VamoSanctity/Freedom of Movement + Border/Shutdown Updates📌

To say that we don’t take serious note of the world migrant crisis would be disingenuous, at best. To not greatly respect and revere refugees’ dreams and desires for better lives and prospects, their desperate, too often tragic journeys in sinking ships and deflating rafts would be heartlessly exploitative as the human traffickers, corrupt officials and disrupting ‘identitarians’ who abuse them. 

Therefore we fully acknowledge the migrants’ plight in the pursuit of racial, tribal, political or economic relief (including Catalan gypsies). Identifying with their existential aspirations for freedom of movement; following their ‘pilgrims’ progress’ in their dire and deadly passage, closely tracking the border barriers or other impediments mounted in their paths by land and sea—Mediterranean to the Saint Lawrence to the Rio Grande.

Of most current concern is the plight of 600 migrants being shunted around the Mediterranean after being denied entry by Malta and Italy’s new anti-immigrant government. It appears the SOS Mediterranee is helping rescue many Aquarius ill and hypothermic male migrants, women and children from their crowded, flimsy smuggler’s vessel, to be received at long last by Spanish authorities. Italy says “Enough!”, no more transforming Italia into an enormous refugee camp; a Bavaria-Berlin divide threatens to avenge Merkel’s ‘Boner’ (over 1.6 million migrants thus far) by sealing off Germany’s borders to those who’ve previously entered through another country. It remains to be seen how the EU acts on such door slamming to Mideast and African migrants as the summer Mediterranean crossing season heats up, or if it can maintain unity at all—particularly in the face of Worldwide Nationalist Conservative Movement pressures.

This, even though we admittedly may travel in different, more comfortable ways, by different means, in terms of readiness and technology: From a nomadic standpoint, roam in esprit de corps support for them, we shall…with the understanding, for example, that the story of North America is essentially a tale of migration—which doesn’t historically include the “Zero Tolerance” policy of pulling families apart at U.S. borders.

Fortunately, airlines such as United, American, SWA and Frontier have put the Federal government on notice that they don’t wish to transport any detained migrant children. Now, perhaps the White House worm has turned on its entire border fiasco…

UPDATE: Border Disorder, Shutdown Volume 3. 

Happy Holidays from San Francisco’s Presidio! Here amid the third U.S. government shutdown of 2018, as the nation’s capital remains deadlocked somewhere between the country continuing to lay out a welcome mat along its southwestern border, or strong-arming itself to fabricate a weaponized ‘moatif’.

Picture Christmas afternoon—sunny, crisp, skies clear like never before this year. Particularly out here along Marine Drive, which is the shoreline access to Fort Point, so perfectly tucked under the Golden Gate Bridge. Usually packed with cars, cycles, vans and tour buses, today its entrance gate is closed, the road is free of motor vehicles, with federal shutdown notices posted about.

No ranger shirts, no Smokey Bear hats, no service: So many visitors, hikers, runners, surfers, yet Fort Point and all facilities were locked up tight; there wasn’t a National Park Service staffer to be found. This scene could only be the tip of the NPS iceberg, but a floating fragment of a federal government gone coldly adrift. Parks and cherished sites are closed down all over the country, right when the holiday vacationing public needs them most. Not to mention a Park Service police horse that lay down, shivering and unattended outside its now unattended, padlocked Presidio stables—just symptomatic of sad, purposeless stasis and neglect playing out nationwide.

All because a White House that  desperately clings to a bullet point made to its dwindling support base is in a grudge match with an incoming Congress that refuses to pay for a fanciful wall. As shutdown days turn to weeks, federal employees from the NPS to the TSA (naming but a few) find it harder and more impractical to cope with the resulting furloughs and payroll freeze, particularly while the irresponsible politicians idly spin and grandstand, receiving their pay and bennies unabated.

It is said this holiday stand-off is essentially all about immigration policy. So it was curious that on that crowded, bustling Christmas afternoon stroll, not one word of English was to be heard, out to Fort Point or back.

A worldly confluence it certainly was. Still, everybody was getting on and along just fine—or at least as best we could under these senseless, shuttered circumstances—save for that trusty NPS horse, suffering and shivering outside the Presidio Stables. Clearly, none of this will be forgotten down the road…

Much more to come, as Shutdown, Volume 3 drags on…

UPDATE: Borderline Madness or Border Order?

“No Bans, No Walls!”

“Strong Borders, No Crime!”

As the migration debate roils on worldwide, time to more sharply focus upon what it all means to us Vamigrés. 

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore” (Emma Lazarus, 1883). “Better (to) be safe, (to) be tough” (Donald Trump, 2018). 

Ever since the “Migrant Crisis” blew up in 2015, human movement and national borders have been open and shut issues globally, with increasing fervor all around.

Wrought from the tribulations and tragedies of Sub Saharan Africa, the Middle East and Central America, this wrenchingly migratory strain of travel, however distressed and harrowing, has opened the floodgates of controversy and recrimination.

Border Free to Borders Frozen.

Hundreds of thousands of desperate refugees and asylum seekers continue to press toward European and American borders and shores. The Mediterranean travails of that Aquarius rustbucket, finally unloaded by Spanish officials in Valencia, has since been followed by the standoff over MV Lifeline, a German Mission Lifeline charity ship that had rescued over 230 African migrants from a pair of rubber dinghies launched by Libyan-based smugglers.

