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10th grade students

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To explore the essential question:

What is it like to be caught between multiple homes or nationalities? What does it mean to grow up as a refugee?

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CA History-Social Science Framework Content Standards

1. 10.9: Students analyze the international developments in the post-World World War II world

2. 10.10: Students analyze instances of nation-building in the contemporary world in at least two of the following regions or countries: the Middle East, Africa, Mexico and other parts of Latin America, and China.

CA Model School Library Standards

1. 3.2: Draw conclusions and make informed decisions: Analyze information from multiple sources and identify complexities, discrepancies, and different perspectives of sources.

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by Thi Bui
-graphic memoir-

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Welcome from Thi Bui, author of "The Best We Could Do" for UO Common Reading

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Read her explanation here or listen below:

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Read the book talk here or watch below:

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Thi Bui’s The Best We Could Do is a graphic memoir about the author’s family’s past, their escape from Vietnam after the war, and their lives in the United States afterward. The memoir explores some history (such as the French occupation of Vietnam and the war between the north and south), but it mostly focuses on her family’s sacrifices and their journey.

Because the book is a graphic novel, the illustrations are part of the storytelling; it’s important that readers experience both the language and the images to get the whole story. It is also made more complex due to the use of some Vietnamese language. Some contextual knowledge about the Vietnam War is required, but Bui develops background knowledge in the memoir through her parents’ storytelling.

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Bui’s family are victims of violence, discrimination, and government exploitation. Her parents have to make the impossible decision to leave friends and family behind to keep their children safe. This is an issue that people face all over the world when the place they once called home is no longer safe. Bui explores what it means to be caught between home countries and how growing up as a refugee impacted her relationships with family.

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Bui, T. (2018). The best we could do. Abrams ComicArts.

Bui, T. (n.d.) Audio name pronunciation [mp3]. TeachingBooks. https://www.teachingbooks.net/pronounce.cgi?aid=29954

UOregon CommonReading. (2018, August 28). Welcome from Thi Bui, author of "The Best We Could Do" for UO Common Reading [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7MDSyiXfhs&feature=emb_logo

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by Viet Thanh Nguyen
-essay-
"Many people have characterized my novel, “The Sympathizer,” as an immigrant story, and me as an immigrant. No. My novel is a war story and I am not an immigrant. I am a refugee..."

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Opinion | The Hidden Scars All Refugees Carry

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Like the Syrians today, my family wasn't fully welcome when we arrived here. Like us, they will wear their wounds for a long time.

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Viet Thanh Nguyen’s essay examines the difference between being an immigrant and a refugee. He blends statistical information with his own lived experience as a refugee from Vietnam. The essay reflects on his childhood and draws comparisons to the modern refugee crisis, especially in regards to the judgment and discrimination refugees face.

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Nguyen comments on the Syrian refugee crisis and empathizes with the issues of identity and personal history that resonate with refugees perhaps more than any other type of immigrant. He provides a powerful discussion of displacement and the lasting impact of the refugee journey. This pairs well with Bui’s graphic memoir as a more direct analysis of the refugee identity. Additionally, Bui begins her paperback edition with an interview with Nguyen, in which both discuss what it was like to grow up as refugees.

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Use this essay as a bridge from Bui’s refugee journey to other contexts. Since Nguyen compares his experience to that of Syrian refugees, teachers might ask students to research the Syrian civil war and make comparisons to Bui’s family’s experience.

Standards:
--CA Model School Library Standard 3.2
--CCSS.ELA.Anchor.RI.9: Analyze how two or more texts address similar themes or topics...

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Nguyen, V. T. (2016, September 2). The hidden scars all refugees carry. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/03/opinion/the-hidden-scars-all-refugees-carry.html

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Fatuma Abdullahi, Annie Johnson, and Maryan Osman

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Fatuma Abdullahi, Annie Johnson, and Maryan Osman

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by StoryCorps
-podcast + article-
The link also has a transcript available.

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Even though they're only teenagers, Fatuma Abdullahi and her sister, Maryan Osman, have undertaken a long, complicated journey to get to where they are today.

When they were very young, the girls lost their parents during the civil war in Somalia, the country in which they were born. They were taken in by their grandmother until she was resettled in Australia. Fatuma and Maryan were to follow her there, but in the interim, Australia closed its borders to Somali refugees. The were shuffled between family members in Kenya until they were eventually left on their own.

Then, in 2014, Fatuma and Maryan were resettled in the United States through Catholic Community Services of Utah. There they found a stable, loving home with a young couple, Annie and Randall Johnson, near Salt Lake City. They also live with their little brother, Roscoe, and their dog, Maddox.

Fatuma and Maryan recently sat down with Annie to talk about what it's been like - for all of them - to become a family.

Originally aired April 7, 2017, on NPR's Morning Edition.

Bottom photo: Randall Johnson, Maryan Osman, Fatuma Abdullahi, Roscoe Johnson, and Annie Johnson at their home in Murray, UT.

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Fatuma Abdullahi, Annie Johnson, and Maryan Osman

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Maryan Osman and her sister, Fatuma Abdullahi, were born in Somalia and came to the U.S. as refugees in 2014, finding a stable home with Annie and Randall Johnson. The sisters sat down with Annie to talk about what it's been like - for all of them - to become a family.

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by This American Life (Host: Ira Glass)
-podcast-
The link also has a transcript available as well as a "beeped" version that censors curse words.

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Photo Illustration: Lola Dupre; Photograph: Ira Glass

Note: The internet version of this episode contains un-beeped curse words. BEEPED VERSION.

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Host Ira Glass and Aviva DeKornfeld visits refugee camps we don't call refugee camps-right on our country's doorstep. (14 minutes)

Los Angeles Times reporter Molly O'Toole talks to U.S. asylum officers-the people who end up sending migrants back to Mexico. And they don't feel good about it. This story is a collaboration with the Los Angeles Times. Read Molly's story here. (23 minutes)

Reporter Emily Green happens to meet a man being sent back to Mexico who tells her he's afraid of being kidnapped-and then, he gets kidnapped. Read Emily's report on Vice. (18 minutes)

The startling rise of the number of people on disability in America.

Josh's family didn't play much of a role in his daily life-until duty called, and they took over his life.

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Note: The internet version of this episode contains un-beeped curse words. BEEPED VERSION. If you enjoyed this episode, you may like these The startling rise of the number of people on disability in America. Josh's family didn't play much of a role in his daily life-until duty called, and they took over his life.

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This podcast was the first broadcast to ever win a Pulitzer prize in the award’s 100+ year history. It examines the US-Mexico border situation, where thousands of refugees, many fleeing from other Latin American countries due to violence and persecution, wait in crude camps for their chance at a new life in the US. The podcast interviews asylum officers, volunteers, organizers, and refugees to learn about their motivations and their experience traveling to and living at the border under the strict new US border policies enacted in 2019.

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Though this podcast is long, it is broken into three distinct parts that could be used individually.
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Intro: Interviews with organizers, volunteers, and refugees about their day to day experiences
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Act one: Interviews with asylum officers about the 2019 policy changes for asylum-seekers
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Act two: Interviews with refugees about the danger of being sent back to Mexico after being processed by US border officials

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“The Out Crowd” examines the motivations, hardships, and day-to-day experiences of people who are stuck in these refugee camps. It criticizes the new policies for interviewing asylum-seekers because they place an undue burden of proof on refugees traveling through Mexico with the specific purpose of blocking more entries to the US. This is a very current example of the discrimination faced by refugees, which Bui alludes to in her graphic memoir, and it highlights how perilous the escape journey can be for families trying to protect their children.

