By Barbara Franz
In the last two months 10,000 Ukrainians have entered the U.S. through Mexico. Being exempted from Title 42, they received humanitarian parole, which allows them to live and work legally in the U.S. on a temporary basis.
Similarly, European nations have swiftly met the influx of more than 2 million Ukrainian refugees since the beginning of Russia’s invasion on Feb. 24, 2022.
To be sure, the millions of people who have fled Ukraine have the right to seek and find security and asylum in other countries. But so do refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Afghanistan, Syria, Haiti, Venezuela, Cameroon, and other nations.
The hypocrisy and racism with which many EU countries and the U.S. are handling asylum and immigration issues in the second decade of the 21st century is astounding and absolutely uncalled for.
The European Union is dealing with the Ukrainian refugee crisis in exemplary fashion. In a historic vote, EU member states agreed on March 3 to give Ukrainians immediate temporary protective status that allows them to live and work in EU countries, and provides them with access to health care, education, and other social services.
This marks the first time that member nations have invoked this emergency plan since it became a part of EU law two decades ago.
In the U.S., the Biden administration extended temporary protection to Ukrainian citizens already residing in the country, and promised to accept 100,000 Ukrainian refugees.
However, no structural or policy preparations have been made by the federal government to help with the Ukrainians once they are paroled into the country.
Instead, the federal plan, called United for Ukraine, scheduled to begin last week, requires Ukrainian refugees to have a sponsor who can support them once they enter the U.S. The federal plan apparently relies in its entirety on private sponsorship.
Regarding Ukraine, the U.S. and EU member states have demonstrated an astounding show of resolve and humanitarian solidarity. The EU, for once, reacted appropriately to a massive influx of refugees fleeing the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the subsequent humanitarian crisis that threatens millions remaining in that country.
Those refugees face an array of traumas, from armed conflict to lack of heat, water, electricity, and food.
EXCEPTIONS TO THE RULE
Comparatively speaking, the treatment of Ukrainian refugees and asylum seekers is the exception, rather than the rule. The rule is that, every time there is an increase in the number of Black, brown, (and, in the American case, indigenous) migrants and asylum-seekers at borders, the situation is painted as an invasion and turned into a “border crisis,” for the sake of politics and gaslighting, rather than as a logistical challenge.
In 2018, when a migrant caravan from Central America brought the total number of asylum-seekers at the border to more than 5,000, the Trump administration sent National Guard troops, in order to stop the “invasion.”
In the past six months, U.S. Customs & Border Protection (CBP) agents apprehended more than 1 million asylum-seekers and migrants at the southern border. Similarly, the EU has been engaged in a “hardening” of its external borders and largely has been successful in blocking (irregular) migration to the continent.
Coupled with the adoption of bilateral border cooperation treaties – especially among southern EU member states and Middle Eastern and North African states– these measures have contributed considerably to limiting immigration.
For example, between January 2015 and March 2020, Turkey’s coast guard reportedly intercepted 186,766 asylum seekers and migrants in the Aegean Sea. Both regions largely have turned away from humanitarian border policies, instead stressing security and the militarization of migration processes.
Nevertheless, as the case of Ukrainian refugees shows, there are exceptions.
During the past month, Poland has welcomed 1.2 million of those fleeing Ukraine, according to United Nations data. At the same time, Poland has rigidly rejected entry to black and brown migrants from Ukraine. In 2019, about 80,000 international students from 158 countries were studying in Ukraine. The majority of then (about 23 percent) come from India, followed by Morocco, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Nigeria.
Similarly, Slovakia, whose politicians insisted on only accepting Christians from Syria, so far has taken more than 140,000 Ukrainian refugees, per United Nations data.
In the U.S., the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) estimates that approximately 25,000 asylum seekers are waiting at the border for Title 42 to be repealed. Yet there was no backlog at the same border crossings for 10,000 Ukrainians who officials processed without delay.
Erika Pinheiro, an immigrant attorney based in Tijuana, Mexico, told Democracy Now that American citizens and church groups finance Ukrainians’ flights from Europe to Mexico City or Cancún and then onward to Tijuana.
These volunteers then are waiting at the airport and coordinating with CBP to allow the Ukrainians to be speedily processed and paroled into the U.S. Up to 1,000 Ukrainians are processed per day, mostly through the San Ysidro Port of Entry in San Diego, where border officials for years have claimed they lacked daily capacity to process even 30 other asylum seekers.
Other asylum seekers, who have been waiting often for years at the same port of entry, in deplorable conditions, many after suffering rape, attempted kidnappings, and assaults while staying in dangerous Mexican border cities, probably are in awe watching the efficiency with which the Ukrainians are granted entry. The same rules do not apply for them.
As Pinheiro explains: “If a Honduran even tries to approach border officials, they will be arrested and detained in a Mexican immigration prison for even attempting to seek safety in the United States.”
In many cases, U.S. citizens escort Ukrainian refugees in their cars to border officials. While there is nothing wrong with that, if an American citizen attempted to extend the same courtesy to Haitian asylum-seekesr, and drove them to the border checkpoint, the American would get arrested and be imprisoned for smuggling.
At the American southern border we find the same double standard that Polish and Slovak border authorities apply: White persons are given unfettered access to ports of entry, and their applicantions are processed at a clip of a thousand per day.
However, Black and Brown asylum seekers more often than not are apprehended and deported. In addition, persons who seeks to aid non-white asylum seekers are persecuted for the same activities.
Of course, the number of Ukrainian asylum seekers at the southern border still is much smaller at this point. Yet the difference in numbers simply cannot justify the difference in treatment.
The way the Ukrainians have been received shows that the CBP, DHS and other border agencies safely can process tens of thousands of asylum seekers in a very short time period.
When governments devote adequate personnel to process people in an orderly way, borders are not overwhelmed by refugees, and other features of the so-called border “crisis” vanish. The color of one’s skin should not determine how one is treated; everyone should have a fair and timely asylum screening process.
Morristown resident Barbara Franz, Ph.D., is a professor of political science at Rider University.
Opinions in commentaries are the authors’, and do not necessarily reflect those of this publication.
Thank you for publishing this well-researched commentary on this topic by expert Barbara Franz. I fully echo her conclusion: “The color of one’s skin should not determine how one is treated; everyone should have a fair and timely asylum screening process”.