In Haiti, Jean was an elementary school teacher who taught English, Creole and French. He later moved to Brazil for three years, but the lack of work permits kept him from finding a similar job. Tired of the stress, he and his friends headed to the United States, spending around $6,000 each to travel by bus and on foot just to reach the U.S.-Mexico border.

“There were thieves. There were women that had been whipped by thieves because they didn’t have money,” he said, adding that women had also been raped. “A lot of my friends saw a lot of dead people.”

Jean said he wanted to have legal status and hoped he might be able to do that in Mexico. Others had the same idea: Nearby, nearly two dozen lined up to speak to a worker from the Comisión Nacional de los Derechos Humanos, the National Commission for Human Rights, hoping she could help them secure Mexican work permits.

When about 400 Haitians arrived on foot at San Fernando, Tamaulipas, Mexico, on Sept. 17, Fr. Francisco Gallardo, a Catholic priest and director of the Casa del Migrante shelter in Matamoros, Mexico, drove almost two hours south to meet them. There, he and Juan Sierra, a lay assistant, joined ministers from other faiths to guide the caravan as it came to a fork in the road, hoping to avoid a repeat of the August 2010 mass killing of 72 immigrants in the town.

As the group neared Reynosa, Mexico, the next day, Gallardo alerted the news media and met them at the town’s immigration checkpoint to facilitate the group’s passage into the border town, Sierra said.

“The whole process was reported live [in the media], so then, the authorities felt forbidden to confront the Haitians,” Sierra said. “We convinced the entire caravan not to be aggressive — to pass with joy, yes, but with respect. “

Sr. Norma Pimentel, executive director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, regularly visits thousands of Haitians sleeping in the plaza in Reynosa. The Missionaries of Jesus sister praised the way pastors from local evangelical churches and the Catholic Church were working together to find housing for the town’s newest residents because they were more vulnerable to crime.

At a Sept. 23 public hearing for the Homeland Security and Public Safety Committee of the Texas House of Representatives, Pimentel called for the state and federal governments to support the community’s efforts to make sure immigrants were treated with dignity and respect.

“Families are coming here because they are afraid for their lives, especially of their children,” she said. “They’re looking not for a better life, but just life. They want to be safe.”

https://www.globalsistersreport.org/news/news/news/faith-groups-band-together-help-haitians-camped-us-mexico-border?site_redirect=1

Mexico, migrants

Answering call to US-Mexico border, sisters share the intensity, gifts of what they witness

A migrant family from Nicaragua seeking asylum in the U.S. waits to be transported to a Border Patrol processing facility after crossing the Rio Grande into La Joya, Texas, May 13, 2021. (CNS/Reuters/Adrees Latif)

Sr. Kristin Peters of the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration traveled to Arizona, where she ministered with Casa Alitas, the Kino Border Initiative and the Tucson Samaritans, who help migrants braving the desert to cross from Mexico into the United States. She reports here on her time with the Tucson Samaritans:

When we travel with Christine of the Tucson Samaritans into the desert, she implores us to please, please tell people what the border wall has done. She asks that we show them and tell them the damage that it has caused.

Into a 4×4 vehicle we pack gallon jugs of water, a backpack filled with water and food, and Samaritan signs for the truck. Though it is unlikely, she tells us if we meet a migrant, we will offer the bag and talk with the person about what they need. The migrant may want to give up the journey or continue. They make their own decision; we do not influence them.

The Tucson Samaritans are volunteers who put water into the desert and educate groups who come to Tucson to learn about the border. The Jeep we travel in is named Joe, after former county sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was particularly inhumane in his treatment toward immigrants. Proceeds from a U.S. Justice Department civil rights lawsuit against Arpaio’s office benefited community groups that support immigrants; the Jeep named for Arpaio was paid for by the settlement.

Christine says 258 people have died this year in the desert. I understand over the last 10 years, there have been almost 6,000 deaths in the desert.

