A History of the Central American Refugees

2,029 words

Jonathan Blitzer
Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The Untied States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis
New York: Penguin Press, 2024

The Central American immigrant caravans were serious threats during Trump’s first presidency, and the key component of the border crisis during senile Joe Biden’s occupation of the White House. The roots of the crisis were not new, however. They stretch back to the 1930s, when El Salvador’s political and economic elite enacted laws like England’s Enclosure Acts, which put common property into the hands of private individuals. In El Salvador, the privatization of the commons was for the purpose of profitably growing coffee on a mass scale.

When the English ended common landholdings, they had colonial possessions; the displaced yeomen could go on to develop Massachusetts and Virginia. El Salvador’s peasants had nowhere to go in the 1930s and communist agitators encouraged them to revolt. The communist peasants were massacred by the military and El Salvador’s internal politics became increasingly toxic thereafter. In late 1979, there was a military coup in El Salvador, and a civil war began. To explain it simply, the new government eventually came to made of anti-communists, and this government was faced with a guerrilla insurgency of communists backed by Cuba and the Soviet Union. Many of El Salvador’s Christian ministers—especially a sub-set of that nation’s Roman Catholic clergy— followed a school of thought called liberation theology which offered simplistic economic panaceas that were a mix of the ideas of Jesus and Karl Marx.

The civil war in El Salvador was part of a wider Central American trend. Two other Central American republics were faced with a communist driven civil war: Guatemala and Nicaragua. In all three nations there was an economic component driving the conflict which corresponded to race. The communist guerrillas tended to be poor, and the poor tended to be Indios. At the top of the economic and social stairway were and are New World Spanish whites. The Indios also carry considerable social pathologies, so mistrust and violence are part of the warp and weft of Central America’s social relations

Meanwhile, the US-Mexico border was insecure, and President Carter had signed the Refugee Act of 1980 into law. The 1980 Refugee Act is one of the anti-white laws of the “civil rights” order, although its origins had nothing to do with the sub-Saharan uplift attempt. The genesis for the act came from the refugee problems that immediately followed the end of World War II. Then, refugees fleeing the Soviet occupied parts of Europe were held up by ordinary migration rules. Most (if not all) of those refugees were highly skilled, so they added to the wealth of the Free World while denying the Communist Bloc their services.

In 1980, passing a refugee law based on the historical paradigm that streamlining the admittance of anti-communist European refugees was beneficial seemed to be correct policy. Additionally, there was a widely held idea in the 1980s that admitting refugees in the 1930s and 40s could have saved people from the Nazis. The plot of mini-series War and Remembrance (1988) is focused on refugee issues, for example. By 1980, those who could flee communism in Europe had already done so, which made communist Cuba the reservoir of those wishing to flee a workers’ paradise.

As soon as the Refugee Act was signed, anti-communist Cubans sought refuge in the Peruvian embassy in Havana and demanded permission to leave. The numbers of Cubans on the embassy grounds swelled, and eventually Cuba’s communist leader, Fidel Castro, allowed the Cubans to leave through the port of Mariel. Initially the boatlift brought high quality Cubans to Miami, but Castro had thought through the implications of the Refugee Act to their logical end. He emptied his prisons and insane asylums to get the most problematic people in Cuba on the boatlift and off to the USA. Haitians also recognized an opportunity from the Refugee Act of 1980 and they, too, surged towards Florida.

The refugees created a crime wave in Miami and the problems spread. Refugees were sent by the Federal Government to occupy World War II barracks in military bases everywhere. In Arkansas, refugees staged a riot that partially caused Bill Clinton to lose re-election for governor, the only election he’d lose. The problems of the Cuban refugee invasion of Miami are at the center of the movie Scarface (1983). The word “refugee” gained its toxic connotations in Miami in 1980.

There is a before-and-after aspect to the 1980 Mariel Boatlift that deserves some further remarks. The US Census Bureau counted people from Latin America as whites until the 1970 US Census. The “Hispanic race” only appeared after it became widely known that the “civil rights” structure created a host of benefits for anyone “non-white.” Prior to the Census Bureau change there was no hostility in the wider US-American culture for people of New World Spanish ancestry. The heroes of the Wild West often married New World Spanish women including Jim Bowie and Pat Garrett. The New World Spaniard Juan Seguin was one of the heroes of the Alamo. John Wayne married several New World Spanish women, and all his films held Latin Americans in high regard. TV’s first sitcom centered upon the lives of a heritage American woman, Lucy Ricardo (Lucille Ball), and her Cuban husband Ricky Ricardo (Desi Arnaz).

Once Latin Americans were declared a different race in 1970, the tensions took off. All immigrant waves create a response, but with the “Hispanic” moniker in place, the problems connected with the “civil rights” occupation regime. The partnership between Ricky and Lucy Ricardo were replaced by a “blacks and Hispanics” political coalition. After 1970, the porous border with Mexico became a widely noticed political problem.

President Carter’s re-election chances were destroyed by Carter’s missteps and the Iran Hostage Crisis. He was replaced in 1980 by Ronald Reagan. The Reagan administration was staffed with dedicated anti-communists. They implemented a policy that supported the anti-communists forces in Central America. In El Salvador and Guatemala, Reagan’s staff supported the non-communist governments, in Nicaragua, they supported an insurgent militia, called the Contras, who opposed the communist government.