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Use this podcast as a teacher-led tool to discuss US foreign policy and the responsibility that countries have to displaced people. This might be a powerful tool to inform a Socratic seminar or other student dialogue about human rights and the ethics of strict borders. This particular text would also be useful for 11th and 12th grade history curriculum as it examines US policies.

Standards:
--CA History-Social Science Framework Content Standard 10.10
--CCSS.ELA.Anchor.SL.1: Prepare for and participate effectively in a range of conversations and collaborations with diverse partners...

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Glass, I. (Host). (2019, November 15). The out crowd (No. 688) [Audio podcast episode]. In This American Life. PRX. https://www.thisamericanlife.org/688/the-out-crowd

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This audio clip is a conversation between Annie Johnson and her two adopted daughters, Fatuma and Maryan. After losing their parents in the Somalian civil war and being separated from their grandmother due to Australia’s refugee policies, the girls were resettled in Utah through a church program. The short article explains their situation, and in the audio clip they discuss what it was like to meet for the first time and what it has been like for the girls to learn a new culture and language.

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The clip helps explore the specific experience of young people who are refugees. Maryan talks about how difficult it was for her to adjust, and the conversation alludes to the hardship of losing family and being forced to leave your home. This gives another perspective on the confusion children face when their families are persecuted and displaced, which is the core of Bui’s graphic memoir as she tries to understand how her experiences have shaped her.

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Use this for student reflection about the challenges of change in childhood and adolescence. Students could examine how they react when change is out of their control or when it forces them to live in a different way. The tone of this text is more light-hearted than previous ones on this list, so it lends itself better to recognizing personal connections among more of our students.

Standards:
--CA History-Social Science Framework Content Standard 10.10
--CA Model School Library Standard 3.2

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Diaz, V. (Executive Producer). (2017, April 7). Fatuma Abdullahi, Annie Johnson, and Maryan Osman [Audio podcast episode]. In NPR’s Morning Edition. Story Corps. https://storycorps.org/stories/annie-johnson-maryan-osman-and-fatuma-abdullahi-170

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The Heartbreaking WWII Rescue That Saved 10,000 Jewish Children From the Nazis

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The Heartbreaking WWII Rescue That Saved 10,000 Jewish Children From the Nazis

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by Erin Blakemore
-article-
The article also includes a link to an interview with a social worker who was part of the Kindertransport effort.

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Parents gave their children advice and checked them over one last time. Then, came the goodbyes-sincere, but not too sad. "There was laughter and crying and one last hug," recalled social worker Norbert Wollheim. The Jewish children, clutching their possessions, then walked toward the train to become child refugees in England. Their parents stayed behind.

The parting may have been understated, but its consequences were not. For most of the children who left Germany in scenes similar to the one Wollheim recalled, it was the last time they ever saw their parents. They were part of the Kindertransport, or children's transport, a rescue effort that brought Jewish children to England in the lead-up to the Holocaust.

"We couldn't even foresee, we couldn't surmise for a moment that for many or most, it would be the last goodbye, that most of those children would never see their parents again," Wollheim recalled in an oral history.

Between 1938 and 1940, about 10,000 Jewish children made their way to Great Britain on the Kindertransport. But though the rescue is widely seen as one of the only successful attempts to save European Jews from the Holocaust, the reality was much more complicated.

READ MORE: Holocaust Photos Reveal Horrors of Nazi Concentration Camps

The idea for the Kindertransport came after Kristallnacht, the anti-Jewish pogrom in which tens of thousands of synagogues, homes, and businesses were destroyed in November 1938. Life had been getting harder for Jews under Nazism, but Kristallnacht represented a turning point. After the violence, Jewish parents began desperately searching for ways to get themselves-and their children-to safer countries.

That wasn't easy. The United States, Great Britain and other countries had strict immigration quotas and repeatedly refused to change their policies to help Jews under threat from the Nazi regime. At the 1938 Evian Conference, 32 nations had met to discuss what to do about the increasing number of Jewish refugees. But Great Britain, France and the United States had all left without committing to change their policies.

Kristallnacht, however, brought more attention to the plight of Jews within Germany and its territories. When public opinion in Great Britain turned, the British government finally shifted its policy toward refugees. If English refugee aid organizations would agree to pay for the care of refugee children, Britain agreed, it would relax its immigration quotas and allow Jewish children age 17 and younger to immigrate.

There were catches: The children couldn't be accompanied by parents or any adults, and would have to leave the host country once the refugee crisis had ended. At the time it was inconceivable that within a few years most of Europe's Jewish population would be murdered.

It took a major mobilization effort to get the children to Great Britain. Guarantors-people who agreed to pay for the children's upkeep-had to be found for children who wanted to immigrate. (The government refused to use state dollars to support the children.) Usually, foster families were friends or family members in Britain, but they were also solicited in newspaper advertisements. "Please help me bring out of Berlin two children (boy and girl), ten years, best family, urgent case," read a characteristic ad.

On December 2, 1938, the first Kindertransport arrived-200 children from a Jewish orphanage in Berlin that had been destroyed on Kristallnacht. On the way over the German-Dutch border, the train carrying the children was boarded by SS members who went through the children's luggage. "As the SS men pawed through carefully packed clothes and toys," writes historian Thomas J. Craughwell, "the children wept and shrieked in terror." The children then sailed to Harwich, England on a ferry.

Orphans, homeless children, and the children of people in concentration camps were given priority on the transports, which lasted until as late as 1940. Many children were sent by their parents, too. Vetting of foster families was lenient when it happened at all. Some children headed to homes where they were abused or expected to act as servants.

Over time, the transports stoked increasing anti-Semitism in Great Britain. As fears of a German invasion grew, parliament passed legislation allowing the internment of "enemy aliens," refugees thought to be pro-Nazi. "That many of the 'enemy aliens' were Jewish refugees and therefore hardly likely to be sympathetic to the Nazis, was a complication that no one bothered to try and unravel," writes the BBC. Suspected enemies, among them teenage members of the Kindertransport, were incarcerated on the Isle of Man or sent to Canada and Australia. About 1,000, or one tenth, of the Kindertransport children were classified as enemy aliens.

Gerti Deutsch/Picture Post/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

The fates of the Kindertransport children varied dramatically. Some fought for Britain against the Nazis. Others reunited with family members after the war. But for most, the day they boarded the transport trains before World War II was the last time they ever saw their parents. For those who did reunite with their families, the transition was often difficult, and brought up complicated issues of familial assimilation, trauma, and even language.

Today, the Kindertransport looms large in Britain's memories of World War II. But historian Caroline Sharples warns that it can be used as a way to glorify a country's generous action without acknowledging the nuances of the actual situation-the adults who were turned away to die in the Holocaust, the traumatic experiences of children whose time in Britain was characterized by abuse and antisemitism, the mistreatment of so-called "enemy aliens."

"For all of the popular fascination with the Kindertransport," Sharples writes, "there remain a number of issues that need to be addressed more fully....the history of this scheme needs to be placed much more firmly within the broader, long-term context of British immigration policy."

