Immigration and Migration

Earlier this month, I hosted a CFR roundtable with Becca Heller, director and cofounder of the International Refugee Assistance Project. My discussion with Heller brought to light some of the challenges women face at the intersection of immigration and gender.

This afternoon, I joined Randal C. Archibold, Arturo Sarukhan, and José W. Fernández to speak about the domestic politics of Mexico, the impact of corruption, and Mexico’s bilateral strategy with the United States following disagreements over immigration, border walls, and the North American Free Trade Agreement. You can watch the conversation here.

Earlier this week, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly confirmed reports that he was considering a policy that would separate women and children who cross the U.S.-Mexico border illegally. If enacted, the policy would be both devastating for women and their children—many fleeing violence in Central America— and costly for the American taxpayer.  Under the proposal women would be kept in detention while applying for asylum and children would be put in protective custody. Currently, women and children are released from detention quickly as they wait for a decision on their case, in part, because of a federal appeals court ruling that prohibits keeping children in prolonged detention. Last year, however, there was an increase in the number of unaccompanied minors and families with children fleeing Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. From October 2016 to January 2017, 54,147 families (typically defined as mothers traveling with their children) arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border with a vast majority from those three Central American nations. The three countries have continued to experience a surge in gang violence and organized crime along with impunity for perpetrators. Over the last three years on average, 88 percent of families passed their credible fear screening—a screening that determines if an asylum seeker has a credible fear of persecution. Women and girls in these countries increasingly face the threat of sexual violence, forced prostitution, and gender-based violence by organized crime and gangs. Women and children fleeing Central America have faced violence in their home country and along their journey. Separating traumatized mothers and children from one another will add to that trauma. In addition, placing children in protective custody will place more of a burden on our child welfare system. Plus, keeping women detained for the duration of their case will increase the number of people kept in detention, which poses increased costs for U.S. taxpayers. During FY2016, the United States spent on average $123 per day on an adult bed in detention and $342 per family unit per day with an annual budget of around $3 billion for detentions.  Maintaining the current policy—which keeps families together—is not only the right course of action, it’s the smart, fiscally prudent course to follow. The potential policy comes as the Trump Administration pursues more aggressive immigration enforcement policies, including, for example, through new administrative directives. On Monday, President Trump signed a revised executive order (EO) on “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States” replacing the earlier controversial executive order on immigration, signed in January, that was blocked by a federal appeals court. The new order continues the ban for ninety days on travelers from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen but Iraq is no longer included. Iraq’s removal from the list was requested by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, along with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and National Security Advisor Gen. H.R. McMaster. It also replaced the indefinite ban on Syrian refugees with a 120-day ban. However, the new order retains a core element of the old one— slashing the total number of refugees to be admitted to the United States per year from around 110,000 to 50,000. As I have written before, since the United States is the largest resettlement country in the world, the decision to cut the total of number of refugees will both adversely affect women and have destabilizing effects globally, as it affects not only the U.S. resettlement infrastructure, but the refugee resettlement landscape worldwide.