As we drive, Christine notes that migrants walk along this road hoping someone their coyotes have paid will pick them up. We pull over at a mile marker indicating 38 miles from the border checkpoint. There is a cross. We stand in solidarity, acknowledging the effects of the border wall and the severity of our immigration policy. I ask Christine why she does this work with Tucson Samaritans. She says she knows what it is like to be thirsty when hiking in the desert; it is a humanitarian thing.

She adds that the United States has signed on to international law, which allows people to come to your border to ask for asylum. Given the number of families sending their children alone, it seems we are truly only giving children a chance for refuge. She and others I have met report that men are often separated from their families, put in detention or returned to distant border towns.

We return to the truck and head toward the border wall. The stories unravel as we drive. As Christine shares, I remember Diego, who works at Casa Alitas. He described the organization as grassroots and volunteer-led. He shares this in a way that is touching, noting that it is the community volunteers who are truly the ones who make the difference. When I asked Diego why he does this work, he asked me what I would do if it were my family.

The wall comes to an end and begins again at various stops where the steel slats did not match. At the end of the wall, two water jugs are placed. I think in this way, we leave our mark. We then drive in the opposite direction, leaving jugs of water near where there are other gaps in the steel construction.

On this journey through the desert, I witnessed many who remain standing in solidarity, just as there are many who continue to seek a better life for their families in this country. Equally, I witness the many dreams lost in crossing the desert.

Near the end of our journey, at mile marker 19, we kneel and stand at the cross of an infant who was born and died in the crossing. We mark her life and her mother’s life with our tears and our prayers. Through this encuentro, we walk away with our heart and conscience pricked. Hopefully, we are provoked with a clearer sense of mission and forthcoming action.

Mercy Sisters Peggy Verstege and Carmelita Hagan paused in the airport in Laredo, Texas, on their way back from the border to write a reflection, “Shoes for the Journey”:

The young mothers and children come.

Young fathers come with children, too.

They come miles, believing that life will be better in this country.

They come tired but trusting us to help them go forward.

They come hungry and hot.

They come each day.

Most need clothes.

Many need shoes for the journey.

Each day is busy, busy … Long and hot … Sometimes chaotic … but real.

¿Tiene camiseta? ¿Pantalones? ¿Zapatos? [Do you have a T-shirt? Jeans? Shoes?]

¿Bolsa? ¿Banar? ¿Por favor? Yo tengo hambre. ¿Comida? ¿Agua? Por favor [Bag? Bath? Please? I am hungry. Food? Water? Please]

They wait in line to be processed.

They wait for food, clothing, and a place to sleep.

They wait with patience in the Texas heat.

They live in hope, a precious thread for life.

What more must we be and do for the journey?

Will the seekers be welcomed?

We can only hope and act in love, prepare food, find water and get the clothes and shoes for their journey.

https://www.globalsistersreport.org/news/justice/ministry/answering-call-us-mexico-border-sisters-share-intensity-gifts-what-they

India, migrants

Yearning eyes: the plight of the migrants in India

(Unsplash/Arturo Madrid)
(Unsplash/Arturo Madrid)

The blank look on his face … a look of hopelessness … helplessness … perplexed … it wasn’t a silent face at all. The look on his wrinkled, aged face spoke aloud, as he stood passively before the vehicle that was about to leave the slum. He had remained absolutely silent all through our interactions with the people and now his look was disturbing. It yearned for something!

We had organized food distribution for stranded migrants in one of the slums in Mumbai due to the lockdown. This slum area of migrants is not unlike other migrant living areas elsewhere in India. They live in subhuman, pathetic conditions, lacking decent housing facilities, potable water, sanitation facilities and other amenities, and are exposed to inclement weather and a hazardous atmosphere. They work for long hours, sometimes risking their health and lives, and yet are paid less than they are entitled to.

The sad eyes of this aged man seemed to express his resignation to his fate, and I wondered if it reflected the feelings of the rest of the migrant population, who also seem to have accepted their present plight helplessly. This resignation might also arise due to the insecurity, uncertainty and unpredictability of their lives.

As they lack financial and health security and have little or no social support from a caste- and class-ridden society, they are unsure of what they can or cannot control in their lives. This leads to a certain passivity, and they feel locked down deep within, unable to rise above. All that they can do is to sigh, become resigned to their “fate,” accepting life events as bound to happen, and feel helpless to change them.