The story of the Kindertransport continues to evolve as survivor stories and historical revelations about the world's reaction to the Holocaust are woven together. In December 2018, the Claims Conference, which negotiates with the German government for financial compensation for victims of the Holocaust, announced that Germany would make a one-time payment of about $2,800 to each surviving child of the Kindertransport.

"After having to endure a life forever severed from their parents and families, no one can ever profess to make [the survivors] whole," a negotiator of the settlement, Stuart Eizenstat, told the Guardian. "They are receiving a small measure of justice."

For survivors of the Kindertransport, their lives were forever altered by their flight from a hostile nation before the Holocaust.

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The Heartbreaking WWII Rescue That Saved 10,000 Jewish Children From the Nazis

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Parents gave their children advice and checked them over one last time. Then, came the goodbyes-sincere, but not too sad. "There was laughter and crying and one last hug," recalled social worker Norbert Wollheim. The Jewish children, clutching their possessions, then walked toward the train to become child refugees in England.

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Norbert Wollheim describes departure of Kindertransporte (Childrens' Transports) from B...

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I saw, all the transports which left Berlin I saw off, because it was my function to see to it that these things were working properly.

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This article summarizes the history of Kindertransport, in which thousands of Jewish children were sent to England to save them from the Nazi regime. It also examines the complicated reality of this lauded rescue effort and the effect it had on the children who were sent away from their homes in Europe.

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This text acts as a historical example of a refugee crisis. The article discusses the diplomacy involved in managing so many displaced people, and it highlights the fact that while England accepted thousands of refugee children, there were many caveats to the agreement. Individual sponsors were financially responsible for the children rather than the children, much like for Vietnamese refugees in the US.

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Use this text to supplement learning about World War II. Students could reflect on the moral dilemma parents had to grapple with: send my children away to safety or stay together as a family? Students could also examine the impact of family separation and make comparisons to modern issues at the US border.

Standards:
--CA History-Social Science Framework Content Standard 10.9
--CCSS.ELA.Anchor.RI.7: Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse media and formats...

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Blakemore, E. (2018, December 18). The heartbreaking WWII rescue that saved 10,000 Jewish children from the Nazis. History. https://www.history.com/news/holocaust-child-refugees-kindertransport-britain

US Holocaust Memorial Museum. (n.d.). Norbert Wollheim describes departure of Kindertransporte (childrens’ transports) from Berlin, and the separation of children from their parents. In Holocaust Encyclopedia. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/oral-history/norbert-wollheim-describes-departure-of-kindertransporte-childrens-transports-from-berlin-and-the-separation-of-children-from-their-parents

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by Hyeonseo Lee
-TED talk-
This link also has a transcript available.

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Transcript of "My escape from North Korea"

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TED Talk Subtitles and Transcript: As a child growing up in North Korea, Hyeonseo Lee thought her country was "the best on the planet." It wasn't until the famine of the 90s that she began to wonder. She escaped the country at 14, to begin a life in hiding, as a refugee in China.

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This TED talk explains Lee’s budding disillusionment with North Korea and what it was like after she escaped, separated from her family for years. She shares her fears and the hardships she faced in other countries as a result of their treatment of immigrants from North Korea.

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Lee’s story demonstrates the identity crisis of a refugee. She has lost the connection with the place she once called home, and she doesn’t feel quite like she belongs in her new home, either. Her journey from North Korea to safety traverses much of the Asian continent and many years. She also brings up North Korea’s government surveillance and exploitation as well as the constant fear of being discovered in China, sent back, and tortured. Bui’s family faced similar fears and surveillance--albeit somewhat less extreme--living in the south of Vietnam after the war.

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Use this talk to spark research and discussion on the responsibility a government has to its people as well as what people owe their government. This would also be a useful text to compare with dystopian fiction like 1984.

Standards:
--CA History-Social Science Framework Content Standard 10.10
--CCSS.ELA.Anchor.W.8: Gather relevant information from multiple print and digital sources...

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Lee, H. (2013). My escape from North Korea [Video]. TED. https://www.ted.com/talks/hyeonseo_lee_my_escape_from_north_korea/transcript?referrer=playlist-refugees_welcome

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by Dunya Mikhail
-poem + podcast-
This podcast link includes a copy of the poem, as well as a clip of Mikhail reading it.

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Poet Dunya Mikhail fled her homeland, Iraq, a few years after the first Gulf War. She had been questioned by Saddam Hussein's government, and state media had labeled her writing and poetry subversive. Mikhail escaped to Jordan and eventually reached the United States, where she made a home for herself - marrying, raising a daughter and becoming a U.S. citizen.

Mikhail never physically returned to Iraq. But she revisits her homeland again and again in her poetry - line by line, stanza by stanza.

Ten years after the start of the Iraq War, Mikhail joins NPR's Renee Montagne to read some of her poetry, talk about the bond she still feels with Iraq, and explain why she's never gone back.

Interview Highlights
On how she remembers Iraq after more than 17 years
"The way that things come to mind, I feel that they are more as fragments. They are strange. They don't come in order any more, so the happy moments and the sad moments climb over each other: our home in Baghdad with the roof where we would sleep [during] summer nights and we would go down when we [heard] the sound of the siren; the simple heater in the middle of our living room that was called Aladdin, and, on it, that pot of tea with cardamom.

"And I remember my father dying in front of my eyes. I remember the windows of our classrooms shaking from explosions. You know, the war was like the norm."
On how poetry reveals wounds, rather than healing them
"I still feel that poetry is not medicine - it's an X-ray. It helps you see the wound and understand it. We all feel alienated because of this continuous violence in the world. We feel alone, but we feel also together. So we resort to poetry as a possibility for survival. However, to say I survived is not so final as to say, for example, I'm alive. We wake up to find that the war survived with us."
On why she hasn't returned to Iraq
"A lot of people ask me this, and the way I feel towards this is really strange. I feel that I woke up from a dream, and going back to Iraq is like asking me will I see the same dream if I go back to sleep? It's strange.

"But I keep contact to maybe have some trace of that old dream or experience. And I find that Iraqis all have one dream, and that is to live a normal life and to die a normal death."

'I Was In A Hurry'

Yesterday I lost a country.
I was in a hurry,
and didn't notice when it fell from me
like a broken branch from a forgetful tree.
Please, if anyone passes by
and stumbles across it,
perhaps in a suitcase
open to the sky,
or engraved on a rock
like a gaping wound,
or wrapped
in the blankets of emigrants,
or canceled
like a losing lottery ticket,
or helplessly forgotten
in Purgatory,
or rushing forward without a goal
like the questions of children,
or rising with the smoke of war,
or rolling in a helmet on the sand,
or stolen in Ali Baba's jar,
or disguised in the uniform of a policeman
who stirred up the prisoners
and fled,
or squatting in the mind of a woman
who tries to smile,
or scattered like the dreams
of new immigrants in America.
If anyone stumbles across it,
return it to me, please.
Please return it, sir.
Please return it, madam.
It is my country...
I was in a hurry
when I lost it yesterday.

"I Was in a Hurry" by Dunya Mikhail, translated by Elizabeth Winslow, from The War Works Hard, copyright 1993, 1997, 2000, 2005 by Dunya Mikhail. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

Excerpted From Diary Of A Wave Outside The Sea
(Mazin is Mikhail's husband, Larsa is her daughter.)
Mazin bends his head to the table and cries.
His niece in Baghdad has been kidnapped.
She is twenty years old.
Masked men surrounded her and pulled her away
from her mother's outstretched hands.
into a car. They were like a tsunami.
Iraq is a tsunami in slow motion.
I wake at night and wonder if she is alive
and if she is what her life is like.
To be in a cage of strange hands
Can only be a nightmare.