As the wars in Central America continued, immigrants headed to the United States, aided by the pre-existing people smuggling networks in Mexico. The first immigrants from El Salvador were educated professionals who’d run afoul of their respective governments for some reason. They were aided by Protestant US-American ministers. The ministers involved were motivated by the narrative that the failure to help refugees in Europe during World War II left innocents to meet a cruel fate. The Jewish paleoconservative Paul Gottfried wrote an excellent critique of this impulse in his 2002 book, Multiculturalism and the Politics of Guilt.

In 1980, however, the limitations of making decisions based on World War II analogies were not yet fully understood. Additionally, Reagan’s cabinet was divided on the immigration issue. Many profitable Sun Belt industries relied on cheap labor from Mexico and Central America. Opposed to the cheap labor lobby were those in Reagan’s base who were frustrated by the (then) recent “civil rights” movement and motivated to protect US-American whites from waves of new arrivals. There was also the strategic situation regarding operations in Central America. Every Central American in the United States meant one less potential recruit for the communist cause in Central America. Consequently, Reagan made a decision by indecision, allowing the situation to stand.

Events on the ground continued to drive forward. The Protestant supporters of the Central American refugees created the sanctuary movement, whereby refugees, who were illegal immigrants in the eyes of the law, stayed inside the buildings of sympathetic churches and claimed “sanctuary.” The Central Americans in those churches and their US-American allies went to the press to discuss their plight, and they received a great deal of public sympathy. The sanctuary movement was the launch pad for legal precedents that immigrants and asylum-seekers couldn’t be returned to their native lands if they feared persecution or if their native land was embroiled in domestic turmoil.

The sanctuary movement was also the genesis for “sanctuary city” policies in which local police would not report illegal immigrants to federal immigration authorities for minor offenses, like driving without insurance. Another factor in the sanctuary movement was NGOs which were formed and funded through President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society that continued on even after Johnson left office. One key NGO was the Manzo Area Council, a “community organizing” group in the Southwest. Ronald Reagan attempted to end the crisis with the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986.

IRCA became known as “amnesty” and President George H.W. Bush allowed for another “amnesty” in 1990 that created the temporary protected status (TPS) for immigrants that shielded them from deportation. Blitzer writes,

The 1990 act was the last major immigration reform package the US Congress would pass. In the following two decades, the only other significant measures to become law involved enforcement: tools to increase deportations, funding bills to expand border security, and an act to overhaul the Immigration and Naturalization Service. TPS holders would become permanently stuck with a status that was meant to be provisional. Republican and Democratic administrations found it easier to renew their TPS status every two years than to create an actual route to citizenship for those who had built lives in the US over decades. Ironically, the Salvadorans who ultimately benefited from TPS received the protection as a result not of the civil war itself but of a series of earthquakes that struck the country in 2001. Many whose asylum petitions had been denied or delayed were pursuing legal relief through the American Baptist Churches litigation; others went underground or eventually availed themselves of TPS when it became available. A quarter of the Salvadorans living in the US ultimately obtained TPS. (p. 179)

The early 1990s is when a shift takes place. The political drivers in of the Central American immigrant community cease being principled New World Spanish refugees fighting against an unjust Latin American junta-led government. (“Unjust” is putting it unfairly, the junta governments were fighting real communist terrorists, but they were using ugly methods.) Their place was taken by non-white Indios and Mestizos who aped a watered-down form of Negro criminal pathology. Blitzer doesn’t express this explicitly in this book, but as the book progresses, the chapters increasingly have some feature on a Central American immigrant and his or her dealings with Central American criminals. One particularly frightening story is that of a young woman, newly arrived, who was interviewed by local El Salvadoran gangsters. The gangsters were looking to discover her origins in El Salvador to further their criminal purposes.

Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here humanizes the Central American illegal immigrant wave while showing its problems. It could be that the second Trump administration has started to solve the problem. Deterrence is key. During Trump’s first presidency, migrant children were separated from migrant children. The press created a semi-believed moral panic over the policy, but the policy’s deterrent effect did partially work. Trump’s election in 2024 undoubtedly was a deterrent also. It is certain that potential immigrants know US policies regarding immigration and respond accordingly.

The next step is solving the problem long term. Central American governments are frustrated by the shifts in US-American policies, and they can deliberately not cooperate enough to cause real problems. There is probably no way to avoid this, but US-Americans and Central Americans can agree to keep things from getting too bad. Central American deportees should be treated kindly by ICE, for example. Remittances should also not be taxed. Central American governments must also respect property rights and multi-national corporations must pay their fair share of taxes.

With the border secured, and should birthright citizenship be abolished, it could be possible to allow for a labor force from Central America that comes and goes. Central Americans working in the United States who are saving money to build up their home villages are not participating in the Great Replacement. A poor Central America does not help US Americans. As events in the Indo-Pacific become more uncertain, than supporting the transfer of manufacturing capabilities from China to El Salvador as well as the United States might be a viable option with long-term benefits.