In my experience, their helplessness also leads to a feeling of alienation, of being severed from the mainstream, no longer deemed worthy of love, care or support. Unable to cope with the dynamics and politics of modern-day society, they experience themselves as deficient, limited and powerless.

Even though they aren’t behind prison walls, the structures of society imprison them and they are forced to face physical and emotional captivity. Their helplessness leads them to feel exposed and vulnerable, like a bird grounded by a broken wing.

As I looked at the yearning eyes of the aged man, it seemed to me that he gazed not at the vehicle which was preparing to leave, but at the complacency of those who were more privileged than he. I think that this complacent attitude towards the plight of the migrants in India stems from ignorance about the real extent of the migrants’ situation, or the migrants’ internalized attitude of “resigning to their fate.” Are we so mired in our complacency that we have become blind to their reality? Have we etched more deeply in them the feeling that they have to be resigned to their fate?

Has our craving for power stripped them naked of their own inner strength and dignity, thus making them powerless and limited?

For me, the recent low point of this societal complacency has been the passivity of a few privileged people in India as they watched the unending trail of desperate migrants, within the city and interstate, trying to reach home to be with their loved ones. The migrants took any means — cycles, motorbikes, or container trucks. Some of them even made treacherous journeys on foot, sometimes walking hundreds of kilometers.

Social media projected photographs of women carrying their children in their arms, and their personal belongings on their heads. In such foot journeys, a few of them even lost their lives before reaching home, due to exhaustion, all because they wanted to escape dying of hunger as they tried to save themselves from the coronavirus. These are India’s nameless, faceless migrants who were unjustly denied time and transport to return home, due to the sudden and dramatic announcement of the lockdown — which was, ironically, to save lives.

But who cares for the lives of the poor?

The yearning eyes hit hard at my complacency and I realized that it is this complacency that continues to enslave them. The eyes that are “resigned to fate,” internalizing helplessness, are knocking hard at hearts filled with complacency. These eyes look into the hard-heartedness of those who wallow in the little charity that they offer and think of it as “great generosity,” but which does little to raise the self-worth and dignity of the neglected poor. The yearning eyes long for freedom and dignity, and they continue to pierce into complacent hearts, seeking a response from me and from you.

https://www.globalsistersreport.org/news/social-justice/column/yearning-eyes-plight-migrants-india

migrants, trafficking

Libya: More than 150 migrants freed in raid on traffickers

As many as 156 migrants were rescued by Libyan authorities from human traffickers in the southeastern city of Kufra [Kufra Security Directorate/Facebook]
As many as 156 migrants were rescued by Libyan authorities from human traffickers in the southeastern city of Kufra [Kufra Security Directorate/Facebook]

Libyan authorities say they have raided a secret prison in a southeastern city used by human traffickers and freed at last 156 African migrants – including 15 women and five children.

The raid in the city of Kufra took place on February 16 after a migrant managed to escape a house-turned-prison last week and reported to authorities that he and other migrants were held and tortured by traffickers there, the Kufra security bureau said.

Security forces arrested at least six traffickers and referred them to prosecutors for further investigation on Sunday, it said.

The rescued migrants, who were from Somalia, Eritrea and Sudan, were taken to a shelter where they were given food, clothes and blankets.

The raid shows the perils that refugees and migrants face in conflict-stricken Libya, which has emerged as an integral transit point for African and Arab migrants fleeing war and poverty to Europe.

Libya descended into chaos following the 2011 uprising that toppled and killed longtime ruler Muammar Gaddafi. The country is split between an internationally recognised government based in the capital, Tripoli, and a rival administration in the country’s east.

Traffickers have exploited the chaos and often pack desperate families into ill-equipped rubber boats that stall and founder along the perilous Mediterranean route.