It is a great relief to have my daughter
far away from danger
from clouds like corpses
from kidnappers' masks
from long lines at passport offices
from amputated fingers in the sand.

Larsa scatters the old pictures
and mixes them with the new ones.
She mixes pictures of snowballs in Michigan
with pictures of a round city with two rivers
palm trees
poetry
wars
a thousand and one nights.
Inside that city was our home,
inside the home was our garden
not separated from the neighbors even by a wall,
and inside that garden was a razqi flower
I will never smell again.

"Excerpt" by Dunya Mikhail, translated by Elizabeth Winslow, from Diary of a Wave Outside the Sea, copyright 1995 by Dunya Mikhail. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

'The Shape Of The World'

If the world were flat
like a magic carpet,
our sorrow would have a beginning and an end.

If the world were square,
we would lie low in a corner
when the war plays "hide and seek."

If the world were round,
our dreams would take turns on the ferris wheel,
and we would be equal.

"The Shape of the World" by Dunya Mikhail from The Iraqi Nights forthcoming from New Directions, copyright 2013 by Dunya Mikhail. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

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Revisiting Iraq Through The Eyes Of An Exiled Poet

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Poet Dunya Mikhail fled her homeland, Iraq, a few years after the first Gulf War. She had been questioned by Saddam Hussein's government, and state media had labeled her writing and poetry subversive. Mikhail escaped to Jordan and eventually reached the United States, where she made a home for herself - marrying, raising a daughter and becoming a U.S.

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This poem reflects on the feeling of losing one’s country. It uses similes and metaphors to compare a country to other lost things, starting with more tangible items and working toward more figurative ideas and experiences. The accompanying podcast and article explain Mikhail’s personal story to some degree, including how she was forced to flee Iraq after Saddam Hussein’s government labeled her poetry as subversive.

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Mikhail wrote this poem not long after arriving in the US, reflecting on leaving her home fearing for her life. Her family was already victim to violence under Hussein’s regime, and she has not returned since. The weight of her loss of country is heavy in the poem. This is also what Bui explores in her graphic memoir when she feels disconnected from Vietnam.

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Use this for a guided close read. Mikhail uses vivid imagery in each simile and metaphor, and each could be analyzed in isolation before being brought together as a whole. Students could connect the emotions expressed in the poem to Bui’s experience going back to Vietnam or asking her father about where they used to live. Students could write their own short poems about loss as an extension activity.

Standards:
--CA History-Social Science Framework Content Standard 10.10
-CCSS.ELA.Anchor.RL.4: Interpret words and phrases as they are used in a text...

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Mikhail, D. (1993). I was in a hurry. (E. Winslow, Trans.) In The War Works Hard. New Directions Publishing Corp. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/147223/i-was-in-a-hurry

Montagne, R. and Inskeep, S. (Hosts). (2013, March 21). Revisiting Iraq through the eyes of an exiled poet [Audio podcast episode]. In Morning Edition. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2013/03/21/174773962/revisiting-iraq-through-the-eyes-of-an-exiled-poet

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Guatemalan Migration in Times of Civil War and Post-War Challenges

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Guatemalan Migration in Times of Civil War and Post-War Challenges

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by Susanne Jonas
-article-

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During recent decades, large-scale international migration has become an external escape valve, a response to Guatemala's multiple internal problems. This pattern emerged during the most violent phase of Guatemala's 36-year civil war (1960-96), which generated significant refugee flows beginning in the late 1970s. More recently, in the post-war era, international migration continued in response to Guatemala's severe and continuing socioeconomic problems, successive natural disasters, increasing social violence-and a weak state, lacking the vision, capacity, and resources to resolve these problems internally. Migration to the United States has also included family reunification, although in lower numbers.

What differentiates the case of Guatemala from other Central American migrant-sending countries is the high level of ethnic diversity of Guatemalan society-principally, indigenous Maya and ladino (mixed). In Guatemala itself, Mayas constituted by far the majority of victims during the war. In addition, virtually all statistical data show that the Mayan population has experienced historical and ongoing discrimination, segregation, higher indicators of poverty, and far less access to resources and services such as land, education, and health care. Not surprisingly, then, we can distinguish two migration streams from Guatemala, Mayan and ladino, although there are no reliable or precise statistics on the breakdown.

This article traces the development of large-scale Guatemalan migration to the United States during both the long civil war and the post-war era. It focuses on the dominant factors spurring the ongoing migration and the dynamics of each period, as well as U.S. government immigration policies affecting Guatemalans. The article also examines the impacts of migration within Guatemala, including the challenges posed by sizable deportations of migrants by the U.S. and Mexican governments. Finally, the article locates Guatemalan migration within a regional context, with particular emphasis on Guatemala/Mexico migration dynamics.
Sources of Guatemalan Migration during the Civil War Period
Guatemala experienced Central America's longest and most violent civil war, between leftist insurgents and the armed forces of successive governments. The first phase of the civil war came to a head with a major counterinsurgency campaign by the army in 1966-68, mainly in the Eastern ladino region, as well as targeted assassinations and threats against opposition leaders in Guatemala City. However, this wave of repression did not lead to significant migration to the United States. Rather, the 1960s phase sparked a trickle of political emigrants primarily to Mexico, joining a pre-existing diaspora of largely professional, middle-class Guatemalan political exiles in Mexico City.

During the second phase of the war, centered in the western Mayan highlands, the first large-scale migration began in the late 1970s. The conflict sparked a flood of refugees, overwhelmingly Mayan, across the border with Mexico, with thousands ending up in refugee camps run by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in southern Mexico. Some of these forcibly displaced Guatemalans continued to the United States, seeking asylum from political or ethnic persecution. Technically, they were de facto refugees because, although most were fleeing persecution, they were not granted refugee status in either Mexico or the United States.

What spurred their displacement and flight? In response to organizing efforts (e.g., self-help networks that emerged after a massive 1976 earthquake), and a heightened sense of Mayan identity in many highlands communities, the Guatemalan army regarded the Mayan population per se as subversive, and supportive of the leftist insurgency, which by the late 1970s was operating in the Mayan highlands. In the early 1980s, state security forces responded with a massive scorched-earth counterinsurgency war and engaged in acts of genocide that were later well documented as such in authoritative reports by Guatemala's Truth Commission ( Comisión de Esclarecimiento Histórico, Historical Clarification Commission) and by the Catholic Church Archbishop's Human Rights Office.

According to the army's own figures, its operations destroyed 440 highlands villages during the most intense period (1981-83). Some 150,000 (primarily highlands Mayas) were killed or "disappeared" in the early 1980s alone-part of a larger total of over 200,000 from 1954 through 1996. Additionally, around 1 million Mayan villagers were internally displaced, and some 200,000 fled over the border to southern Mexico (46,000 in UNHCR camps, the other 75 percent outside the camps).

