Political Report # 1248 How Unaccompanied Youth Become Exploited Workers in the US

By Stephanie L. Canizales,  The Conversation

The Trump administration has released a series of executive orders targeting immigration at the U.S. southern border. Central American families and children traveling alone represent nearly half of all unauthorized migrants apprehended by Customs and Border Protection. The criminalization of immigrants at the U.S. southern border disproportionately affects Central American children and youth. Nearly 153,000 unaccompanied Mexican and Central American children have been apprehended at the U.S. southern border since 2014. Of those detained by Customs and Border Protection and processed by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, 60 percent have been reunited with a sponsor, typically a parent. The other 40 percent are placed with a nonparent sponsor. With the guidance of a parent or guardian, these youths might obtain financial, legal, health and social support. Others who enter without detection and remain unaccompanied when they arrive in the U.S. are financially independent and may never gain access to formal resettlement services. Recent orders by the Trump administration that prioritize unaccompanied child migrants for deportation heighten the vulnerability of immigrant children in the U.S. Since 2012, I have conducted in-depth observations and interviews with undocumented immigrant youth who arrived in Los Angeles, California as unaccompanied minors and have remained without a parent throughout their settlement in the U.S. I use pseudonyms for confidentiality as research participants are migrant youth living and working in the U.S. without authorization.

Political Report # 1209 Presidente Trump, Mexico's Worst Nightmare

By Laura Carlsen, Americas Program

Mexico's proximity to the United States has always been a big headache for Mexico. Popular proverbs such as "When the U.S. sneezes, Mexico gets pneumonia" and "Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States" speak to the downside of being next-door neighbors to the world's superpower. Now, with the election of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States, that headache has developed into a brain tumor. Trump used Mexico as what's called a "wedge issue" in U.S. political nomenclature. This is a subject that divides the population, but consolidates and mobilizes a core nucleus of support. At a time when even the Republican Party believed that direct insults to Mexicans (referred to as "thieves", "rapists" and "bad men", in various Trump speeches) would lead to the loss of the critical Latino vote, Trump took advantage of it, proving that U.S. society is a lot more racist than we thought. Skillfully, and with the widespread use of lies, he blamed Mexico for unemployment ("Mexico robs us of jobs"), the loss of purchasing power among working families, and the trade deficit. And he won the election, in the anti-democratic Electoral College. Trump's victory puts Mexico up against the wall. We're looking at the prospect of imminent political, social and economic crisis. What are the implications of Trump's triumph and his policy agenda for the U.S.'s third largest trade partner?