Thread by @diaspora_is_red

Long due: A thread on SE Asian refugee deportation.

Aiming to get closer to answering:
1) History of SEA deportation
2) Domestic and geopolitical motivations for deportation
3) What this means for our community (esp. Khmer)

khmertimeskh.com/50560058/rise-…

BACKGROUND: Deportation of SE asians with undocumented or refugee status was limited by a MOU between US State Dep. and the mother countries.

Migrants arriving before July 12, 1995 were exempt from deportation. Those with criminal records are included.

state.gov/documents/orga…

This MOU has since been unilaterally reinterpreted to allow for the deportation of refugees who arrived prior to that date, leaving many with criminal records who arrived before 1995 subject to deportation orders, even after they have served their criminal sentences.

Khmer refugees were previously immune to deportation orders since 1980 until 2002 when the Bush Administration made similar unilateral changes to the MOU between the US and Cambodia. Since then over 700 refugees have been deported.

RATIONALE:

Why pursue these deportations? Aside from "tough on crime" rhetoric, how does US benefit by deporting refugees? The home countries do not want our deportees. Yet the US is willing to threaten sanctions if countries do not accept them. Why?

time.com/5335281/us-vis…

THE VISA QUESTION:

Threats are made toward visas for SE Asian government officials and their families ONLY. Why the distinction? Other countries have resisted deportees but their visa sanctions only pertain to tourist travel, and NOT government officials

dhs.gov/news/2017/09/1…

In fact, the US State Department makes it CLEAR that general tourists and travel visas for Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, etc would still be issued despite the ban on only government officials seeking diplomatic visas. Is there a geopolitical rationale for this?

GEOPOLITICS OF SE ASIA:

SE Asian nations are seeking closer and stronger ties with China against the United States. China is among the primary trading partners of Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, and Myanmar, etc, and these ties are only growing stronger as China becomes a global power.

There are pro-US and pro-China factions in the SE Asian governments. Given the US and China are competing for regional influence, it's plausible that the US is targeting government officials to sow disunity and shift favorability toward the US.

globaltimes.cn/content/112387…

For example, US capital has been investing heavily in Cambodia. Within 4 years, the US jumped from the 10th largest foreign investor to the 5th. Visa sanctions likely threaten Cambodian financial interests tied to these investments and the involved people

cambodiainvestment.gov.kh/why-invest-in-…

By shifting the internal politics of SE Asian countries toward the US, it perhaps intends to protect existing and future US capital interests in the region (e.g. Coca Cola, Proctor & Gamble, textiles, etc) against China. These visa threats over deportees could be for this reason

The deportees are possibly being used as a political tool to punish countries that are favoring China more and the US less, in the hopes to politically and economically encircle China. Deportees as weapons for American economic imperialism? Lord I hope not.

WHO ARE THE DEPORTEES?

Most are young men who came to the US as infants or young children with refugee or protected undocumented status as per the previous MOU. Most have criminal records, many whom were incarcerated as juveniles.

Our communities are impoverished, social services are cut. Unemployment is high and educational attainment is low. These are clear material and structural indicators and systemic causes of crime in the bid for survival.

aapip.org/publications/w…

And we know that the criminal justice system targets and criminalizes POC and immigrants to the benefit of the private prison system.

aapip.org/publications/w…

So what does this mean us, the diaspora? The deportations signal that many others could face deportation if they at some point become involved in the criminal justice system. Even minor drug charges, petty crime, and other non-violent misdemeanors could result in deportation.

It signals to the diaspora that they should fall in line or face legal consequences, to target asians and threaten their ability to survive under the brutality of capitalism. It means that others who have not yet committed crimes should watch out for face deportation.

It means communities who are already struggling and still struggling and are in social and material conditions that produce crime are under even heavier surveillance, being watched for the slightest mistake, and paying in your future for it.

If the US is able to unilaterally change an MOU for refugees with criminal records, who is to say they can't make another unilateral decision on all refugees without criminal records but are still undocumented or still on visas/green cards?

Our motherlands don't need us, or want us, and recognize that to deport us to places we have never been to, is inhumane.

People who committed crimes in their teens did not realize they'd be up for deportation years down the line, even after serving their sentences, and being protected from deportation under the 1980 and 1995 agreements between the US and our mother countries. So what? They served.

So then is there a strong rationale for deporting ex-criminals and refugees who arrived as children? Given what we know about the structural causes of poverty and criminality, there is no moral justification to further punish those by deportation to the mother countries.

You can't morally justify the criminal justice system and how we already know it operates. Read any research on economic opportunity and rates of criminal recidivism, and understand that there can be no justice while we are poor.

tinyurl.com/y9kum6td

The conditions of poverty under late capitalism will continue to create more poverty and the criminal justice system will have more people to criminalize and pluck from, many of which will likely be SE Asian and Khmer and Hmong and Vietnamese.

There is likely very calculated reason for all of this which I outlined earlier. The US is using deportees as pawns in it's geopolitical/economic games in Asia, and as a signal to threaten SE Asian Americans who once thought they were safe from deportation and criminalization.

The shit sucks, and there is no moral justification for it, even if you wanna yammer about being tough on crime. Tough on crime doesn't work if you don't understand the nature of criminality and it's relation to economics.

Further examinations of the school-prison-deportation pipeline in the community:

pewtrusts.org/en/research-an…