First Malta, then Italy rejected the vessel’s pleas to dock at their ports. While a Maersk cargo ship with 110 more migrants also tread Italian waters. Both nations claimed the migrants were saved from Libyan waters, thus were not their responsibility, and should be returned to Africa. Malta ultimately blinked, and frenemy Italy soon relented, as well—so long as as other European Union nations agreed to absorb their share of this human cargo. 

These impasses have prompted EU officials to summit in Brussels and address the need for a more comprehensive migration policy*. The Union’s entire Schengen border and passport-free zone is coming under increasing five from now populist, anti-immigrant sentiments in Eastern Europe and frontline nations bearing the brunt of taking in migrants and asylum seekers on their Mediterranean shores for at least three long years.

Contentious issues among the 28 Euro states are illegal, immigration, first asylum/primary vs. secondary landings, international protection centers (preferably at the departure end), human rights to live safely and securely versus “human meat and cargo”, as the new Italian interior minister calls them. These plus pressuring Greece to further block migrant traffic from Turkey, Middle East conflict zones and the Central Mediterranean—otherwise closing the Balkan route altogether.

Now Austria is preparing to Harden its inner borders while demanding better defending of the EU’s outer borders, declaring migrants, refugees and asylum seekers are “not welcome here” and “too dangerous for our citizens”.

Germany itself is feeling the domestic and EU member heat of anti-migrant resistance. Angela Merkel, the main architect of border-free travel and immigration throughout the EU all along, risks losing her ‘European Vision’, if not her Chancellorship to a populist challenge from the Alternative for Germany and Bavarian Christian Social Union. 

* Most recently, an EU deal has apparently been struck to halt uncontrolled (e.g., secondary) migration, facilitate a fair distribution of migrants and asylum seekers among member nations without binding quotas, and establish ‘neutral zone’ migrant process transit centers about Germany, to start. In the process, Merkel has apparently saved her job for now.

En total, this makes for an intriguing Mediterranean crossing summer—even as migration to Europe appears to be actually slowing…

Catch and Release to Zero Tolerance.

Not that crossings are any smoother, easier in the Americas, from Tijuana to the Rio Grande or borders northward. But at least the U.S. State Department has just relaxed its travel advisory on Cuba from Level 3 to Level 2, which means American visitors to the island should used increased caution instead of wholly reconsidering their trips—despite those dangerous sonic concussion attacks on  U.S. Embassy employees in Havana.

Still, amid the chaos and confusion of Trump administration immigration policies with regard to refugees and asylum status comes the Supreme Court’s affirmation of the Muslim travel ban. Targeting Middle Eastern countries, Venezuela and North Korea, the 5-4 decision further clouds entry to the United States. This, while checkpoints and ICE or INS agents continue to sort thru the separation of illegal migrants from their children, seeking to sidestep due process for those fleeing grinding Central American poverty, gang violence and the ‘hothouse’ effects of climate change.

Clearly, humanity and compassion know no borders in this territorial, nationalistic day and age.

UPPERDATE (January 2020): Another Banner Year.

As if the 2017 Muslim travel ban weren’t enough, the Trump Administration now doubles down.

That is, the initial DHS/TSA reject lines of Middle Eastern countries, Venezuela and North Korea must make room for the denizens of Nigeria, Sudan, Eritrea, Myanmar, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus  and Tanzania.

The common grounding? Primarily countries that have failed to measure up in terms of compliance with current U.S. security policies. A White House spokesperson maintained that if nations want to “…fully participate in U.S. immigrations programs,” they need to meet all security and counterterrorism requirements to stem terrorism or security threats to the United States.

Otherwise, as with the “profoundly successful” 2017 ban: Whether you’re upbraided or uprooted, hounded or hopeful, a researcher or refugee, schemer or dreamer, desperate or desperado, infant or innocent abroad—Baby, it’s up against the wall…

isNirs: See Hear Now.

So where does that lead us Vamigrés? 

There is likely not a lot we can do about beating the bush and beaches, but as to the actual checkpoints, perhaps we can help ease the border flow by not impeding the ‘port of entry’ process, nor unnecessarily interceding in either direction—be it with regard to crossing or customs screening.

Then again, we can pay closer attention at such entry points or security stations. See something, hear something, appropriately say or do: Spot and cite abuses and nefarious activity either way.

Rapid reaction, reasoned response—in the extreme, report any sighting of suspicious vans, semi-trailers or other death traps that may be carrying human traffic in harmful, dire straits by unscrupulous smugglers. Conversely, any potential terrorist activity/attempts to plot and penetrate borders. For what’s needed is not more solid walls but better straining and screening—that is, thinking scalpel rather than scythe.

In the meantime, we certainly can factor Euro/other countries’ softer or hardened positions on their borders (France, Austria, Hungary, etc.) into the ‘vaquation’ when deciding where to visit and venture. Not least the UN’s recent agreement on the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration—which the U.S. is dismayingly boycotting.

To Preserve and Progress.

Of all the inane drivel spewing forth from the White House these days, one throwaway talking point warrants a measure of Vamigré mention: “changing the culture”. The implication is that mass migration threatens to dilute cultures through the homogenization of historical diversity.

This is a matter we will be hashing over a wee bit down the road…in the meantime, be sure to look into the laudable efforts of www.miles4migrants.org