[music]

Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Many things are different in the Biden administration than they were under Donald Trump. We could spend the next hour counting the ways. Let's not minimize that. Some things are not that different. A Washington Post column by Ruth Marcus today says, "Rather astonishingly, the Biden Justice Department is continuing the Trump administration's efforts to shield the former president from a defamation suit filed by author E. Jean Carroll, who says that Trump sexually assaulted her in the 1990s, and then slandered her when she went public with her claim in 2019."

The column notes that Attorney General Merrick Garland is also appealing a federal judge's order to release a full version of a memo about the Mueller report from the Trump administration. Garland is arguing to dismiss a lawsuit against Trump and former Attorney General William Barr, for violating protesters' civil rights during the violent clearing of Lafayette Square last year. That from the Washington Post on the Justice Department. Then there was this headline in Forbes on June 1st, when it comes to weapons, the Biden administration's budget is just like Trump's. We'll explore that on another day.

Vice President Kamala Harris returned last night from a two-day trip to Mexico and Guatemala, facing criticism from some in her own party, because while in Guatemala, maybe kind of, sort of, like Trump would have done, she said this.

Vice President Kamala: I want to be clear to folks in this region who are thinking about making that dangerous trek to the United States-Mexico border, do not come. Do not come. The United States will continue to enforce our laws and secure our border.

Brian Lehrer: That statement, two reactions, like this tweet from New York City Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She wrote, "First, seeking asylum at any US border is a 100% legal method of arrival. Second, the US spent decades contributing to regime change and destabilization in Latin America. We can't help set someone's house on fire, and then blame them for fleeing." From AOC. From, of course, the political sector.

From the media commentary space, Maria Hinojosa, who many of you know, host of Latino USA, tweeted, "I just saw that the veep told refugees today - Do Not Come. Honestly I'm just gonna tell you I'm heartbroken. For a woman daughter of immigrants to say this to people who are desperate is just heartbreaking." Kamala Harris is, of course, a woman daughter of immigrants. Maria continues, "Stay and be killed by your lover? Stay and be killed by the gangs?" Maria's tweet ended with a sad emoji face.

We should say that the vice president didn't make up this policy, her boss did. Here's President Biden himself on ABC news in March.

President Biden: I can say quite clearly, don't come over. The process of getting set up, and it's not going to take a whole long time, is to be able to apply for asylum in place. So don't leave your town or city or community. We're going to make sure we have facilities in those cities and towns run by DHS, and also access with HHS, the Health and Human Services, to say, you can apply for asylum from where you are right now.

Brian Lehrer: President Biden on ABC in March. They're telling Central Americans as Trump did, do not come. Here's more of what the vice president said in Guatemala on Monday.

Vice President Kamala: Most people don't want to leave home. They don't want to leave the place where they grew up, where the language they know is spoken, where their culture that they know is present and has been in this case for centuries. Most people don't want to leave where their grandmother lives, and when they do, it is usually for one of two reasons, because they are fleeing some type of harm, or because to stay it means that they cannot provide for their essential needs and the needs of their family.

Brian Lehrer: On the fleeing, some type of harm side of that, there is anti-democratic government as one example, and as Harris says, she conveyed to Guatemala's president.

Vice President Kamala: We did have a very frank conversation about the importance of an independent judiciary. We had a conversation about the importance of a strong civil society.

Brian Lehrer: On NBC news when Lester Holt pressed Harris about why she was going to Guatemala but not to the southern border of the US, Harris stated clearly how their administration is different from Trump's.

Vice President Kamala: I'm in Guatemala because my focus is dealing with the root causes of migration. There may be some who think that that is not important, but it is my firm belief that if we care about what's happening at the border, we better care about the root causes and address them. That's what I'm doing.

Brian Lehrer: That's what we're doing. Let's talk about root causes of why the US southern border has more migrants seeking asylum than many in the US believe we can comfortably handle, and watch in the humanitarian interest of the people there and their families here.