Even in the non-conflict zones, the violence disrupted highlands commercial/trade patterns, causing many to lose their livelihoods. At the national level, the Guatemalan economy was in crisis, as a consequence of the "Lost Decade" of the 1980s that affected virtually all of Latin America, generating massive unemployment and underemployment. The Guatemalan economy also suffered by being virtually cut off from international economic assistance, in response to the army's brutality. Given the close relationship between the war and the economy during the 1980s, migration from Guatemala increased significantly for a combination of political and economic reasons.

Even prior to the 1970s and 1980s (in fact, for decades), there had been a long-standing labor flow back and forth across the Guatemalan/Mexican border, some of it by laborers on a daily circuit or seasonal basis. There also was some labor migration to the United States during the war years, although large-scale migration began only in the late 1970s. Both of these labor flows were obscured, however, by the high profile of refugees until the civil war was ended with the Peace Accords signed on December 29, 1996.

The number of Guatemalan immigrants to the United States (including both estimated unauthorized and legally admitted) during the civil war years rose from 13,785 in 1977 to 45,917 at the peak in 1989, subsequently decreasing to 22,081 in 1996, according to figures from the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) analyzed by Nestor Rodríguez. INS statistics also showed that Guatemalans constituted by far the highest number of asylum petitioners in the United States in fiscal year 1992 - 43,915 - or 42 percent of all applications.

Unique History of U.S. Migration Measures for Guatemalans and Salvadorans

More important than the numbers of Guatemalans in the United States at war's end (as of 1996, they still constituted a fraction of the foreign born in the United States) was the high profile and drama of their story, together with that of Salvadorans. The situation of these two groups in flight from civil war, primarily state-sponsored violence, gave rise to the U.S. sanctuary movement of the 1980s. Furthermore, the fact that the Reagan administration throughout the 1980s denied the asylum petitions of 97 percent of Salvadorans and 98 percent of Guatemalans led to an historic outcome. In 1985, these two groups and their supporters launched a class-action lawsuit, later known as American Baptist Church (ABC) v. Thornburgh, against the INS and its parent agency, the Justice Department.

The years-long lawsuit ended in a settlement announced in December 1990 and approved by a federal judge in January 1991, requiring the INS to rehear the cases of all those Guatemalans and Salvadorans still in the United States who had arrived by 1990, and whose asylum cases had been denied. The decisions in their cases were determined to have been driven by foreign policy considerations, rather than bona fide refugee standards. Until their cases were re-adjudicated, those who registered by the late 1991 deadline were protected from deportation and were authorized to work in the United States.

As a result of the ABC victory, Guatemalans and Salvadorans developed a rather unique history among Central and Latin American immigrants. In the 1997 Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act (NACARA), additional concessions for Guatemalans and Salvadorans with ABC status were granted, in partial compensation for the harsh effects of the immigration measures of 1996. Most important for the ABC asylum seekers, pre-1996, more lenient standards would be applied to their petitions to stop deportation proceedings.

Even so, it was a far cry from the automatic legalization given under NACARA to Nicaraguan and Cuban immigrants and refugees presumably fleeing leftist governments. While the overall situation of Guatemalans was one of vulnerability after the passage of the strict immigration enforcement law in 1996, they gained that one measure of relative protection from immediate deportation, and a possible path to legalization.

Post-War Labor Migration to the United States
It was during the post-war period (1997 to the present) that the number of Guatemalan immigrants became more significant as a percentage of the foreign-born population in the United States. This was not yet the case for Guatemalans as of the 2000 Census. But by the 2010 Census-even before, beginning in 2009-Guatemalans were tied with Dominicans as the ninth and tenth largest foreign-born populations (around 2 percent each). Guatemalans remained tenth in 2011, at 2.1 percent, with the official U.S. estimate of nearly 851,000. The Guatemala office of the International Organization for Migration (IOM - OIM in Spanish), on the other hand, projected over 1.5 million Guatemalan migrants in the United States the previous year, in 2010.

In contrast to the late 1970s through 1996, post-war Guatemalan migrants have been mostly labor migrants, many of them building on family and community contacts with immigrants and refugees already in the United States. Even among those who fled because of the war, a return home was not likely; a 1995 survey of 600 Salvadorans and Guatemalans in the Los Angeles and the San Francisco areas, in which this author participated, found that almost none were planning to return to their home country after the end of the war. Their overwhelming reason was the lack of decent jobs and economic opportunities in the home country.

Guatemalan experts have analyzed the major problems of the labor market. An increasing share of jobs has been considered and referred to as "precarious" - insecure, unstable, part-time, with subminimum wage levels and no social benefits. Studies by the Guatemalan office of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP - or PNUD in Spanish), the Bank of Guatemala, and various research institutions have documented that between two-thirds and three-quarters of the economically active population worked in the informal sector throughout the 1990s and the first decade of the 21st century. The creation of decent jobs at home has not been a policy priority for successive post-war governments, leading to underemployment as well as open unemployment. There has also been a deficiency of job training programs to elevate the skill level of the labor force.

In addition to the precarious labor market, Guatemala has been among the countries with the highest levels of socioeconomic inequality in the world. Moreover, its level of human development is the lowest in the entire Latin American region; worldwide, Guatemala ranks 131st of 187 countries according to the United Nations' 2012 Human Development Index. And while Guatemala is not overall the poorest Central American country, poverty and extreme poverty persist in both its urban and rural settings. Migration has been seen as a survival strategy-or an opportunity for above-subsistence jobs and possible upward mobility-for Guatemalans who have the resources to finance the trip to the United States (e.g., to pay coyotes).
Post-War Environmental Disasters, Pervasive Social Violence, and Femicide
In addition to labor migration in the post-war era, the factors propelling increased migration included several environmental disasters affecting Guatemala since the late 1990s-Hurricane Mitch in 1998, Hurricane Stan in 2005, Hurricane Agatha and other environmental events in 2010-11, and a powerful earthquake affecting the Pacific southern coast in 2012. In contrast with Salvadorans, Hondurans, and Nicaraguans, however, Guatemalans have never been granted the relief of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) in the United States following these disasters.

On another dimension, well into the post-war era, Guatemala has experienced an accumulation of uncontrolled social violence. In addition to high levels of common crime, Guatemalans have been subjected increasingly to violent and coercive practices stemming from the operations of drug traffickers, organized-crime rings, gangs, and clandestine paramilitary organizations. The levels of coercion (e.g., entire communities being forced to participate in the drug trade) and the extreme structural violence of Guatemalan society have been documented in studies by Guatemalan, Central American and U.S.-based institutions, including the Migration Policy Institute's Regional Migration Study Group. Some Central American analysts refer to these factors as causing "forced displacement from violence and crime" or "forced migration."

Furthermore, since 2000, Guatemala has had one of the world's highest rates of femicide (assassinations specifically targeted against women, often accompanied by rape, torture, and bodily mutilation)-more than 6,500 reported cases between 2000 and 2011. Government officials and institutions have demonstrated a refusal or unwillingness to investigate the overwhelming majority of these cases. Some specialized institutions such as the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies, at the University of California Hastings College of the Law, are developing the case for asylum from femicide, as well as from gang violence that also involves domestic violence against young women.
The Role of the Weak State in Guatemalan Migration
Many Guatemalan experts and those working at UN agencies in Guatemala have concluded that these post-war factors are evidence of a structurally weak Guatemalan state, i.e., a state that lacks the authority, capacity, and political will as well as the financial resources to attend to the needs of the population. It also lacks strong political institutions such as stable political parties, an effective Congress, and a functional judicial system. We refer to this as "structural" because none of Guatemala's governments during the last six decades, independently of their ideological orientation and their military or civilian character, have been able to resolve, or even to develop policies addressing the massive problems of societal and citizen insecurity at home.

