By Sir Ronald Sanders 

On October 12, more than a dozen representatives in the US Congress sent a letter to the US Trade Representative, Katherine Tai, asking for immediate attention to what they describe as “the growing influence of the Chinese Communist Party in both Latin America and the Caribbean trade and economic development”.

The US Congresspersons have come to this realization years after Caribbean representatives in Washington – me included – have been saying to successive US Governments and Congress that the US has been absent as a meaningful contributor to the Caribbean development for almost two decades.

The vacuum that  the US left has been filled by the Peoples Republic of China, and it would be unreasonable for the US government or Congress to expect Caribbean countries to defer or delay their urgent development needs, waiting for the US to refocus its attention on the region.

Further, the terms of China’s loans to many Caribbean nations have been far more concessionary even than World Bank and IMF loans to lower and lower middle-income countries, and China does not use per capita income as a criterion for disqualifying high income but vulnerable and underdeveloped Caribbean countries, from eligibility for loans and grants.

US Congress persons and US government policy makers should take these realities into account when they say, as they did to the US Trade Representative, “Economic prosperity and solidified trading relationships is slowing, becoming a matter of national security.”

Caribbean countries do not regard the loans and other economic arrangements they have with China as a threat to US national security, and no member state of CARICOM has put any policies or programmes in place that affect US national security.  Indeed, CARICOM countries have remained faithful to importing goods and services from the US, even though US assistance and investment in the sub-region has steadily declined.

Here are a few facts of which the 13 US Congress persons, who signed the 12 October letter, appear to be unaware.  First, with the exception of Haiti (which for the US is a special case), the 14-nation independent states of the Caribbean Community have been at the bottom of US official development assistance for decades.  In 2019, for instance, total US foreign assistance globally was US$47 billion, of which all CARICOM countries received US$338 million or 0.7%.  For emphasis, that is less than 1% of the global total.  Haiti alone received  US$268 million of that US$338 million delivered to all 14 CARICOM states, leaving the other 13 to share US$70 million only.  For 9 of the 13 countries, the sum provided did not amount to US$1 million.

On trade, the US remained the dominant trading partner of CARICOM states, enjoying a trade surplus of US$6.5 billion.   So, while it is factual that trade between Caribbean countries and China has increased in recent years, no trade in goods with the US was displaced, and certainly no trade in services.  And, on foreign assistance to the region, if China is now delivering more to the Caribbean than the US, it should hardly be a matter of complaint by the US.

Among the references made about China is that its representatives use sharp practices in negotiating contracts with Caribbean countries which could lead to seizure of vital infrastructure should defaults occur on repayment of loans.  These references suggest that representatives of Caribbean countries lack the skill to negotiate contracts that are in their interest – an assertion most CARICOM governments would reject.   It also suggests that CARICOM countries have not encountered similar practices from other countries that have led to uneven contracts – the Economic Partnership Agreement between the European Union collectively and each CARICOM country individually being a case in point.

What US policy makers should regard as undeniable is that China is giving more scholarships to Caribbean students to upgrade their knowledge and capacity than the US.  In fact, the US poaches Caribbean doctors, nurses and teachers – trained at great expense by Caribbean taxpayers.  In the end, if the US continues this practice, they will have only themselves to blame if the Caribbean professionals and influencers of the future know China better than the US.

To be sure, the 13 Congress persons who wrote to the USTR were more concerned about China’s relationship with the bigger countries of Latin American than they were about the Caribbean.  The Caribbean is usually a forgotten appendage to Latin America among most US policy influencers, including its think-tanks.  It is that concern about loss of trade benefits and influence over Latin American markets that caused them to say, “We believe that it is of the highest priority for the US to keep its relationships strong with our neighbors in the Western Hemisphere. Before long, China will be significantly positioned to completely dominate Western Hemisphere economics, as China is already the top trading partner for practically all of Asia, Oceania, Eastern Europe, Africa and, as stated, most of South America.”

If China comes to dominate Western Hemispheric economics, it will be because of a long period of US neglect and the slow process to recognising that the US must re-engage Latin America and the Caribbean in genuine cooperation and not with one-sided strategies that are long on words, but short on allocation and delivery of funds.

In any event, Latin American and Caribbean countries, concerned about improving their economies and advancing the social and economic conditions of their peoples, do not subscribe to a rivalry between China and the US in their region and hemisphere.   They would all declare that there is ample room for economic and other forms of mutually beneficial cooperation with both China and the US.

Responses and previous commentaries: www.sirronaldsanders.com 

(The writer is Antigua and Barbuda’s Ambassador to the US and the OAS.  He is also Senior Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London and Massey College in the University of Toronto.   The views expressed are his own) 

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Court again lets Texas continue banning most abortions

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas can continue banning most abortions after a federal appeals court rejected the Biden administration’s latest attempt to stop a novel law that has become the nation’s biggest curb to abortion in nearly 50 years….Read More

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Russia struggles to meet global orders for Sputnik V vaccine

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Southern Baptist leader resigns amid abuse review division

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Lebanon pauses amid tense calm after deadly gun battles

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Custody hearing for Norway bow-and-arrow suspect

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Oct 15 (Reuters) – President Joe Biden’s administration is taking steps to restart by mid-November a program begun under his predecessor Donald Trump that forced asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for U.S. court hearings after a federal court deemed the termination of the program unjustified, U.S. officials said Thursday.

The administration, however, is planning to make another attempt to rescind the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), commonly called the “Remain in Mexico” policy, even as it takes steps to comply with the August ruling by Texas-based U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, the officials said.

The possible reinstatement of MPP – even on a short term basis – would add to a confusing mix of U.S. policies in place at Mexican border, where crossings into the United States have reached 20-year-highs in recent months. The administration said it can only move forward if Mexico agrees. Officials from both countries said they are discussing the matter.