With me for this is Anita Isaacs, professor of political science at Haverford College, and the director of Migration Encounters, a Mexican migrants oral history project. She studies democracy, democratization, and democratic transitions, with a focus on peacebuilding in Latin America, and particularly, in Ecuador and Guatemala. She has a New York Times op-ed this week called Guatemala Is America's Best Chance to Fix the Immigration Problem. I'll say she co-wrote the piece with Jorge Morales Toj, a leader of the Maya K'iche people of Guatemala. He's a human rights lawyer and specialist in rural development, but he doesn't speak English. So she is representing them both. Thanks for joining us, Professor Isaacs. Welcome to WNYC.

Professor Anita Isaacs: Thanks so much for having me.

Brian Lehrer: One of your main arguments in your op-ed is not to treat all the countries of Central America the same. A survey done in Guatemala, you point out, had more people saying economic reasons, and fewer citing fear of violence, compared to neighboring countries from which many migrants are also coming. Can you expand on what specific economics make Guatemala unique?

Professor Anita Isaacs: What's different about Guatemala, and particularly, the indigenous highlands of Guatemala, is that there is not an absence of violence, but there is relatively less violence that drives migration from El Salvador and from Honduras, and the violence that drives migration from the non-indigenous parts of Guatemala. In the indigenous highlands, the challenges are acute poverty and despair, combined with frustration and a desire to dig oneself out of that economic despair, and to build an economic future.

It's not that Guatemala is entirely different from the rest of the region, is what I was trying to say, but rather that, in contrast to other countries, and in specifically focusing on the indigenous rural highlands of Guatemala, the vast majority of people who are trying to come to the United States are coming, driven by economic despair and by the hope for economic opportunity that they can't achieve back home.

Brian Lehrer: One of the really interesting things, at least to my eye that you wrote, was that those migrants aren't seeking the American dream, as we think about immigrants to this country often. They're seeking the Guatemalan dream, but they need to go to the United States to attain it. Why does the path to a better life there run through here?

Professor Anita Isaacs: This is actually not my rhetoric. These are the words, I would say, of indigenous Guatemalans, Guatemalans in rural communities that I've spoken to over the past several decades, and that Jorge Morales, my co-author, has also spoken to. It's their own words that I'm reporting here. I'm not making, using just a turn of phrase here. They talk about the American dream, and they say, "No, this is a Guatemalan dream or a Mayan dream that we're after."

The reason why they can't achieve it at home because they are living in a profoundly unequal and racist society in which the governments have historically shown complete indifference to the majority of their population, who are indigenous Guatemalans, and who live in conditions of poverty and complete neglect. They also are confronting a government who has historically aligned itself with a very, very tiny elite who is equally intent on maintaining a rigged status quo that advances their very narrow economic interests. They have absolutely no opportunities at home to actually pursue their own dreams for a better life. Their dream is the same as our dreams, the same American dream. We don't have a monopoly on this notion of making a better life for ourselves and our children. That's what Guatemalans want too.

Brian Lehrer: You refer to the Guatemalan Civil War which ended 25 years ago, but you remind us in the article, as you just did in that last answer, that the country is still divided sharply along racial and class lines. By the way, our civil war ended 150 years ago, but we're still sharply divided along this but they come here and join that context, but I guess it's still better for them than in Guatemala.

Professor Anita Isaacs: It's impossible in Guatemala. It's absolutely impossible. You only have to travel out to rural Guatemala to witness within a second the total neglect. A vision that I have in my mind is a tourist trip to a small coffee estate that's been made into a playground about an hour outside of Guatemala City, and being in this zip line with friends in this playground estate and seeing the Guatemalan indigenous peasants, farmers carrying still wood that they had to chop down for firewood on their backs, walking along the zip line.

This is a country where the inequalities are so sharp that they don't just stare you at the face, they knock you off your feet.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, is anyone from Guatemala or with ties to Guatemala, listening right now? If so, we invite your calls to help tell the story of how the US helping Guatemala help itself in the right way would be good for people there and reduce the demand for migration here. 646-435-7280. If anybody happens to be listening with personal ties to Guatemala, 646-435-7280.