There is also a generalized consensus among Guatemalan and UN experts that one reason for the weak post-war state has been the non-implementation of a crucial provision in the 1996 Peace Accords for a tax reform that the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), among other institutions, pressured Guatemala to adopt. This reform, under which taxes would contribute 12 percent to gross domestic product (still a low rate), was seen as essential to generate resources needed to strengthen and increase the state's ability to provide basic services. However, in the face of persistent, strong resistance, particularly from the country's business elites, no such reform has been enacted.

It is worth mentioning these deficiencies of the weak post-war state - which the UNDP in Guatemala made the focus of its entire Human Development Report for 2009-10-because they affect virtually all aspects of the lives of Guatemalan migrants and the migration process: initial migration and, as will be seen, transit through Mexico, life and work in the United States, and (non)-reintegration of deportees.
Rise of Women and Unaccompanied Child Migrants from Guatemala
Even as the majority of Guatemalan migrants have been working-age males, the number of female migrants has risen. One reason for this increase is the high unemployment and underemployment that women face in Guatemala. In the migration process through Mexico, women have suffered particular gendered vulnerabilities to attack. Rape has become rampant, almost routine, for female transmigrants, and they take contraceptive measures as part of preparation for the journey. Women have also been the victims of forced recruitment and trafficking as sex slaves.

For Guatemalan women who have migrated on their own (not as spouses), who make it to the United States and avoid deportation, many have come to lead relatively successful lives. Case studies in particular contexts have demonstrated their ability to find steady, although often low-wage work. Those who are mothers with primary responsibility for child-rearing have generally interacted intensively with their children and the children's schools and networks, hence providing for some continuity with the next generation and contact with broader communities. The experiences of Guatemalan migrant women as heads of households in the United States have given many of them an independent self-image and identity.

A further characteristic of Guatemalan migration by 2011-12 has been the increasing number of unaccompanied children. Guatemala, Mexico, El Salvador, and Honduras are the world's four top countries of origin for unaccompanied child migration to the United States. Taken together, these four groups constituted 98 percent of unaccompanied children to the United States who were apprehended during the first half of 2012. Many of the unaccompanied minors are seeking asylum from coerced recruitment by gangs or persecution by traffickers or smugglers. Some seek work, seeing no jobs or economic future for themselves in Guatemala, while still others migrate in search of their parents already in the United States.

At the same time that migration by unaccompanied minors has grown so rapidly in recent years, the UNDP office in Guatemala has featured the rise of youth as a significant social actor in the country. Asking what kind of Guatemala today's youth will inherit, the UNDP focused its entire 2011-12 Human Development Report on the difficult conditions facing youth in Guatemala, including the particular vulnerabilities they confront when they migrate.

Whatever their reasons for migrating, however, many of the children who arrive in the United States face frustration in achieving their goals. According to a study by the Women's Refugee Commission, in 2011-12 alone, there was a 50 percent increase in the number of unaccompanied unauthorized youth, primarily Central Americans, being held in U.S. detention centers.
Guatemalans Affected by Post-1996 U.S. Enforcement Policies
These conditions of increasing post-war Guatemalan migration have coincided with significant new enforcement measures affecting unauthorized immigrants in the United States from the mid-1990s to the present, and the denial of public services and benefits to legal permanent residents. These restrictions began in 1996, with enactment of three major bills concerning immigration or containing immigrant-focused provisions: the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA), the welfare reform law, and the anti-terrorism law. In the wake of 9/11, some of these measures were expanded in the 2001 USA PATRIOT Act, as immigration and counterterrorism policies were often conflated. Immigration enforcement took on growing momentum after 9/11, and particularly after the creation in 2003 of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which incorporated immigration-related functions formerly carried out by the INS into divisions of the new department.

Deportations, which increased significantly during the Bush administration, have continued to rise under the Obama administration, ensnaring many Guatemalans among the more or less 400,000 unauthorized immigrants deported annually from fiscal years 2009 through 2012. Notably, while Guatemalans were 2 percent of the foreign born in 2010, they constituted 5 percent of unauthorized immigrants in the United States, according to DHS 2010 estimates. Thousands of Guatemalans have felt the impact of deportations, in family separation and disrupted lives.

Guatemalan immigrants in the United States became more visible after 2006 because they were the majority of deportees in several high-profile mass workplace raids. The largest and most prominent was the May 2008 raid at the Agriprocessors kosher meat-packing plant in Postville, Iowa by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Three-quarters of the nearly 400 migrants rounded up for deportation were Guatemalan, mainly Mayas who did not understand Spanish or English. They were accused of aggravated identity theft for using Social Security numbers that were not legally theirs; after being pressured to plead guilty, most were rapidly deported. As the details emerged, this raid sparked significant public concern.

The total number of Guatemalans deported from the United States increased from 1,763 in 1995 to 4,543 in 2000, and reached a record 30,313 in 2011, according to INS and DHS statistics. Many have arrived in Guatemala on U.S. planes in chains, a visible symbol of humiliation. Furthermore, the Guatemalan government has virtually no programs for their reintegration. The few incipient reintegration initiatives for deportees come from private agencies.

In the absence of anything comparable with El Salvador's Bienvenido a Casa ("Welcome Home") program, Guatemalan deportees are generally left to their own devices, with the result that many appear as "failures" (some having incurred new debts), rather than as respected providers of remittances. Having no job prospects and sometimes no community or family assistance, some make new attempts to migrate.

However, in sharp contrast to the above scenarios, some Guatemalan migrants return voluntarily, having succeeded in the United States.
Authorized Immigrants and Legalization Campaigns by Guatemalan Migrant-Rights Organizations
Not all Guatemalan migrants arrive or remain unauthorized and vulnerable in the United States. The 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) allowed around 50,000 Guatemalans to gain legal status, and some became citizens. Since that time, Guatemalan lawful permanent residents (LPRs) and citizens have been able to gain legal admittance for family members, which suggests a measure of increasing integration into U.S. society. In addition, NACARA legalizations for ABC-status Guatemalans, which count as legal admissions, have added to the ranks of authorized Guatemalan immigrants. Most of those cases were approved, although they were not resolved until the early 2000s. The highest number of legal admissions and legalizations was registered in 2006 (nearly 24,000).

Beyond what was won from the U.S. government through legal admissions and NACARA, U.S.-based Guatemalan migrant-rights organizations and networks have organized campaigns for legalization, primarily since 1997. With the war over, many Guatemalan activists turned their attention from war-time issues to the situation of immigrants. The organizations focused largely on goals such as NACARA parity (treatment equivalent to that of Nicaraguans) and TPS; although these were not won, the campaigns made these issues more visible and mobilized some Guatemalans grassroots community activities.

