Given the clandestine but booming nature of human smuggling operations in the US and the Caribbean and the enormous social and economic problems that accompany unrestrained immigration, it becomes necessary to understand the context and the factors from whence they evolve.
While human smuggling is considered a covert, illicit activity, it must be seen that the flourishing business of people smuggling in the US and the Caribbean is not only to be understood in the context of globalization and migration or the push and pull factors of escaping poverty, natural disaster, seeking opportunities abroad, economic marginalization for women or conflict and persecution, but also from a combination of weak legislation and lax border controls, to corrupt immigration officials and the power of organized crime. The smuggling of human beings across international borders is growing rapidly and is now a multimillion-dollar activity that is global in scope.
If national security is a protection of a way of life compatible with the needs and genuine interests of others and includes freedom from military attack or coercion, freedom from internal sedition and freedom from the erosion of political, social and economical values, then defending a country’s borders is one of the top responsibilities of any government to its citizens. Tensions over the issue of human smuggling reaching a crescendo, now call for regional co-operation and intelligence sharing between US and Caribbean officials to counter the new and sophisticated criminal threat that is rapidly eroding the borders of the US and the Caribbean.On the correct supposition that security is one the foremost important social service that a government can deliver to its people, America’s failure to do so is not only dangerous, but is now regarded as a sign of weakness around the world; for to surrender a 60-mile stretch of Interstate 8 between Phoenix, Arizona, and San Diego to drug gangs is analogous to going ashore at Normandy on the 6th June 1944 and driving around sightseeing and leaving the enemy the opportunity, flexibility and iniative to attack you when they want.
Edward Luttwak, counterterrorism expert with the Pentagon’s National Security Study Group, says the tri-border is “the most important base for Hezbollah outside Lebanon itself”, proving that terrorist groups such as Hezbollah are now working with drug cartels and the business of human smuggling continues through Central America and across the border without much difficulty. The discovery of tunnels equipped with lights, air-conditioning and railroad tracks, and semi-submersible vessels that evade radar between Tijuana and San Diego not only brings billion dollars worth of drugs into the US, but is the route used by the cartels to smuggle people and begs the question how important is border security and whether it should be taken seriously and also confirms that America has simply lost control of miles of its borderland.
In the Caribbean, Trinidad and Tobago is the most active country of origin and transit point for regional and extra-regional irregular migration to North America and Europe. Information garnered by authorities in the US and the UK have now resulted in Trinidad and Tobago being placed on a Tier Two Listing by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the US Department of State.
The infant government of Kamla Persaud-Bissessar should be particularly concerned about the vulnerability of its borders to transnational organized crime networks and the risk of being exploited by terrorists and its own immigration officials, as the country is not only one of transit and destination, but the growing evidence of the abuse of immigration stamps, issuance of birth certificates, bribery and government passports to foreign nationals, should provoke immediate actions into tabling legislation to deal with the problem of human smuggling.
On this note, if Trinidad and Tobago is to achieve its declared aim of becoming a developed society by the year 2020 and maintain its reputation as the most prosperous country in the Caribbean with the highest level of direct foreign investment and an expanding tourist industry, then the very creed of national security, and all its code of ethics of the public service will be ceaselessly undermined by the corruption of its own immigration officers and some of its notorious elites, as many who are smuggled also belong to the educated middle class from India, the Philippines, and Nigeria and the pattern proceeds like an aggressive cancer as far north to Wisconsin, Alaska, and Canada thus making human smuggling a reality.
In this regard, The Palermo Protocols are also open to scrutiny because, while the trafficking protocol establishes a useful framework for intervention in the enhancement of human rights protection for trafficked persons, implementing measures to provide for the psychological, and social recovery, including cooperation with NGOs, provision of housing, counseling, material assistance, and employment and training opportunities, by contrast, the smuggling protocol contains minimal reference to the protection needs of smuggled persons.
The preamble to the smuggling protocol does not set out the need to provide migrants with humane treatment and full protection of their rights because they have no rights. There are no provisions regarding medical, psychological, or social recovery, as human smuggling is deemed the procurement for material gain, of the illegal entry of someone into a state of which they are neither citizen nor resident, a meeting of the minds and a contract between the smuggled and the smuggler and a criminal activity.
But if one takes the perceptions of the smuggling protocol seriously then, in that context, anyone can participate directly or indirectly in sustaining the trade in humans by turning a blind eye to the injustices they suffer in domestic servitude, forced labor, torture, rape, and all those who at the time of this writing are presently living in hostage-like conditions in drop houses in Canada and the US until their debts are paid.
For this reason, I believe that the smuggling protocol is oxymoronic and duplicitous because if equality is fundamental to democracy, then the protocol tramples upon the very value that it tends to uphold and obscures more than it illuminates because the lives of humans are not mere digits and cannot continue to go by unnoticed. Smuggled people are living, breathing individuals who committed a crime and should be dealt with accordingly by the authorities.
It is therefore imperative to reassess human smuggling and the smuggling protocol in the US and the Caribbean both as a necessary sense of urgency and a calculated framework that guides overall planning. The open hostility and slave-like conditions that smuggled immigrants are presently facing and the authenticity it lends to hecklers abroad, constitute a great danger to our continued existence as a civilized people and political system.
October 26, 2010
caribbeannewsnow