The new administration has emphasized the need to curb security threats from Latin America: bad hombres, rapist Mexicans, and the wall are among the wrenching rhetorical symbols that President Trump has used to signal his goals. Five data points highlight the challenges the administration will face as it moves to secure the southern border. Crime directly consumes 3.55 percent of GDP in Latin America, on average. This is about twice the average cost in developed nations, and exceeds the annual income of the bottom 30 percent of the regional population. Corruption may consume an additional 3 percent of GDP, on average, with illicit financial outflows in some countries suggesting even higher costs. Impunity reigns. Latin American nations are near the top of a global impunity index, with Mexico, Colombia, Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador among the world’s worst performers. The practical implications are significant: 9 out of 10 murders go unresolved in a region that is among the world’s most violent. Astounding levels of violence drive migration. A survey of Central American migrants conducted last year by the Inter-American Dialogue found that violence was the second major reason given for the decision to migrate. No wonder, when Latin American homicide rates are four times higher than the global average. The most common trigger for migration, the search for economic opportunities, may also be influenced by the brake crime puts on local economies. In 2014, the U.S. had 55 million self-identified Hispanics or Latinos (about 17 percent of the population). Of these, just over a third – 19.4 million – were immigrants. Latin American remittances surpassed $70 billion in 2016, continuing an upward trend in which remittances to Latin America have more than doubled over the past fifteen years. According to a study of last year’s remittances, “[t]he growth in remittances to Central America…is mostly associated with continued insecurity in the region that is driving people out.” These five data points suggest that untangling the U.S. from Latin America will be fraught with difficulty. The push factors that drive migratory flows – crime, corruption, violence, and impunity – are tangled up with the pull factors that attract them to the U.S.– family ties and economic opportunity – in ways that are not easily undone. The five data points further suggest a strictly hardline approach at the border will be self-defeating. Crime and corruption together consume roughly 6.5 percent of Latin American GDP, driven in no small part by U.S. demand for narcotics and its various knock-on effects: organized crime, violence, and a weak rule of law. The fact that the costs of crime and corruption exceed remittances in most countries in the region suggests that an effective policy set to tackle threats from the southern border must at the very least include rule of law development assistance, aimed at tackling local “push” factors that drive violence and incentivize migration. If, as a consequence of administration policies, remittances were to decline and hundreds of thousands of migrants were blocked or sent home, the economic conditions in much of Latin America – and particularly in those countries closest to the U.S. southern border – would worsen considerably, deepening the “push” factors that drive migration. Both remittances and migratory flows would be driven underground: literally, through border tunnels, and figuratively, through illicit money laundering and organized migrant smuggling. The implications for border security would be profound.

Last week while in Mexico I had the chance to talk to Alejandro Domínguez, Reporter for Milenio TV about U.S.-Mexico relations under the Trump administration. You can watch the conversation here.

Gallup put out a poll today that shows most Americans disapprove of President Trump’s recent moves on immigration and refugees. Here’s the chart: The temporary ban on immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries draws the most support, but it tops out at just 42 percent in favor. And if you think Trump’s 43 percent approval rating is low for a president who has been on the job for less than two weeks, you’d be right. A year-and-a-half passed before Barack Obama’s approval rating sank that far, four-and-a-half years before George W. Bush’s did, and six months before Bill Clinton’s did. But as I have noted before, overall poll results are misleading in an age of political polarization. What matters is how opinion breaks down along party lines. So here’s the chart the White House and Capitol Hill are looking at: Democrats oppose Trump’s immigration and refugee moves. Independents lean against them. But Republicans overwhelmingly give them two thumbs up. The lesson from these numbers? As long as GOP support remains high, don’t expect the White House to change course—or for Congress to force it to—even if Democrats, and most Independents, disagree.

President Donald J. Trump has wide latitude to enact the sweeping changes to U.S. foreign policy that he has promised, but his executive authority is constrained by congressional legislation, treaty obligations, and bureaucratic processes.