In addition to working with much larger, more established, and better-funded Salvadoran organizations and networks, the Guatemalan networks have participated in pan-Latino campaigns for immigrant and refugee rights, comprehensive immigration reform, and various approaches to legalization. They also began to coordinate with counterpart organizations in Guatemala (see below). By 2005, and continuing to the present, there have been three national U.S.-based Guatemalan networks (known by their acronyms as CONGUATE, MIGUA, and RPDG), generally led by ladinos. In addition, various Mayan organizations and networks around the United States have included immigrant rights in their agendas.
Remittances
A significant percentage of Guatemala's population of nearly 15 million relies on remittances from U.S.-based migrant relatives to meet basic needs. According to Bank of Guatemala figures, remittances rose significantly between 2001 ($584 million) and 2005 (almost $3 billion). This increased to $4.3 billion in 2008, when, according to the Guatemalan office of the IOM, they contributed more than 11 percent of GDP. Remittances declined in 2009, because of the economic recession in the United States, but recovered to $4.4 billion by 2011.

These remittances sustain some sectors of the population and keep them from falling into extreme poverty; according to the IOM, they sustained 30 percent of population in 2008. The UNDP Guatemalan office found in its 2007-08 Human Development Report that remittances reduced the severity, but not the incidence, of poverty among the population. There have been growing debates about how to view the dependence on remittances as such a central part of the government's economic development strategy, and about their impact on broader human development at both the local and national levels.
The Mixed Record of the Guatemalan Government
Overall, successive post-war Guatemalan governments have not been proactive in protecting the welfare of Guatemalan migrants in Mexico and the United States, or of deportees. The 1998 Ley de Migración (Migration Law) is seriously out of date and does not address many of the key issues of the early 21st century. Although the government created a Vice Ministry for Migrant Affairs (within the Foreign Ministry) in 2006, its level of activity has been inconsistent. Meanwhile, in the United States, some of the government's consulates, functioning under the Foreign Ministry, have actively assisted Guatemalans in their regions, for example by issuing identity cards and operating " cónsul móvil" or "roving consulate" services.

The Guatemalan Congress, and particularly its Comisión de Migrantes (Committee on Migrants), has taken some initiatives since creation of the committee in 2004. Congress approved a new Consejo Nacional de Atención al Migrante de Guatemala en el Exterior (CONAMIGUA - National Council for Attention to Guatemalan Migrants Abroad) in 2007. CONAMIGUA began to function in 2008, including representation not only from various ministries and entities of the Guatemalan government, but also from non-state migrant organizations in U.S. cities with significant Guatemalan immigrant populations.

On paper, the creation of CONAMIGUA appeared to be an advance, but in practice, its accomplishments have been limited by partisan infighting, alleged corruption, and insufficient long-range vision or resources to make a real difference in the lives of migrants and deportees. Various Regional Migration Study Group analysts, including Francisco Alba and Manuel ángel Castillo, have observed that the governmental structures appear to exist, but are not functional. As a result, by late 2012, the congressional committee was holding a series of hearings on reforms to the 1998 Migration Law and to CONAMIGUA. The hearings also addressed Guatemala's treatment of other Central Americans as they pass through or work in Guatemala, and proposed measures of protection against abuses.
Guatemalan Civil Society: Migrant Advocacy Organizations and Networks
Given this very mixed record on the part of governmental institutions, another social actor has played an important role since the late 1990s: Guatemalan civil society. The first migrant advocacy network was the Scalabrinian Missionaries, a world-wide congregation/order of the Catholic Church dedicated to providing shelter and protection to international migrants and speaking out on behalf of their rights. In Guatemala they worked with other institutions of the Catholic Church. They also established a network of " Casas del Migrante," shelters at Mexico's northern and southern border crossing points and other dangerous areas for transmigrants, including Guatemala City.

A broad network of well-established human rights, labor union, health, and other nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), as well as research centers and university departments came together in 1999 to form the network, Mesa Nacional para las Migraciones en Guatemala (MENAMIG - National Forum for Migration in Guatemala). Also included were the Scalabrinians and the semi-official Human Rights Ombudsman's Office. MENAMIG has actively lobbied the government on virtually all aspects of migration policy and remains a player in all debates. Another important research/advocacy institution has been the Instituto Centroamericano de Estudios Sociales y Desarrollo (INCEDES - Central American Institute for Social Studies and Development). Among multiple other activities, INCEDES has worked with a unit of the Colegio de México on binational activities at the Guatemala/Mexico border, such as monitoring the treatment of migrants in the border area and proposing policy improvements.

In addition to urging the government to develop more proactive and comprehensive migration policies, all of these organizations have criticized the Guatemalan government's neoliberal socio-economic policies, arguing that "migration should be a choice, not a necessity." They have also promoted public education and awareness about migration issues - e.g., through a high-profile "Migrants' Week" and "Migrants' Day" every September. Beyond Guatemala, they have participated in regional networks, as well as coordinating with the U.S.-based Guatemalan migrant networks and with Mexican counterpart organizations.
Guatemalan Migration in a Regional Context: Relations with Mexico
Guatemala is part of a migration region that includes both Mexico to the north and the rest of Central America, particularly the Northern Triangle (Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras). Most important in this regional context have been the Guatemala/Mexico border and Guatemala's multidimensional relations with Mexico. The transit experience for unauthorized Guatemalan migrants to the United States has always been heavily impacted by the long and dangerous journey beginning at the Guatemala-Mexico border, a kind of no-man's land at various crossing points, through Mexico, and across the Mexico-U.S. border. Mexican government authorities (police, army, migration agents) have always played a crucial role in the outcomes for Guatemalan migrants, but in recent years, they have often become more predatory. It should be noted that not all Guatemalans are transmigrants; as Alba and Castillo point out, some Guatemalans detained in Mexico have stated in surveys that Mexico is their destination.

In the early 1980s, Mexico had permitted the presence of UNHCR refugee camps for Guatemalan Mayas in southern Mexico. Since the early 1990s, by contrast, largely in collaboration with the U.S. government, Mexico has engaged in deportations of Guatemalans and other transit Central Americans. Furthermore, throughout the 1990s and into the early 2000s, Mexico deported all Central Americans it apprehended across its southern border, to Guatemala.

Even after Mexico stopped that practice and deported non-Guatemalans to their home countries, Guatemalans have been by far the highest number of Mexican " devoluciones" of Central Americans (literally, "deportation events," as Mexico's Instituto Nacional de Migración [National Migration Institute, INM] counts them, sometimes involving the same person more than once). More than 200,000 deportations of Guatemalans occurred in the period 2001-2003. During the period 2004-06, Guatemalans were close to 45 percent of all Mexican deportations (in 2005, the number reached 99,000). In 2011, there were more than 31,000 deportations of Guatemalans.

Aside from deportations, Guatemalan migrants have encountered a host of predatory forces in Mexico. In recent years, this has included powerful drug-trafficking and organized-crime rings, as well as gangs. These realities burst into worldwide public view with the August 2010 massacre of 72 migrants in San Fernando, Tamaulipas, relatively close to the U.S.-Mexico border. "Los 72," mostly Central Americans and a few South Americans, were executed when they resisted demands to participate in activities of the Zeta drug ring. This was by no means the first or the only such incident of a mass crime against migrants and transmigrants, but its scale and brutality were unprecedented at the time.

The vulnerabilities of Central American transmigrants in Mexico have also resulted in several thousand "disappearances," kidnappings, and killings of Central Americans in recent years, by traffickers in drugs and other commodities. The practices of " trata" (human trafficking - a human-rights violation) and " tráfico ilícito" (illegal smuggling of humans - a violation of the law) have become major issues in Mexico and throughout the region.