Thousands have drowned along the way, while others have ended up detained in squalid smugglers’ pens or crowded detention centres.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/2/22/libya-more-than-150-migrants-freed-in-raid-on-traffickers

Ethiopia, migrants

‘Double burden’ for Ethiopian migrants stranded as conflict rages in Tigray

An Ethiopian woman who fled the ongoing fighting in Tigray region prepares a meal in Hamdait village on the Sudan-Ethiopia border in eastern Kassala state, Sudan November 14, 2020. REUTERS/El Tayeb Siddig

ADDIS ABABA,- When migrant worker Lula flew home to Ethiopia after eight months in Saudi detention, she thought her ordeal was over.

But instead of returning to her family in Tigray, she found herself stranded in the capital, unable to contact her parents and daughter as fighting has cut off the northern region and raised fears of a humanitarian crisis.

Lula is one of dozens of migrants who returned from Saudi Arabia last week to find that internet and phone connections to Tigray have been suspended and roads and airports closed.

“I have tried to contact my family but the phone is not working,” 29-year-old Lula, who declined to publish her full name, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation from Addis Ababa.

“It is concerning not to hear from them at this point.”

Two weeks of escalating conflict between federal forces and rebellious local rulers has killed hundreds and pushed 30,000 refugees into Sudan, leading the United Nations (U.N.) to warn on Tuesday of a “full-scale humanitarian crisis”.

It has called into question whether Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, Africa’s youngest leader and last year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner, can hold his fractured nation together ahead of national elections next year.

More than 14,000 Ethiopians have returned from Saudi Arabia since March, according to the U.N. migration agency, IOM, where many like Lula were detained in camps that the U.N. described as overcrowded and unsanitary.

Every year, it is estimated that tens of thousands of Ethiopians travel irregularly to the Gulf in search of better paid work. Many end up exploited as maids or on building sites.

STRESSFUL

More than 80 out of about 260 migrants who flew home to Ethiopia after the conflict broke out had to stay in a hotel in Addis Ababa because they came from Tigray and had no relatives in the capital. This included about 20 minors.

Shimeles Belaso, a director at Ethiopia’s ministry of peace said that the stranded returnees will be transported to their respective towns and villages when the situation calms.

“There are now security issues … just letting them go there is troublesome and (they could) be troubled and endangered,” he said.

“Therefore, the Ethiopian government is handling them, covering all the necessary costs for them.”

Lula was relieved that she had a friend in Addis Ababa who was willing to take her in, providing some home comforts and a familiar face to help brush away her painful memories of prison in Saudi Arabia.

Her dream of working abroad fell flat this year when rebels in Yemen – through which she and scores of other migrants were travelling to Saudi Arabia – rounded them up, while shooting and calling them “coronavirus carriers” and took them to the border.

Lula was one of thousands of migrants who were held in Saudi detention centres, described by Human Rights Watch as squalid and abusive, before being repatriated to Ethiopia.

“There were illnesses, hunger, deaths,” Lula recalled.

“It is better to beg in your own country,” said Lula, who has twice made the dangerous journey to Saudi Arabia, adding that she would not return there illegally.

Kassahun Habtamu, assistant professor at the School of Psychology of Addis Ababa University, said that the conflict and ensuing communications blackout put returnees at risk of developing mental health problems.

“Their migration experience is a very big burden by itself,” said Kassahun, who has studied the mental health problems faced by Ethiopian returnees from the Middle East.

“And this conflict now … they don’t know what is happening to their family members, they can’t even tell them that they are back. So this is a double burden, and it is very, very stressful.”

For Lula, the only option now is to find work in Addis Ababa while waiting for the conflict to end.

“I’m worried not to find a job, to have no money,” she said, after days of fruitless searching in the capital. “If the roads were open and I could see my daughter, I would go today.”

https://news.trust.org/item/20201119153517-qb5ec/?utm_campaign=trending&utm_medium=trendingWebWidget&utm_source=detailPage&utm_content=link5
Charity, India, migrants

Indian nuns aid migrant laborers stranded on way home during lockdown

Mothers and children wait at Kaushambi Bus Terminal on the Delhi-Uttar Pradesh border to go to their villages in eastern India hundreds of kilometers away. (Jessy Joseph)

New Delhi — Sr. Sujata Jena could not sleep after seeing a picture of a young girl with a heavy load on her head in a WhatsApp message. “Her stained face, wet with tears, haunted me,” the member of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary told Global Sisters Report.