Rachel Brown is a research associate for Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. This is the second part of a series on migration trends in India and China. In 1966, Indira Gandhi assumed the position of India’s prime minister and served until 1977, followed by a second term from 1980 to 1984. Yet fifty years later, women’s opportunities for economic advancement remain limited compared to other emerging economies. Currently just 27 percent of working-age Indian women participate in the workforce (compared to 58 percent in Bangladesh and 64 percent in China) and the participation rate has fallen over the past decade. This large gender gap in employment incurs significant financial consequences. In 2015, the McKinsey Global Institute estimated that “achieving gender equality in India would have a larger economic impact there than in any other region in the world” and could contribute as much as $700 billion to the nation’s GDP over the next decade. Yet attaining those gains will require changes in attitudes toward and opportunities for female employment. Recently – and perhaps in response to the gender gap’s costs – both the Indian government and private firms have undertaken efforts to boost female employment; as they do so, the role of internal migration in promoting women’s economic mobility will be an important consideration. On the face of it, the migration situation appears promising, with women making up approximately 70 percent of India’s internal migrants. However, nearly all of these women migrate for marriage, and the share between the ages of 15 and 64 who moved for jobs declined from just 1.3 percent to 0.8 percent between 1983 and 2008 despite dramatic GDP growth. (Although statistics on those who move for both marital and employment reasons are difficult to tease out since many datasets only cite one reason for a respondent’s move.) A reluctance in some communities to allow women to move for work has hindered greater economic opportunity. Assumption College Professor Smriti Rao argues that this reluctance stems from both “the continuing resilience of the patriarchal family” and the limited number of good or suitable jobs available for women in cities. Familial concerns often include the risks of exposure to crime, physical assault, improper relationships, and other threats. Additionally, while migration offers financial benefits, it can also inflict significant personal and social costs, particularly for children left behind if both parents move. Elsewhere, in countries such as China and Bangladesh, the large number of urban jobs for women in manufacturing, clothing production, and other areas created new economic opportunities, which led to an increase in women’s role in the workforce and in migration from rural areas to cities. Since employers often favor young women for these jobs, high demand pulled females into cities. For example, in the Chinese city of Shenzhen females made up 70 percent of migrant workers by 2003 and helped fuel the region’s rapid development. But India’s manufacturing and garment export industries remain less robust, and less than 20 percent of women currently employed work in the manufacturing, wholesale, and retail sectors. Additionally, a critical mass of migrants can facilitate greater movement and awareness of job opportunities. For example, in China, many rural women have used networks of guanxi (social connections) to find employment in cities by exchanging information with others from their home region; but since fewer Indian women migrate for work, fewer urban social networks emerge through which to spread news of employment opportunities. Sources of optimism are emerging from programs now underway to promote the economic role of women, which could help stimulate urban networks and open new employment prospects. These include trainings for female migrant workers in Bangalore’s textile factories and mentorship programs operated by Indian outlets of Yum! Brands restaurants. Additional initiatives to improve gender equality in the workforce will require not only further education and skills training, but also efforts to protect female migrant workers against sexual exploitation, trafficking, and other abuse to which they are particularly vulnerable. After all, it would be something of a Pyrrhic victory if India succeeds in reaping the benefits of women’s increased labor market participation, but fails to ensure greater protection of their rights in the workplace and in cities.

In October 2016, the New Zealand government withdrew the visa waiver arrangements for South African passport holders. It said the decision resulted from the number of South African visitors who used the visa waiver to visit family and friends in Zealand, rather than traveling to New Zealand for business or tourism. It also said that some South African visitors were overstaying the three month visa waiver limit or did not return to South Africa. The New Zealand government also cited the number of visitors who presented counterfeit South African passports and were denied entry by the New Zealand authorities. In December 2016, the South African government announced that it was in turn withdrawing the visa exemption for New Zealand passport holders. The home affairs minister said that South Africa’s visa waiver policy was based on reciprocity. South Africa and New Zealand are both members of the Commonwealth; white South Africans have long looked at New Zealand as a possible immigration destination. According to the 2013 New Zealand census, 54,279 or 1.36 percent of the country’s population had been born in South Africa. South Africa was the fifth largest source of New Zealand immigrants: ahead of it was the United Kingdom, China, India, and Australia. Over 90 percent of South African immigrants have arrived in New Zealand after the end of apartheid. The majority of whom are white. Contrary to conventional wisdom, in absolute numbers the white population of South Africa is larger now than it was at the end of apartheid. Though, whites at about 8.3 percent of the population are a smaller proportion of the total population than in 1991 (according to the last census prior to the end of apartheid whites represented 11.7 percent of the population ). Whites continue to immigrate to South Africa, notably from the U.K. The tit for tat withdrawal of the visa exemption by the two governments does not appear to have larger significance beyond New Zealand’s effort to eliminate visa abuse. South Africa’s action appears to be purely reciprocal.