By Gonzalo Santos, Exclusive for El Magonista - Monday May 17, 2021
I have received with great joy and pride the news that the 80 young Dreamers who are members of the 2021 Summer Exchange Program, organized by the California-Mexico Studies Center [CMSC], with which I am associated, were finally approved by the U.S. immigration authorities to travel to Mexico, and the first group already left yesterday Sunday.
I will not go into details about what I consider to be undoubtedly the best model of international exchange programs for Dreamers, nor the great personal benefit that it has brought to its participants and their families. All this is already well documented in the CMSC electronic magazine, El Magonista.
What I will address is its broader meaning, in the context of the long and arduous struggle for justice for migrants, and its future prospects both in the US, and in Mexico and Central America.
To begin with, the topic of the Dreamers has three unique aspects, which makes everything that happens to them significant for the other aspects of migration in North America: first, their transparency and moral clarity - immune from any distortion on the part of xenophobes to criminalize them. In fact, what has protected the Dreamers the most in the last two decades of struggle has been their undeniable innocence and humanity, having arrived in the United States as minors.
In the past, the migra detained and deported them with impunity, but since the emergence of social media the expelling governments have been immediately exposed to intense denunciations and convictions. Today it is clear the undeniable human right of the Dreamers to visit their relatives in their nations of origin, and to be able to return to their relatives in the United States. That is the moral basis of the individual travel and educational and humanitarian travel programs for Dreamers since 2012, covered by the DACA program that has benefited more than 45 thousand Dreamers.
The Donald Trump regime, as we know, tried to abolish DACA - unsuccessfully in the end - but it did succeed in suspending the Advanced Parole visa so that dreamers could not travel. Joe Biden, when he entered the White House, immediately reinstated DACA and reauthorized visas for Dreamers to travel abroad. But bureaucratic inertia and perhaps political timidity blocked the timely granting of these visas to applicants - the case of the CMSC program, whose permits were stalled for more than 7 months. It took a lawsuit and the support of dozens of congressmen to unlock and grant the Advanced Parole visas.
The importance of the litigation brought by the CMSC is that it demonstrates once again another of the outstanding aspects of the Dreamers: they are one of the most audacious and combative social components of the immense pro-migrant movement. Not only are they willing and ready to exercise their human rights, but they maintain their autonomy, and if necessary they are willing to challenge - in court or on the streets - hostile or supposedly allied governments.
In the CMSC’s case, it had to give the Biden administration a "good push" to get the Dreamers’ travel permits. The other migrant sectors - agricultural, TPSeros, refugees and asylum seekers, etc. - they should take note that taking them at their word and placing full trust in the new Democratic administration, and waiting for justice to be done from above, is not enough or recommended. We already had that bitter experience in the past. Much vigilance is required, as in the case of the CMSC, the constant mobilization of allies, and if necessary, direct pressure - in the courts or in the streets - to make progress happen without undue delay.
What is going to happen with the proposed laws currently before Congress, and the diplomatic agreements between the governments of North America, to make the urgent and just changes in the immigration regime that the region urgently requires, will depend a lot on the protagonism of the organized migrant sectors, their drive and determination, their autonomy and audacity, their militancy and defiance, to bring these diplomatic proposals and initiatives to fruition, and prevent, as on so many other occasions, their stagnation, derailment, or dilution.
In order for the wheels to move up on the Acropolis, the Cratia of the Demos - the People's Power - is required to become robustly manifest. Since 2006, and even before, migrants have appeared on the stage of history as a new historical subject that demands its rights. That is what will really push governments to act to grant them.
Finally, looking to the future, the Dreamers, as binational citizens, are the ambassadors and architects of the future of North America. They embody a future possible for all of us, where the current walled and militarized borders between nation-states that block human mobility on our continent become as symbolic and irrelevant as they are today for transnational capital and its international trade, for technology and science, and for our increasingly shared global culture. Investing in family exchanges and study trips of the 2.4 million Dreamers residing in the United States is to bet on developing the human capital that will connect us all on a new and higher social plane, with news, extended definitions of citizenship and belonging beyond our antiquated political geographies.
Programs like CMSC sow the seeds of the future for all of North America. They deserve the visionary support of all educational and civil institutions, governments and corporations, as part of the great project to fully and harmoniously integrate the continent that we all ultimately share. Let's get to work, and congratulations to the Dreamers of the CMSC 2021 study abroad program in Mexico.
Yes, we could!