The photo was being circulated to illustrate the plight of hundreds of thousands of people who hit India’s highways following a nationwide lockdown to contain the coronavirus pandemic.

As Jena saw on social media platforms pictures and videos from around India, the 38-year-old lawyer and nun set out to help migrants reach home. One video clip showed 10 workers crammed into a room in Kerala, a southwestern Indian state. The men said their employer had locked them up and that they desperately needed help to reach their villages in Odisha, more than 1,000 miles northeast.

As the lockdown confined her to her convent in the Odisha capital of Bhubaneswar, Jena on May 17 joined a social media network that helps the stranded migrants.

By June 24, more than 300 migrants, including the 10, stranded in southern Indian states reached their native villages in states such as Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Odisha and West Bengal in eastern India, thanks to Jena’s efforts.

Jena is among hundreds of Catholic nuns who are on the front lines as the church reaches out to migrant laborers affected by the initial 21-day lockdown Prime Minister Narendra Modi imposed on India’s 1.3 billion people from midnight of March 25 with only four hours’ notice.

The lockdown, considered the world’s largest and toughest attempt to contain the pandemic, has been extended five times with varying degrees of relaxation until July 31.

The lockdown suddenly rendered jobless millions of migrant laborers in cities.

“As they lost the job, they had no place to stay, no income and no security,” says Salesian Fr. Joe Mannath, national secretary of the Conference of Religious India, the association of men and women religious major superiors in the country.

As the lockdown halted India’s public transport system, migrant laborers in cities swarmed highways and roads within a few days. Most walked and some cycled to their native villages, hundreds of miles away.

Mannath says the fear of starvation and contracting the coronavirus led to a “chaotic exodus” of workers from cities.

Church groups are among those trying to help these workers.

On June 6, Caritas India, the Indian bishops’ aid agency, informed a webinar that the church reached more than 11 million people during the lockdown period, including many migrant workers.

Mannath, who coordinates India’s more than 130,000 religious, including nearly 100,000 women, claims the bulk of that service was carried out by the religious.

https://www.globalsistersreport.org/news/coronavirus/news/indian-nuns-aid-migrant-laborers-stranded-way-home-during-lockdown

migrants, USA

Coronavirus comes to a migrant tent city at US border

A child hugs a volunteer teacher at a camp for asylum seekers on Dec. 8, 2019 in the Mexican border town of Matamoros. Credit: John Moore/Getty

More than 1,500 people live in a tent city without running water or adequate sanitation at the border of Texas and Mexico, while they apply for asylum in the U.S. Coronavirus has arrived in the camp, a religious sister has said, which should call attention to the condition in which asylum seekers are living.

“These families are living in donated tents at the mercy of extreme weather. Here, the temperatures can rise above 100 degrees, and when it rains, the downpours knock down their only refuge and leave them in mud pits,”Sr. Norma Pimentel wrote in a July 5 op-ed for the Washington Post.

“Imagine living in such uncertainty, where even such basics as running water and a place to shower are nonexistent; where you have to depend on outside organizations for food, which you have to cook over a campfire. Like the prisons and nursing homes that have been breeding grounds for the virus in the United States, the camp is crowded with people who for now are not going anywhere.”

Pimentel, a sister of the Missionaries of Jesus, is director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, in Texas.

“Do not ignore the suffering occurring here,” she urged, explaining that the migrant camp in Matamoros, Mexico, has more than 1,500 men, women, and children, in a make-shift tent city, as they wait for their applications for admittance to the United States to be processed.

The camp has been in existence since last summer, after the federal government initiated the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), which allow U.S. officials to return undocumented migrants to Mexico pending adjudication of their claims for asylum.

Addressing the situation is more, not less urgent because of the coronavirus pandemic, she said, noting that the camp recorded its first positive case last week.

That the camp has remained free of coronavirus for so long was, she said, was “remarkable” and a testament to the dedication of volunteers working to serve the people enduring emotional and practical hardship.

