A few days ago, on September 23rd, the President of the United States, Donald Trump, addressed the United Nations General Assembly. One of the topics he touched on in his speech was migration, “the number one political issue of our time,” as he defined it. In his particular view, migration is equated with an invasion, and migrants with a group of people from prisons, from mental institutions, and drug dealers. He then referred to individuals who “trample our borders, violate our sovereignty, cause unmitigated crime, and deplete our social safety net.” If he were describing the process of colonisation and neo-colonisation carried out by Europe and the United States itself in Africa, Asia or Latin America, he couldn't be more accurate. Unfortunately, that's not the case, writes Guillermo R. Barreto for the 22nd Annual meeting of the Valdai Discussdion Club.
One of the biggest paradoxes when dealing with migration is the fact that the receiving countries are the cause of the conditions that force people to leave their countries but they impose policies that criminalise and punish migrants. Migration then, being a process with historical and cultural roots that has occurred for centuries, has become a political issue with strong colonial roots.
Countries of the global North, colonisers of the past, neo-colonisers of today, keep asymmetries of power with the South by extracting wealth and the knowledge of peripheral countries and by exploiting the precarious work of migrants, rendering the role they play in their economies invisible. Many people who leave their countries do so because of conflicts promoted by the North but find a wall of rejection when trying to get into the so-called developed world. The Syrians are a good example. They left a war zone but faced rejection in Europe via laws targeting migrants and discriminatory treatment that violates their human rights. Quite different was the approach towards Ukrainian migrants received in Europe where their physical aspects and religion were explicitly invoked for a welcome: white and Christian as it was said by different spokespersons. That reveals how racism is very much involved in the treatment towards migrants.
Currently, migrants are being used as scapegoats to justify failed economic policies as much as it was used by the Nazis in 1933-1939. Fascism is dangerously increasing in Europe and USA, and migrants now serve as a focal point unifying public opinion to support governments dominated by billionaires who want to protect their privileges.
The case of Venezuela
When Hugo Chávez took office as president in 1999, induced migration began to take shape within opposition sectors. This process was characterised by the departure of highly qualified Venezuelans, who were encouraged to take up positions in transnational corporations in the global North and in so doing, weakened the professional base of Venezuelan society. In 2015, President Obama declared Venezuela an "unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States" with the signing of Executive Order 13692. This order was used as the legal basis for justifying the imposition of unilateral coercive measures that affected (and continue to affect) the country's economy, inducing significant migration, this time of an economic nature.
In 2017, the Lima Group was formed, which promoted the narrative that Venezuela was a failed state, further encouraging mass migration as the only way to safeguard lives. Thus, many countries created programs to "protect" and facilitate the migration of Venezuelans within their countries, using this fact politically to attack the Venezuelan government. On August 5th, 2019, the US intensified its siege by imposing a total blockade. Between 2017 and 2022, President Trump implemented a "maximum pressure" policy, encouraging widespread migration.
The US approach to Venezuelan migration has shifted in recent years, and instead of promoting and facilitating it, it has primarily opted to criminalise it. Venezuelan migrants are linked to criminal gangs, which has led to the cancellation of permits and visas and the mass deportation of migrants who are "hunted" on the streets, detained, and deported. This has included the separation of parents from their children and the sending of Venezuelans to prisons in third countries, as occurred in El Salvador. In his speech to the UN, President Trump said, “thank the country of El Salvador for the successful and professional job they’ve done in receiving and jailing so many criminals that entered our country.” This professional job was the detention without trials or evidence of 252 Venezuelan last March in a Salvadorian prison that has been described as a concentration camp. Fortunately, after complex negotiations, all of them were rescued on July 18th and were reunited with their families in Venezuela. Only seven of them had criminal records, including one who ran a traffic light!
Currently, the narrative has shifted, with both the Venezuelan people and government being accused of drug trafficking and terrorism. This conflation of terms allows the US government to violate its own laws. It is worth noting that according to a recent UN report on drug trafficking, 87% of drugs arrive in the USA via the Pacific Ocean. This report does not mention Venezuela as part of the drug trafficking network. This highly dangerous escalation is reflected in the deployment of a military force on Venezuela's maritime border and the destruction, as announced by President Trump himself, of three small Venezuelan boats in international waters. Official announcements have described the boat as carrying large cargos of drugs and dangerous criminals. There is, so far, no proof of any of these assertions, as the boats were completed destroyed so nobody knows who was aboard and what the cargo was. The fact is that 17 people, as claimed by Trump, were murdered without any due process or trial. It was basically an extrajudicial execution that violated both US and international law.
Migration is becoming a political issue with the aim of undermining governments that oppose being part of the sphere of influence of USA or Europe. By doing so, the human rights of migrants are violated and hate speech spreads dangerously. In the case of Venezuela, it becomes clear that migration is not an issue but a justification to intervene and get control of our resources. Migration is a human right. Trump has made it a weapon for war.