Do you think the Biden administration is so far on the right track? What was your reaction to Vice President Harris's one-day visit to the country? Your thoughts on Professor Isaacs' thoughts in this conversation? Anyone with ties to Guatemala and anyone else can call too. If you have a question or a comment, 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280, or you can tweet your thought or your question. You can always tweet it @BrianLehrer.

Professor Anita Isaacs from Haverford College, author of the New York Times op-ed this week that maybe you saw Guatemala Is America's Best Chance to Fix the Immigration Problem, it's called.

On coming here for the Guatemalan dream running through this country, your article refers to slow-motion construction of multi-story homes in Guatemala, and a growing fleet of cars and pickup trucks there. This is from remittances to family members there rather than people earning money here and then moving back?

Professor Anita Isaacs: Yes. It's predominantly from remittances that are being sent back. They're financing the construction of homes that looked very much often like replica of US homes, sometimes even have white picket fences. They have driveways sometimes. They have cars increasingly parked outside. It's almost impossible to set up a business, which is some of what I encourage as part of a development strategy in Guatemala. When they want to set something up economically, it often ends up being just one more little bodega or convenience store.

Brian Lehrer: Opponents of offering asylum in large numbers would argue that makes Guatemalan immigration more about a positive desire to do better for themselves and their loved ones, which would be so-called normal immigration, "Okay, get in line and apply", they would say, rather than the oppression we might classically associate with what political asylum is for. What's your take on that?

Professor Anita Isaacs: A few things. I think that the article tried-- I've written a lot, almost continuously, about the unraveling of democracy and the widespread corruption and crackdowns on justice operators and civil society in Guatemala. That's of enormous, enormous concern.

Unless the US really takes this into account and calibrates how it wants to do business with the Guatemalan elite and the Guatemalan government, then we're also going to witness a surge in political refugees from Guatemala, not just people fleeing gangs because there are some, they're not predominantly from the indigenous highlands, but there will be a rise in political refugees if we allow the Guatemalan government to get away and to continue down the path it started [inaudible 00:15:37] down a few years ago and has accelerated over the past few years. I just want to be clear about that.

The article was trying to do something a little different this time and emphasize that for the time being, so many Guatemalans are fleeing their country, driven by economic despair. That there are policies, there are initiatives that we can pursue if we want to get bangs for the buck in addressing the root causes of migration by investing heavily in generating real rural development opportunities, ones that are effective and ones that target communities in the ways the communities need it.

I was threading a little bit of a needle in this piece, but I was focusing on a target of opportunity without neglecting the real concerns for what the government is doing politically at the moment.

Brian Lehrer: I understand. You list some particular investments that you think our country can make in their country access to land, fertilizer, water, roads, credit, technical assistance, broadband. You wrote all those things. You also wrote about the availability of H-2B seasonal worker visas into this country, and that that number should be greatly expanded.

I will note to your last answer that you said, "More important, the United States needs to break a pattern in which foreign assistance is channeled through government contractors with too little transparency." There's the good governance piece. A lot of it, when the government down there is controlling it and maybe it's not a democratic system in the way we might like, the money isn't even going where it's needed.

Professor Anita Isaacs: Yes. Absolutely. There are two problems that you mention here. One is the fact that the government of Guatemala and our focus on combating corruption, et cetera, needs to expand from addressing corruption in the judicial sphere to addressing corruption when it comes to the allocation of resources across the board. The government drains the coffers of the development ministries, the ministry of agriculture, the ministry of transportation, into their own projects and into their own pockets. They line their pockets with the minimal funds that are available. That's one problem that we have.

The second problem is that the way in which development aid is dispersed is through US development contractors who take the large overhead, who design projects that don't necessarily reflect or rarely reflect community needs and priorities. They end up making little difference and securing little local buy-in.