While the one patient in the camp, a woman from the interior of Mexico, was quickly isolated and removed to a nearby medical center run by Doctors Without Borders, Pimentel said that the conditions make the camp a potential outbreak waiting to happen, and that because of the pandemic, the camp has become less safe.

Because of the pandemic, volunteer activity in the camp is limited to a small number, who are able to provide assistance with nourishment and some health care needs, Pimentel wrote.

“All this makes it even harder to keep the camps safe from the cartels and gangsters who continue to prey on these largely defenseless asylum seekers.”

The camp’s existence, said Pimentel, was the unnecessary consequence of the government’s asylum protocols, which itself fail to “address people with dignity.”

“We should not have people forced to wait for asylum — trying to find safety for themselves and their families — while camped outside in the elements for months at a time. It is contrary to our laws and the dictates of humanity.”
 
Pimentel said that “the story of these asylum seekers has faded from the front pages of U.S. newspapers and from television screens but the cruel and unfair situation continues.”

“It is time that we put an end to it, and to end the MPP policy. Until that happens, we will continue to help those who are defenseless, whose only real ‘crime’ is trying to seek protection for themselves and their families.”

The Trump administration has made several changes to asylum and immigration policy over the past 18 months, all of which have come under sustained criticism from the bishops of the United States.

In September 2019, after the Trump administration announced a rule limiting asylum eligibility to those who had already applied and been rejected for asylum in those countries passed through on their way to the U.S, Bishop Joe Vásquez of Austin, head of the U.S. bishops’ migration committee, issued a strong critique of the change.

Vásquez said the rule “jeopardizes the safety of vulnerable individuals and families fleeing persecution and threatens family unity” and “undermines our nation’s tradition of being a global leader providing and being a catalyst for others to provide humanitarian protection to those in need.”

In November 2019, Auxiliary Bishop Mario Dorsonville of Washington, who serves as chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Migration, and Sean Callahan, president and CEO of Catholic Relief Services, the bishops’ international relief agency signed a joint statement on the Trump administration’s changes to asylum policy.

Administration policy “undermines U.S. moral leadership in protecting vulnerable populations and risks further destabilizing the region,” they said.

“To preserve and uphold the sacredness and dignity of all human life, we cannot turn our back on families and individuals in desperate need of help.”

“In light of the Gospel, let us always remember we are invited to embrace the foreigner and to take care of this human person.”

https://wordpress.com/block-editor/post/snddenjpic.org/17086

Charity, migrants

Migrant workers flood Goa beaches for jobs; sisters help them fit in

Sr. Marie Lou Barboza, left, a member of the Immaculate Heart of Mary congregation, speaks to Chandra, a migrant woman from Telangana state who now lives in Saligao, a village in Goa. (Lissy Maruthanakuzhy)

PANAJI, INDIA — Sr. Marie Lou Barboza was shocked to see the condition of a teenage girl one of her volunteers brought to her. The girl had burn marks on her body, and her unkempt hair was cut haphazardly. She would become hysterical when someone approached her. Barboza discovered that her condition was the result of maltreatment by her employer.

“That incident compelled us to begin our work among migrants,” the member of the Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary told Global Sisters Report earlier this year in an interview at the congregation’s apartment in Porvorim, just north of Panaji, in Goa state.

That incident was seven years ago when Barboza was working for the National Domestic Workers’ Movement in the west coast Indian state, the country’s tourism hub that draws thousands of laborers from other regions.

Barboza’s congregation, a partner of the workers movement, sent two sisters to Goa in 2011 to aid domestic workers. Barboza joined them two years later after working with the movement in Mumbai, India’s commercial capital, and Tamil Nadu, a southern Indian state.

After meeting the mistreated girl, Barboza began visiting parishes and homes of migrant domestic workers in Goa. She went by herself to visit the slums, as her two elderly companions could not travel.

Later, two young nuns joined Barboza to work exclusively with about 1,600 migrants, mostly tribal women of various religions from states such as Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Odisha and Telangana. The nuns’ three-bedroom apartment has become the meeting place for the migrants, who work in different parts of Goa, a small state.

