By Sadie Moore
During former US President Trump’s campaign and administration, we often heard descriptions of massive immigrant caravans from Mexico and the Northern Triangle in Central America bringing thousands of “bad hombres” to the country. However, in actuality, thousands of refugees from these countries are fleeing extreme danger, crime, economic instability, hunger, and homelessness to arrive in the United States or elsewhere for a better life. During the COVID-19 pandemic, immigration has grown increasingly complicated due to exacerbation of these existing issues coupled with other problems such as natural disasters like tropical storms, flooding, and landslides.
The Trump administration was famous, or infamous, for their policies and rhetoric against immigrants, especially those from Latin America. The border wall, the child separation policy, you know it. However, new leadership in the United States promises change with regards to immigration. President Joe Biden has pledged to provide a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, encourage legal immigration, and address the root causes of mass migration.
However, this change is not consistent across the entire continent; in December 2020, a caravan containing 9,000 immigrants from Honduras was brought down by the Guatemalan government while en route to the United States. The Northern Triangle of Central American countries (Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador) are legally obligated to respect other nations’ national sovereignty and detain illegal immigrants leaving those nations. This had led to massive crackdowns all over Central America of refugees no matter what they were fleeing from. During COVID, restrictions have only gotten more severe.
Furthermore, despite the optimistic stance President Biden has taken, the US isn’t looking great for immigrants wishing to settle there during the pandemic. Mark Morgan, acting commissioner of the US Customs and Border Protection Agency, warned asylum seekers not to “waste their time and money.”
Even for immigrants currently living in the United States, the US isn’t an option anymore; more immigrants have left the United States in 2020 than have in the past two decades. Thousands of immigrants have returned to their home countries in order to escape the US’ growing number of COVID cases and lack of support for immigrants, who are disproportionately affected by the pandemic. Not only do undocumented immigrants tend to be in lower socioeconomic classes, but many report feeling scared to receive treatment from public hospitals in which they worry their status will be revealed.
Other countries, such as Mexico, offer some healthcare and unemployment benefits, but the United States has struggled for months to come up with a definitive plan for helping American as well as foreign workers through the pandemic with stimulus packages and the like. It is no surprise that immigrants are returning to their home countries for better care during these times.
However, as COVID continues to wipe out hundreds of thousands of people in the United States, immigration is not the number one priority. We can expect to see immigration stay on the backburner for a while as we continue to combat this global crisis.
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