These are two distinct problems and challenges that the US faces as it seeks to address the root economic causes of migration in Guatemala.

Brian Lehrer: All right. We're having a phones problem, I am told. We will get that fixed. With our little phones problem, we've also lost the guest for the moment. We'll get her back in just a second. Let's take a break and we'll continue. Brian Lehrer on WNYC.

[music]

Brian Lehrer on WNYC. As we continue with Haverford political science professor, Anita Isaacs, who's back with us now, an expert in Guatemala, in general, among other things, and the author of the New York Times op-ed this week called Guatemala Is America's Best Chance to Fix the Immigration Problem, with Vice President Harris having gone there on Monday.

I was starting to ask you, professor, in AOC's tweet, she said, "The US spent decades contributing to regime change and destabilization in Latin America. We can't help set someone's house on fire and then blame them for fleeing." I'm curious how much you agree that US foreign policy helped set the stage for the problems there, and therefore, it gives us more responsibility to admit more people here.

Professor Anita Isaacs: I'm 100% in agreement. I completely agree with what AOC said. I also think that Vice President Harris's comment that you played in the beginning about don't come was rather tone-deaf, although it was not playing to a Guatemalan audience but to a US audience. I believe that we have a strong moral obligation. It's in some ways I would say a form of reparations for the harms that we wrought in Guatemala, historically, and for many, many decades.

I'm completely in agreement, but I'm skeptical as to whether that is going to be an effective way, a means of persuading policymakers or others who see immigration differently to actually try to address these root causes. While I'm in complete agreement, I'm actually more concerned about the ways in which the US government is interacting with the Guatemalan government at the moment than necessarily the fact that we created this problem and we should fix it. Yes, but let's not continue to make a mess of the situation there.

Brian Lehrer: This approach to root causes at least talking about tackling the root causes as the road to solving whatever problem people perceive at the US border, do you agree with that as the approach? Do you agree that at least that is extremely different from the Trump administration, which I think wanted to just punish their way into having Guatemala stop people from leaving?

Professor Anita Isaacs: It is a different approach. It needs to make sure that words are followed up with action and that it's done in a way that actually will have impact. I believe it's important. It's the right focus, but I'm concerned that we're going to miss an opportunity because we can't think creatively, because we can't be daring enough, because we can't flex enough political muscle. We need to do all those things in order to have this focus on root causes actually bring about the results that we hope.

Brian Lehrer: Let me ask about the visa's part of your op-ed. This is going to be new to a lot of people who don't know categories of visas and things like that. I think it's really interesting. You wrote that the United States should also expand the availability of H2B seasonal worker visas and privileged Guatemalans in their allocation. You wrote the welcome decision to increase the number of eligible Central Americans to 6,000 this fiscal year compared to just 467 last year is not nearly enough to satisfy the demand, and you add, many would welcome the opportunity to participate in a program that allows them to come and go regularly and safely, avoid crippling debts, count on an annual income, and hone transferable skills and ties to US markets. Tell people more, what is an H2B seasonal worker visa?

Professor Anita Isaacs: There are two types of so-called H visas. One are H2A visas, which are for agricultural workers. While those don't have caps, they tend to go to Mexicans and we're locked in a pattern where most Mexicans get them because of the proximity of Mexico. We need to find a way to increase the numbers of Guatemalans who are able to access and be hired for seasonal agricultural labor.

We need to find a way of incentivizing employers to hire Guatemalans rather than Mexicans for agricultural labor. We need to find a way of perhaps de-subsidizing some of the travel because it's so much cheaper to get from Mexico to the US than to get from Guatemala to the US. That's the whole strategy that we need to put in place. We need to pay attention to increasing the number of seasonal agricultural worker visas.