While migrant women work as domestic help and serve in restaurants, shops and roadside kiosks, the men build houses and roads or work as waiters and bakers.

Barboza, who is 67, says many migrants refuse to join the workers movement because of threats from employers, who dislike the job demands the activists are seeking.

“We send notices to employers if they pay unjust wages,” Barboza said as she took GSR to a slum of migrant workers in Saligao, 3.5 miles from the nuns’ residence.

The nun said the migrants want to maintain their self-respect. “They are not pleased if we take photographs” of them and their families.

A 12-hour day for the sister

The nun’s weekday routine begins at 6 a.m. when she sets out with her lunchbox to visit families in the slums to help them get food and medical aid. She returns to the convent at 6 p.m., exhausted.

“My heart goes out for the migrants. They struggle for their living. They are also forced to find new places to stay every two years,” she said as we moved from one family to another. Employers keep migrants on the move, fearing that, after two years, they can claim permanent residency on their property. In addition, when new tenants come, landlords can raise the room rents.

Sunday is the busiest day for the nuns because a string of workers come with their families to chitchat with the sisters and sometimes stay for a meal. “That is our life. We have committed to serve the poor, the migrants, the domestic servants, daily laborers,” Barboza explained.

Barboza got a call one night from another teenage girl, complaining about her employer trying to molest her when his wife was away to have her baby. “I called the man and asked him to bring the girl to our residence at once. He brought her and apologized for his misbehavior. He requested me to send the girl back to work for him, but I refused.”

But her decision brought another problem for the sisters, whose quarters are limited. She had to find a place for the girl to stay at night. “There are times when we have to provide accommodation and food to such people.”

Besides attending to such problems, the nuns visit the migrants’ houses, focus on the faith formation of the Catholics among them, and create awareness about their rights.

Pushback from employers and locals

Barboza says her involvement with the migrant workers was challenging in the beginning. “It was tough to get acceptance of our mission by the employers.”

Her troubles were not limited to employers alone. Even local people and government officers ridiculed her for spending time on behalf of the migrants. They warned that the migrants would bring more like them to Goa and create problems for locals.

“They told me to find locals as domestic workers and help them first. Then look after the migrants. I took the challenge and found many local domestic workers. The government officials were willing to help them, but the local maids were not enough to meet the demand,” she said.

She says even their parish priest could not understand their involvement with the migrants, until she took the girl who had burn marks to him so that he could pray over her to dispel her fear.

https://www.globalsistersreport.org/news/ministry/news/migrant-workers-flood-goa-beaches-jobs-sisters-help-them-fit

Europe, migrants

‘Shocking’ abuse of migrants forced to pick strawberries in Spain, U.N. says

Workers dust strawberries during harvest at a farm in Palos de la Frontera, southwest Spain February 27, 2009. REUTERS/Marcelo del Pozo

BARCELONA, – Spain must urgently protect thousands of women brought over from Morocco as essential workers to pick strawberries during the new coronavirus pandemic in abysmal conditions and without basic hygiene, a United Nations rapporteur said on Wednesday.

About 3,000 Moroccan women travel to Spain, which provides more than half of Europe’s fruit and vegetables, to harvest strawberries in southern Huelva province each year, despite decades of complaints of exploitation, unpaid wages and abuse.

“These workers have been deliberately put at risk during the pandemic,” said Olivier De Schutter, who became the U.N. Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights in March.

“Poor housing conditions, overcrowded settlements, poor access to water and sanitation … no ventilation of work spaces … absence of cleaning of any surfaces or objects – this is the most shocking,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

De Schutter said the situation amounted to forced labour, as the migrant women were coerced to work in unsafe conditions that violated international human rights standards and domestic laws.

A spokeswoman for the ministry of labour and social economy said that it was inspecting the working conditions of migrant agricultural workers across Spain, regardless of their country of origin.

“The Inspectorate of Labour and Social Security, an autonomous agency of the Ministry of Labour and Social Economy, has programmed a specific campaign for this year, as with previous years, to check working conditions,” she said.

