A-Infos (en) Italy, FAS, Sicilia Libertaria #460 - Trump and Venezuelan Emigration to the US (Part Two) (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

In the June issue of Sicilia Libertaria, we outlined the Latin American 
migration situation, particularly the influx of migrants to the United 
States over the past twenty years. The United States' population has 
been shaped by waves of migrants arriving, during the second half of the 
20th century, from Latin American countries, especially Mexicans-the 
Hispanics, as they are defined by both the white component of the 
population and the subgroup of African origin, the descendants of 
slaves. We concluded by alluding to the new Venezuelan presence in the 
United States since 2015, the year of the onset of the great political 
and economic crisis, further exacerbated by US sanctions imposed by both 
"democratic" and "republican" governments. Thus, the Venezuelan presence 
in the United States has increased exponentially, primarily due to 
clandestine entries from the Mexican border, to approximately 800,000 
individuals, both "legalized" and "illegal." It is precisely in this 
aspect that Trump's new administration stands out: failing to 
distinguish between different statuses, its policy of indiscriminate 
expulsion targets all immigrants, both newly arrived and established, 
with jobs, homes, and children, even if they hold some form of residency 
or work permit (for example, a Green Card).

The case of Venezuelan immigrants is particularly important because 
Trump has targeted them, using them as a "laboratory" to test his model 
for solving the "problem" represented, according to his perception, by 
the uncontrolled arrival of individuals from other poor nations, 
especially from the Americas itself, speciously overlooking the use made 
of them for labor: low-cost labor. The problem is not new to the US 
administration and dates back to Chávez's arrival in power in the late 
1990s, with an explicit political agenda of opposition to gringo 
influence in Latin America, derived from a blend of populist nationalism 
and a left-wing revolutionary project influenced by Fidel Castro. As 
always, the underlying problem was economic, involving Venezuela's vast 
oil fields, which were traditionally entrusted to US oil companies. 
Chávez imposed a nearly 50% increase in the tax burden on the Venezuelan 
state. Like his Democratic predecessors, Trump imposed or increased 
sanctions on Venezuela in an attempt to isolate the Latin American state 
by preventing oil sales. This was unsuccessful (China and Russia support 
Venezuela), so much so that, for example, the US-based Chevron managed 
to obtain exemptions from Trump to continue exploiting the oil fields, 
albeit to a lesser extent than in the past. The result of these 
imperialist processes has been the increase in poverty in Venezuela, 
which directly fuels the new migratory flows.

As the bard would say, there's a method to Trump's madness, something 
that many don't seem to perceive. He promised a very tough crackdown on 
immigrants, and that's exactly what he's carrying out, making it clear 
that his plan is much broader: to make America great again... for 
whites! (A plan clearly visible even in his European emulators). Indeed, 
in the case of Venezuelans, it's not just a matter of expelling illegal 
immigrants, but also those with documents, and if that works, he'll 
continue with other minorities. In the Venezolano case, since he was 
held back by some state judges while he continued to load those captured 
on the streets by police and military officers in chains onto planes 
bound for a maximum-security prison in El Salvador (whose conditions 
bear no resemblance to Meloni's in Albania, which remained new due to 
the lack of expatriates), he invented a convoluted strategy: he 
resurrected an eighteenth-century law that allowed the US government to 
deport citizens of foreign countries at war with the United States. And 
since it was difficult to establish the existence of a war with 
Venezuela in the courts, they came up with a story that we might call 
ridiculous if it weren't so tragic: the invasion of the United States by 
the Tren de Aragua (the Aragua Train).

Let me explain: this name refers to a Venezuelan criminal organization, 
of a mafia nature, whose leader and many members were locked up in a 
"maximum security" prison, so to speak, in a Venezuelan region called 
Aragua.  A few years ago, thanks to some parodic reports, it was 
discovered that this prison was completely in the hands of criminals, 
evidently with the connivance of the guards, who had transformed it into 
a kind of luxury resort. The government decided to intervene, but before 
this could happen, many of the inmates escaped through a long tunnel 
that led to a house in the neighboring village. Under pressure from the 
police and military, a large portion of the members of the Aragua Train, 
as the bandits had called themselves, emigrated illegally abroad, across 
the porous border with Colombia. From there, they spread to various 
Latin American countries and, it seems, even to the United States, where 
they rebuilt their network (also involving Venezuelans present in 
various territories).

Although it hasn't been proven that the Aragua Tren operates in the 
United States, Trump first accused Venezuela of knowingly sending 
criminals to cause disruption, to the point of considering it a 
full-blown invasion, thus legitimizing the application of the laws of 
war. This ridiculous soap opera has had dramatic real-world 
consequences. First of all: how can you differentiate a Venezuelan 
belonging to the Tren from someone who has nothing to do with this 
criminal group? A group of experts-journalists, sociologists, or 
anthropologists-is formed to study the case and, within weeks, churn out 
criteria to provide to the police forces of the various states. And 
since for the gringos, everyone living south of the Mexican border is of 
mixed race, the primary criteria seems to have been skin color and, of 
course, self-identification as a Venezuelan citizen (you certainly don't 
ask in the street whether or not you belong to an international criminal 
gang!). Apparently, they realized that this generality didn't help them 
identify themselves, so they developed a series of new criteria: ten 
tattoos that they somehow identified as characteristic of that gang (for 
example, a watch or a tiger). Thus, raid after raid, they began 
"legally" expelling thousands of men and women to El Salvador or 
Guantanamo (Cuba) (their children are left unattended or locked up in 
child prisons), many of them Venezuelan, but also Mexican or Ecuadorian, 
guilty of having a tattoo similar to those identified by the experts. 
Finally, given that many judges' reaction was to attempt to block the 
deportation, Trump appealed to the Supreme Court and has just secured 
two rulings that expand his power over the judicial system: the priority 
of presidential orders over local judges' decisions (this is what Meloni 
is seeking in Italy) and the partial derogation of ius soli, that is, 
the suspension of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, enacted 
in 1968, which definitively resolved the historic disputes of the North 
American federation, stemming from the infamous 1857 ruling, when the 
then Court denied African Americans the right to citizenship. The 
gravity of this ruling is enormous, as it allows it to target 
second-generation immigrants, who theoretically, by holding citizenship, 
are fully American citizens, with a job, a home, and children, perhaps 
already adults. It seems clear to us that Trump's plan and its 
implementation give us a clear indication of the direction taken by some 
European governments, including Italy.

Emanuele Amodio

https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
Subscribe/Unsubscribe https://ainfos.ca/mailman/listinfo/a-infos-en
Archive: http://ainfos.ca/en