The H2B are for non-agricultural work, but they include work in fisheries, work in hotels, work in a number of areas that many poor Guatemalans would jump at the opportunity to have, and that's where we have a cap, and we've increased it, but not enough to satisfy the demand. We need to also increase the numbers of visas that are allocated to Central Americans, and to Guatemalans, in particular, given the overwhelming economic focus of their migration and their desire, which is really important to not come here for long. They want to come here for a shorter time as possible because they really want to be at home, in their communities with their families.

By expanding temporary visas, both the agricultural and non-farm workers' visas, we provide an opportunity and alternative to undocumented immigration that we seem to want and that definitely Guatemalans want, by providing regular legal channels and safe channels, and much cheaper channels for workers to come to the United States and earn an income, develop ties with perhaps US markets, acquire skills that they can take back home and put to work in their communities.

Brian Lehrer: Could the Biden executive branch increase the number of those visas without an act of Congress?

Professor Anita Isaacs: That I don't have an answer to.

Brian Lehrer: Last question, as we start to run out of time in this segment, and callers, I apologize that we had that phone system crash. We just got it fixed, but it's too late in order to get some of the wonderful-looking calls that it looked like were coming in from people with ties to Guatemala. We will get back to you, Guatemalan-related callers on another day, I promise.

Professor Isaacs, you describe the migrants coming from Guatemala as largely fleeing the desperate conditions in the rural highlands. That sounds like it's so different than anything they'll encounter here in the United States, if they get resettled in Dallas or New York, or even agricultural contexts in the United States. Is that a problem?

Professor Anita Isaacs: Yes, it's an overwhelming challenge for all migrants coming from remote areas of Central America that land in Dallas, New York, Los Angeles, et cetera. I think it's a double challenge for many indigenous rural Guatemalans representing an increasingly larger share of the migrants from Guatemala, because it's not only that they're coming from these remote areas, but they don't even many of them speak Spanish. Their first and major language is an indigenous language. They have this additional challenge on top of the others.

Brian Lehrer: What do they find here? What's the route to settling here for them and for our government, if we are admitting them for asylum in relatively large numbers?

Professor Anita Isaacs: I think we need to distinguish between asylum and economic migration, because many of them are not seeking asylum. The focus of this article is that there are things that we can do in Guatemala, and there are things that we can do through seasonal worker visas that bypass the need for undocumented migration. That's where our emphasis should be. When they come here, many of them come to settled communities where they have relatives, et cetera, that can give them a place to stay, can give them access to a job. It often takes very little time for them to arrive, turn around, and be very hard at work. I think that we have an opportunity in the Guatemalan case, in particular, because of what I say, to make a difference that diminishes the need for undocumented migration.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. I'm glad you made that point about family ties, which makes all the difference so often for easy integration into life here. I'm going to tack on one other question, just about the timeline of all this, what you're talking about, what Vice President Harris and President Biden are talking about, solving the push to come to this country by fixing issues down there. I heard one of the guests on MSNBC this morning sympathetic to the migrants, but with a view on foreign policy, saying, it's going to take 20 years. How long is it going to take?

Professor Anita Isaacs: If we keep saying it's going to take 20 years, then they will always be 20 years ahead of us. So it's time to get started, is what I would say. Yes, the problems are deep-seated. They are deep-rooted. They require a comprehensive solution, but if we continue kicking the ball down the road, they'll always be 20 years ahead of us. So I say let's get started. The other thing, I say, is let's focus on the seasonal worker visas. We have some alternatives right now that we could introduce, that alleviate the pressures to take this expensive, unsafe journey, and to arrive here and to live in these awful conditions as an undocumented migrant.

Brian Lehrer: Anita Isaacs is a professor of political science at Haverford College, and co-director of Migration Encounters, a Mexican migrants oral history project. She co-wrote this op-ed with Jorge Morales Toj, a Maya K'iche leader, and human rights lawyer and specialist in rural agricultural development in Guatemala. The New York Times op-ed is called Guatemala Is America’s Best Chance to Fix the Immigration Problem. Thank you so much for sharing all your thoughts with us.

Professor Anita Isaacs: Thanks so much for having me.

Copyright © 2021 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.