A number of the issues mentioned above were addressed and slated for correction in Mexico's 2011 migration law, for which final regulations were issued in November 2012. It is too early as of this writing to project how much Mexico's new immigration law will change on-the-ground realities, as pointed out by analysts such as Alba and Castillo.

At the same time, other major social actors in Mexico have undertaken crucial humanitarian activities, upholding migrant rights, protecting and providing shelters and safe havens to transmigrants, The Scalabrinians led the way, with their networks of Casas del Migrante. Mexican activist organizations have worked with Central American families to organize caravans of mothers searching for their children who "disappeared" while migrating through Mexico. Another research/advocacy NGO, Instituto de Estudios y Divulgación sobre Migración (INEDIM), together with INCEDES in Guatemala, has worked to reframe discussions about the regional migration context by developing a sophisticated notion of migrant security, as opposed to national security, as the guiding principle for migration policy.
Guatemala as a Country of Transit or Destination in the Central American Subregion
Viewing Guatemala in a regional context also includes its borders with El Salvador and Honduras in the subregion of Central America's Northern Triangle. Guatemala is a country of transit for other Central American migrants; it is also a country of destination for some workers from neighboring countries, just as those countries are for some Guatemalan workers. The treatment of those other Central Americans, including deportees from Guatemala, has become a major focus of debate in Guatemala. In a 2008 report, the UNHCR Special Rapporteur for the Human Rights of Migrants, Dr. Jorge Bustamante, was highly critical of Guatemala as well as Mexico for abuses against transmigrants.
Conclusion
Guatemalan migration from the civil war and post-war periods has profoundly transformed many communities within Guatemala, and the country as a whole, but it is still too early to assess whether these changes have in any way advanced human development in Guatemala. Among the broad issues for a longer-range assessment are questions such as: Can human development needs be met in Guatemala, so that migration becomes voluntary rather than necessary? And what are the human consequences for individual Guatemalans and their communities of the migration processes that are almost certain to continue?

The author's book written with Nestor Rodríguez, Guatemala-U.S. Migration: Transforming Regions, was published by University of Texas Press in January 2015.
Sources
Alba, Francisco, and Manuel Angel Castillo. 2012. New Approaches to Migration Management in Mexico and Central America. Regional Migration Study Group. Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and Migration Policy Institute. Washington. October. Available online.

Center for Gender and Refugee Studies. 2012. Ending Deportation to Death - Developing Positive Jurisprudence for Asylum Claims Based on Gang Persecution. San Francisco. CGRS, University of California Hastings College of the Law. San Francisco. November.

Instituto de Estudios y Divulgación sobre Migración, A.C. (INEDIM)/Instituto Centroamericano de Estudios Sociales y Desarrollo (INCEDES). 2011. Security for Migrants: Building a Policy and Advocacy Agenda. July. Available online in Spanish and English.

Instituto Nacional de Migración (INM), Secretaría de Gobernación (SEGOB). Various years. Boletínes Estadísticos Annuales. Mexico. Available online in Spanish.

Jonas, Susanne. 2000. Of Centaurs and Doves: Guatemala's Peace Process. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Jonas, Susanne, and Nestor Rodríguez. Forthcoming 2014. Perilous Passage: Guatemalan Migrants in a Changing Region. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.

Organización Internacional para las Migraciónes (OIM)/Fondo de las Naciones Unidas para la Infancia (UNICEF). 2011. Encuesta sobre Remesas 2010, Protección de la Niñez y Adolescencia. Guatemala. Available online in Spanish.

Programa de las Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo (PNUD)/Guatemala. 2008. Guatemala ¿Una Economía al Servicio del Desarrollo Humano? Informe Nacional de Desarrollo Humano (INDH) 2007/2008. Available online in Spanish.

Programa de las Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo (PNUD)/Guatemala. 2012. Guatemala: Un País de Oportunidades para la Juventud? Décimo Informe Nacional de Desarrollo Humano 2011/2012. Available online in Spanish.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Annually, various years. Yearbook of Immigration Statistics. Washington: DHS. Programa de las Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo Available online.

U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). Annually, various years. Yearbook of Immigration Statistics. Washington: INS.

Women's Refugee Commission. Presentations to Migration Policy Institute. Unaccompanied Minors and their Journey through the U.S. Immigration System. July 30, 2012. Available online.

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Guatemalan Migration in Times of Civil War and Post-War Challenges

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During recent decades, large-scale international migration has been an external escape valve for Guatemala, a response to the country’s multiple internal problems. This article examines Guatemalan migration, primarily to the United States, into the post-war era; U.S. government immigration policies…

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This article outlines the history of Guatemalan migration to the US in the latter 20th and early 21st centuries. It is a relatively complex, technical article that examines many factors in the issue like the civil war, ethnic and social diversity and discrimination, and geopolitical dynamics. It also discusses the increasing number of unaccompanied minors migrating from Latin America to the US.

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During the civil war, most Guatemalan migrants were refugees who planned to stay permanently in the US. Extortion and violence perpetrated by the Guatemalan government forced people to flee to protect their families. Much like for Bui’s family in Vietnam, government officials in Guatemala took advantage of people and blocked normal emigration from the country.

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Use this article to spark research on civil unrest and government exploitation of its people. Students could also research discriminatory practices against indigenous peoples and the historical significance of being forced to flee your home after it had already been colonized. This text would also be useful in 11th grade history curriculum due to its discussion of US foreign policy and its role in Latin American migration. Barbara Kingsolver’s The Bean Trees is also a relevant novel exploring the impact of the Guatemalan civil war on refugees.

Standards:
--CA History-Social Science Framework Content Standard 10.10
--CCSS.ELA.Anchor.W.7: Conduct shorty as well as more sustained research projects based on focused questions...

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Jonas, S. (2013, March 27). Guatemalan migration in times of civil war and post-war challenges. Migration policy institute. https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/guatemalan-migration-times-civil-war-and-post-war-challenges

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Hiba's Story: Ten-Year-Old Syrian Refugee

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Hiba's Story: Ten-Year-Old Syrian Refugee

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by UNICEF USA
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Hiba's Story: Ten-Year-Old Syrian Refugee  | UNICEF USA

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This video is an interview with Hiba Al Nabolsi, a 10-year-old refugee from Syria. She talks about her escape journey, her losses, and what life is like in the refugee center in Macedonia. The video is partly a marketing tool for UNICEF, but it is a valuable resource because it shares Hiba’s story in her own voice.

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Hiba’s journey from Syria to Macedonia was fraught with danger and loss. This is not uncommon, and it emphasizes the horror of the situation in refugees’ home countries. They are willing to face dire peril and uncertainty in hopes of escaping certain danger. Hiba’s perspective as a child is heartbreaking; she has been through immeasurable hardship in her 10 years. In The Best We Could Do this reflects Bui’s father’s experience as he faces undue persecution and discrimination his entire life.

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Use this video to foster student discussion and research about war crimes and the Geneva Conventions. What does the world owe to its children? How do we expect children to grow up and thrive after being subjected to the violence of war? Ishmael Beah’s memoir, A Long Way Gone, is a full-length book that also explores these ideas in depth.

Standards:
--CA History-Social Science Framework Content Standard 10.9
--CCSS.ELA.Anchor.W.8: Gather relevant information from multiple print and digital sources...

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UNICEF USA. (2016, November 28). Hiba's story: Ten-year-old Syrian refugee [Video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QVmXX62_H0