“The Inspectorate applies the regulation for the protection of workers’ rights with the forcefulness that the situation requires in each case.”

GARDEN OF EUROPE

Morocco and Spain signed an agreement in 2001, granting women temporary visas to harvest fruit in Spain, promising much higher wages than they could earn at home in north Africa.

“Morocco is very much at fault for not diligently ensuring that the workers’ rights are met,” De Schutter said, adding that the strawberry pickers in Huelva were “just one example of a widespread phenomenon in Spain”.

Last year, 10 Moroccan women filed a lawsuit claiming they had been trafficked, assaulted and exploited while picking strawberries in Huelva. It has yet to reach a verdict.

Eight rights groups lodged an appeal with the U.N. last month, asking it to investigate the conditions for Moroccan migrants on Spanish farms working without gloves, masks or social distancing protections against COVID-19.

“Many consumers depend on Spain – it really is the garden of Europe – and yet a large proportion of our fruit and vegetables come from workers living in these substandard conditions,” said De Schutter, a Belgian legal scholar.

The women migrants – many of whom had left their children behind in Morocco – systematically did unpaid overtime, yet as seasonal workers were completely powerless, he said.

“These women are misinformed about what they can expect in Spain. Obviously they don’t speak Spanish and they are not able to stand up for their rights as they cannot form unions,” De Schutter said. “They are very vulnerable to being exploited.”

https://news.trust.org/item/20200701174043-qljpu/

Justice, migrants

Thai clothing factory compensates exploited migrant workers

Screenshot_2020-04-03 Thai clothing factory compensates exploited migrant workers
ARCHIVE PHOTO: A labourer works at a garment factory in Bangkok, Thailand, May 30, 2016. Picture taken May 30, 2016. REUTERS/Athit Perawongmetha

BANGKOK, – More than 150 Burmese migrants who were illegally charged excessive recruitment fees to secure jobs at a Thai garment factory have won a rare compensation payout, company officials and human rights groups said on Friday.

Sheico Thailand, which makes wetsuits for outdoor clothing retailer Patagonia, has made payments totalling more than $100,000 to about 170 Burmese workers, according to Finnwatch, a Finland-based watchdog group.

Between 2018 and 2019, the migrant workers had paid up to 18,500 baht ($559) in recruitment fees to agents and to Sheico in order to secure jobs at the factory, according to Thai charity Migrant Workers Rights Network.

Under Thai law, such fees – that cover visa costs, a health checkup and a work permit – are capped at 2,910 baht.

“We work closely with our suppliers to educate them on the human rights issues that recruitment fees can lead to and offer solutions to mitigate the risks of working with third party labour recruiters,” said Thuy Nguyen, a manager for California-based Patagonia, which confirmed compensation had been paid.

“We value Sheico’s commitment to meeting Patagonia’s migrant worker employment standards and capacity to continuously improve,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an email.

Patagonia, which is known for its environmental activism, began work on eliminating recruitment fees within its supply chain in 2014 and has developed a set of standards for migrant workers hired by its suppliers.

Sheico, which has its headquarters in Taiwan, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Thailand has about 3 million registered migrant workers mainly from Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos, but the United Nations estimates that at least 2 million more are working informally across the country.

There has been an increased effort to tackle excessive recruitment fees and debt bondage among migrants workers, as more industries and their consumers become aware of the problem.

In December, Cal-Comp Electronics, which supplies to tech giants such as HP Inc – said it would reimburse its workers in Thailand after a report found the Burmese migrants had to pay excessive recruitment fees.

Patagonia quickly identified abuses in the recruitment practices of its suppliers and took swift action to fix the problem, said Finnwatch researcher Anu Kultalahti.

“Patagonia’s response on this case was in many ways exemplary and provides a good model for other companies that face similar situations,” said Kultalahti.

“Such action requires countries to make human rights due diligence mandatory for companies. Voluntary measures have yielded unsatisfactory results, which is why Patagonia’s example is still so rare.”

 

 

 

https://news.trust.org/item/20200403025723-v7fb1/