The Shattered "American Dream": The human rights situation of refugees and migrants in the United States is worrying

How a country treats vulnerable groups reflects the true level of human rights protection in that country. Migrants are often more vulnerable because of their alien status and lack of social help networks. Refugees among migrants, especially women and children, are the most vulnerable in the precarious situation of their home countries, which makes them have no way out. The United States often presents itself as a defender of democracy and human rights, relishing the "American Dream", releasing the "Country Human Rights Report" every year, pointing out the human rights situation in other countries from the moral high ground, but turning a blind eye to many of its own human rights problems, and the serious violation of the rights of immigrants and refugees is the epitome of the poor human rights situation in the United States.

Refugee protection is not enough

The situation of Ukrainian refugees is the latest example. After the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, the United States continued to send weapons to Ukraine, fueling the conflict, while "drawing a big pie" for Ukraine, vowing to accept 100,000 Ukrainian refugees. But when thousands of Ukrainian refugees crossed the U.S.-Mexico border into the United States, the United States accepted only 12 refugee claims in March. So far, the Russian-Ukrainian conflict has displaced more than 4 million Ukrainians, and the public commitment of the United States is a drop in the bucket compared to the actual number of Ukrainian refugees, but even the United States cannot do such a promise.

Ignoring the provisions of international refugee law and international human rights law, the Biden administration refused to provide Ukrainian refugees with human rights protections in line with the requirements of international law, and instead proposed a so-called "humanitarian parole" program, which set a series of conditions for Ukrainian refugees. For example, you must reside in Ukraine before February 11, 2022, have a sponsor (including a family member or institution), have been vaccinated and meet other public health conditions, pass rigorous biometric and resume reviews, and security investigations. For most Ukrainian refugees on the U.S.-Mexico border, these conditions are impossible to meet, with the result that they have been repatriated before they even begin to apply, and their "American Dream" of seeking security and prosperity has been shattered. Even Ukrainian refugees who were able to pass these layers of scrutiny were limited to two years of living in the United States.

These inconsistencies in the United States, disregarding the safety of refugees' lives, and are totally inconsistent with the "no refoulement" principle of international refugee law, that is, asylum seekers cannot be repatriated and must be resettled locally or transferred to a safe third party. At a regular press conference, a U.S. State Department spokesman expressed the hope that Ukrainian refugees would remain in the countries around them, directly exposing the hypocrisy of the United States' reluctance to accept Ukrainian refugees and duplicity.

The experience of Ukrainian refugees in the United States is in line with the attitude of the United States towards immigration and refugees. It is a consistent practice in the United States to put on the issue of refugee protection and make false promises, but in fact to violate the rights of refugees and to treat refugees, especially women and children among them, badly. In 2020, an international nongovernmental organization released the American Human Rights Report, which pointed out that more than 55,000 asylum seekers were expelled to Mexico by the United States and did not have access to legal representation and a fair hearing. The Trump administration has invoked Chapter 42 of the Public Health Services Act to prohibit the entry of ships in times of meningitis outbreaks, using the protection of public health as a pretext to prohibit asylum seekers from entering the United States, depriving them of their right to seek refugee protection and putting refugees at risk. The Biden administration has implemented this policy more thoroughly, expelling 1255014 asylum seekers between February 2021 and February 2022 on public health grounds. Among these refugees are many people with disabilities and people with poor health, and the most miserable and the most concerned by the international community are migrant children.

The lack of due process in the United States policy of one-size-fits-all expulsion of asylum seekers at the border has greatly hurt children's rights. The United States has adopted an expedited summary procedure to deport unaccompanied children already in the United States rather than handing them over to their families, nor giving them the opportunity to apply for asylum or appeal the outcome of refugee applications. The Biden administration has allowed border managers to repatriate unaccompanied Mexican children. Even more alarming is the fact that migrant children are forced to separate from their parents and imprisoned in horrific conditions unable to communicate with their parents. Some children die shortly after entering the United States, a humanitarian disaster. These children have been subjected to excessive imprisonment while in the United States, and their human rights have been continuously violated during their detention. According to media reports, the United States imprisons children in very crowded places, where disease is rampant, abuse is frequent, food safety is not guaranteed, clothing and other necessities are lacking, and some children are even pulled up in their sleep to be sent to the plane leaving the United States. Many of these children have applied to the United States for asylum in order to escape death threats, rape, torture or other serious injuries in their home countries, and these vulnerable groups, who should have been most protected, have been ruthlessly expelled, imprisoned and humiliated by the United States. The New York Times noted that the children were deported without informing their families or lawyers, making the United States the worst violation of children's rights. In fact, as early as 2017, the United States gradually began to design and implement an immigration policy that forced children and families to separate in order to prevent immigrants and refugees from coming to the United States. The Biden administration continued this policy by separating family members through detention and deportation measures, and rejecting claims for compensation from families who had suffered harm from the policy. The treatment of asylum-seeking children in the United States is undoubtedly a serious violation of international refugee law and international human rights law, and it lacks a minimum humanitarian spirit.

