US immigration policies have not deterred migration, but they have made the process longer and more difficult for migrants.
The pandemic and anti-immigration policies haven’t stopped migration from Central America – they’ve just made conditions at the border more hazardous.
Herika Martinez/AFP via Getty Images
COVID-19 has created new hardships for migrants while giving the Trump administration an excuse to further restrict asylum as public attention focuses on the pandemic.
In this April 2019 photo, migrants planning to join a caravan of several hundred people hoping to reach the United States wait at the bus station in San Pedro Sula, Honduras.
(AP Photo/Delmer Martinez)
Canada is playing a role in the life-and-death struggle for migrant justice in the United States – from our foreign economic policies to the actions of our mining companies and domestic asylum laws.
A member of Mexico’s National Guard watches for migrants on the Rio Suchiate between Guatemala and Mexico at sunrise on July 4, 2019.
(AP Photo/Idalia Rie)
The U.S. will likely continue to threaten Mexico with trade tariffs due to Central American migrants, and Mexico will respond with more drastic, inhumane measures. None of it will stop migration.
Central American migrants crossing Suchiate River on makeshift boats.
(Iván Francisco Porraz)
Thirty-seven-year-old Nayib Bukele is the first modern president who doesn’t represent either of El Salvador’s two mainstream parties. Can he fix what ails this troubled Central American country?
Donald Trump prepares to give the 2018 US State of the Union address.
Wikimedia
Trump is not the first US president to talk about border security, but he is the only one to make it an “urgent national crisis”. Here is a handy deconstruction of President Trump’s rhetorical strategy.
Central American asylum seekers paint murals on Casa Tochan, a refugee shelter in Mexico City.
Doris Bara
A human rights researcher documents the stories of Central American migrants leaving behind endemic poverty and high homicide rates. In limbo in Mexico, many use art therapy to express their anxiety.
One of 2018’s unforgettable images: Maria Meza and her twin daughters sprint from tear gas lobbed at the border wall between the U.S and Mexico in Tijuana, Nov. 25, 2018.
Reuters/Kim Kyung Hoon
The migrant caravan was one of the biggest international stories of 2018, a roving human drama that laid bare Central America’s pain for all the world to see.
A family from the Central American migrant caravan at the U.S.-Mexico border in Tijuana.
Reuters/Lucy Nicholson
Donald Trump portrays migrants as a foreign problem ‘dumped’ on America’s doorstep. That view ignores the global forces that bind nations together, including trade, climate change and colonization.
In this Nov. 25, 2018 photo, a Honduran migrant converses with U.S border agents on the other side of razor wire after they fired tear gas at migrants pressuring to cross into the U.S. from Tijuana, Mexico.
(AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)
The Donald Trump administration is repelling asylum-seekers by any means necessary, treating them as invaders and using military rhetoric to demonize them. It’s time for reality to prevail.
Migrants begin their day inside a former concert venue serving as a shelter, in Tijuana, Mexico, Dec. 2, 2018.
(AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
The psychological health of migrant children will be deeply impacted by their flight from gang violence, and the experience of crowded unhygienic conditions and tear gas at the U.S. border.
Honduran migrant Elizabeth Umanzor hugs her six-year-old daughter Gina outside the tent where their family of five is sleeping at an sports complex sheltering more than 5,000 Central American migrants in Tijuana, Mexico, Nov. 28, 2018.
(AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
Research shows that when refugees arrive in Canada they find a health system that is ill-equipped to meet their complex social and psychological needs.
LGBTQ migrants traveling with the migrant caravan.
AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd
Before the courts, LGBTQ asylum-seekers have historically had to face bias and ignorance about gender identity and sexuality. Has anything changed?
A Honduran migrant lies on a riverbank as Mexican police move away from tear gas fired by U.S. agents at the Mexico-U.S. border in Tijuana, Mexico, on Nov. 25, 2018.
(AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)
President Donald Trump’s deployment of inflammatory rhetoric about immigration is now in action. Here’s why Canadians should be alarmed by populism that preys upon people’s insecurities.
U.S. President Donald Trump is seen at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., on Nov. 22, 2018.
(AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
Donald Trump’s relentless nods to fascism in his rhetoric requires us to form a language of resistance, rooted in compassion for others, justice and the confrontation of the forces of tyranny.
A young member of the migrant caravan at a shelter in Tijuana, Mexico.
EPA Images
Two trucks carrying migrants have gone missing in Veracruz, Mexico. A witness says that ‘65 children and seven women were sold’ to a band of armed men. Other caravan members have reached the border.
Members of the migrant caravan, mostly Hondurans, cross a river that separates Guatemala and Mexico.
EPA/Esteban Biba
Honduran migrants trudging north towards the US-Mexico border are fleeing violence and poverty that has its roots in activities of 10th-century American fruit companies.
A photograph by Oliver de Ros presents a different impression of the migrants at the Guatemalan border than the standard tropes published. Migrants bound for the U.S.-Mexico border wait on a bridge that stretches over the Suchiate River, connecting Guatemala and Mexico, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018.
(AP Photo/Oliver de Ros)
Photographs can influence us – they can inspire us to act and they can also impact the way we think about issues. The recent published photos about the migrant ‘caravan’ convey several stereotypes.