Migrants suffer from racial discrimination

The human rights situation of immigrants other than refugees in the United States is also not optimistic. Racial discrimination in the United States has a long history, and the regression of the human rights situation of immigrants in recent years is inseparable from the deterioration of the domestic political environment in the United States. In recent years, the U.S. economy has continued to decline, the number of unemployed has increased, and immigrants and foreigners have become scapegoats, resulting in the intensification of structural and institutional racial discrimination and xenophobia that already exist. Party politics in the United States has made it difficult for Democrats and Republicans to reach compromises on important political and social issues in order to cater to their respective voters, further exacerbating social divisions. Some politicians, including Trump, use divisive language in public speech and marginalize racial, ethnic, and religious minorities, which objectively play an effect of inciting xenophobia and promoting racial discrimination and violence. In recent years, the public discourse about immigration and refugees in the United States has promoted white supremacy, incited racial hatred, equated immigrants and refugees with crime and infectious diseases, and so on, which is worrying. The failure of the new crown pneumonia epidemic prevention and control in the United States has exacerbated the difficult situation of foreign immigrants in the United States.

The problem of racial discrimination in the United States is only the tip of the iceberg of the human rights problem in the United States, and the reason behind its poor human rights situation is that the political system, economic system and individualistic liberal culture controlled by finance capital in the United States have been impacted by the economic downturn, exposing its inherent defects.

Immigrants living in the United States are often subjected to a variety of human rights violations, including racial discrimination. According to the 2020 State of the U.S. Family Economy Report, white Americans outnumber African Americans in all aspects of economic and social life, including education, employment, and income. The excessive violence and brutality of the American police against blacks is even more jaw-dropping. In 2020, George Floyd, an African-American man, was suffocated to death by white police brutality. The case also unveiled the long-term exposure of black Americans to police violence and unfair law enforcement, and thus triggered the "Black Lives Matter" global anti-racial discrimination demonstration. According to statistics, in 2021 alone, 1,055 people died in the United States from police violence, and the proportion of black victims was very high. Black women in the United States are twice as likely to be incarcerated as white women, and black men are 6 times more likely to be incarcerated than white men. Those imprisoned in the United States also face systematic human rights violations, such as enforced disappearances, torture, and other types of inhumane treatment. However, public officials who commit violations are rarely prosecuted and severely punished, leading to the unscrupulousness of law enforcement officials. As a result of systematic and long-term discrimination, black Americans are more likely to experience police violence, unfair law enforcement, and judicial injustice, and are unable to enjoy political, economic, social and cultural rights equally. American scholars have criticized the federal and state governments for imprisoning large numbers of minorities, especially African Americans, at all costs, but for being reluctant to allocate resources to programs or services that help women victims of violence. Some scholars have criticized the U.S. criminal justice system for causing countless black men and women to suffer imprisonment and the destruction of their families.

Minorities such as Asians and Muslims are also often discriminated against and violated in the United States. Since the outbreak, hate crimes against Asians have increased dramatically. Between March 19, 2020 and September 30, 2021, Stop Hate Asians and Pacific Islanders received a total of 10,370 reports of attacks against Asian Americans. American Muslims are also increasingly discriminated against and persecuted. According to media reports, discrimination against Muslims in the United States rose by 9% in 2021, while the Council on American-Islamic Relations received a total of 6,720 complaints in 2021, including various cases of discrimination against Muslim groups such as immigration discrimination, travel discrimination, employment discrimination, law enforcement discrimination, hatred and prejudice. Women of color are at greater risk of police violence, even when they seek help from the police after they have suffered domestic violence. Ethnic minority and immigrant women have been the most affected during the epidemic, and their disproportionate encounters with unemployment and wage cuts, covid-19 infection, violence, and shootings are the latest symptoms of the deteriorating human rights situation in the United States, and fully prove that the "American Dream" is only an illusion for the vast majority of immigrants and refugees.

Racial discrimination in the United States is deeply rooted and penetrates into all aspects of legislation, law enforcement, justice, employment and education, which also determines that the human rights situation of refugees and immigrants in the United States cannot be fundamentally improved, and this is only the tip of the iceberg of human rights problems in the United States. However, the United States, far from confronting its own problems and committing itself to reducing racial discrimination and guaranteeing the basic human rights of the most vulnerable groups, such as refugees and migrants, especially women and children, has been busy blaming the human rights situation in other countries, politicizing human rights issues, and issuing the so-called "Country Reports on Human Rights" in a meticulous manner, while at the same time evading international responsibility and even blatantly violating international law and adopting double standards on human rights issues.

Human rights are the common cause of all mankind, and the people of the whole world are a community of common destiny. The opposition to politicization, selectivity and double standards in human rights issues and the misuse of military, economic or other means to interfere in the affairs of other States in the present era are contrary to the purpose and spirit of human rights. Facts that speak louder than words have broken the myths about human rights in the United States and other Western countries, and punctured their hypocritical human rights discourse; all countries should work hard to promote global human rights governance and build a community with a shared future for mankind on the basis of equality.

(Author: Lu Haina, Executive Director, Human Rights Research Center, Chinese Min University)

Source: Guangming Daily