Mexico’s foreign ministry said in a statement on Thursday that it has expressed a “number of concerns” over MPP to U.S. officials, particularly around due process, legal certainty, access to legal aid and the safety of migrants.

Trump, a Republican known for hardline immigration policies, created the MPP policy in 2019, arguing that many asylum claims were fraudulent and applicants allowed into the United States might end up staying illegally if they skipped court hearings. Biden, a Democrat, ended the policy soon after taking office in January as part of his pledge to take a more humane approach to border issues.

Immigration advocates have said the program exposed migrants to violence and kidnappings in dangerous border cities where people camped out for months or years in shelters or on the street waiting for U.S. asylum hearings.

Biden in March said that “I make no apology” for ending MPP, a policy he described as sending people to the “edge of the Rio Grande in a muddy circumstance with not enough to eat.”

After the Republican-led states of Texas and Missouri sued Biden over his decision to end the program, Kacsmaryk ruled in August that it must be reinstated. The U.S. Supreme Court, whose 6-3 conservative majority includes three justices appointed by Trump, subsequently let Kacsmaryk’s ruling stand, rejecting a bid by Biden’s administration to block it.

The administration has said it will comply with Kacsmaryk’s ruling “in good faith” while continuing its appeal in the case. The administration also plans to issue a fresh memo to terminate the program in the hopes it will resolve any legal concerns surrounding the previous one, officials said.

“Re-implementation is not something that the administration has wanted to do,” a U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said in a call with reporters. “But in the interim we are under this obligation of the court.”

The official said the administration has taken steps including preparing courts, some housed in tents, near the border where asylum hearings could be held.

For MPP to restart, Mexico has said that it first wants to make sure migrants have access to legal counsel and that particularly vulnerable people are not returned, a second DHS official said.

A senior Mexican official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said that while conversations have been underway through a working group since the August Supreme Court ruling, “there is no decision at this point.”

Biden has left in place another policy that Trump implemented in March 2020 early in the COVID-19 pandemic that allows for most migrants caught crossing the border to be rapidly expelled for public health reasons, with no type of asylum screening. One DHS official said that policy will continue.

Mexico has also expressed its concern over this policy, the foreign ministry said on Thursday, warning that it incentivises repeat crossings and puts migrants at risk.

In a win for Mexico on a separate front, the United States said this week it will lift restrictions at its legal ports of entry for fully vaccinated foreign nationals in early November, ending curbs on non-essential travelers during the pandemic.

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(CNN) One recent Saturday morning, Cristina Oyarzo, a 41-year-old historian who lives in the coastal Chilean city of Iquique, near the border with Bolivia, felt unusually nervous. Like many other residents, she had seen on social media that there would be an anti-immigrant rally a few hours later and she worried things could get out of hand. She was right.

In the past few months, Iquique has become a stop-over for many Latin American migrants escaping poverty and political upheaval in their countries. Tensions between the throngs of migrants and the local population have progressively escalated. On Saturday September 25, they reached a boiling point, when thousands of people participated in anti-immigrant protests that culminated in violence when some attacked a large group of Venezuelan migrants.

Oyarzo, who went out to document the rally, said she reached the city’s waterfront and saw a group of protesters stop seven young Venezuelans, one of them missing a leg, and try to physically attack them. Other people intervened, but the attackers managed to snatch the migrants’ backpacks and told them they were “criminals” and “thieves.”

“It was terrible!” Oyarzo said. “The migrants were desperate because they were trapped between their attackers and the sea. They had no way out.”

Elsewhere in the city, protesters held Chilean flags and placards with messages that read “Dirty Venezuelans leave our country” or “Human Rights are for Chileans,” and chanted the national anthem. They yelled at the migrants, many of them families with young children, to go back to their country.

Some even spat at them and set migrants’ clothes, strollers, toys, and mattresses on fire.

The violence in Iquique, a city of about 200,000 people, reflects a rising tension over migration across Latin America. The historic Venezuelan exodus, large numbers of Haitians moving through the continent and other regional migrants who have lost their jobs because of the pandemic have built up to an unprecedented humanitarian crisis in the region.

Venezuelan migrants who cross the border from Bolivia to Chile search for refuge in the desert after crossing five South American countries.

Changing patterns

“We have always had migrants in Latin America and the Caribbean,” said Cristián Doña-Reveco, Director of the Office for Latino and Latin American Studies at the University of Nebraska-Omaha.

“What is changing are the patterns, the governments´ response to the different flows and the effect they have on migrants´ lives.”

In mid-2020, international migrants represented 2.6% of South America’s whole population, a significant increase from the less than 1% registered in 2015, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

Almost 80% of them originated from somewhere else in South America and many are now on the move due to increasingly hardline stances on immigration in several countries, and because the pandemic has exacerbated already difficult living conditions and made jobs scarce.

Between 2000 and 2017, several South American leaders — including presidents in Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, and Bolivia — pushed for more progressive immigration laws that made it easier for migrants to cross borders, work legally and obtain resident visas. But the trend in policy has since reversed, with restrictions on movement gaining momentum.

In Argentina, for instance — the top destination for migrants in South America — then-president Mauricio Macri passed a 2017 decree to limit immigrants’ entry and facilitate deportation, prompting harsh criticism by the United Nations. In Chile, President Sebastián Piñera also toughened immigration policies.

Political tumult has also added pressure. Massive protests in Chile and Colombia, a coup in Bolivia, a political crisis that saw three different men assume Peru’s presidency within one week, and the entrenchment of Venezuela’s authoritarian regime have pushed millions of Latin Americans to set off in search of a better life.

“While traditionally there were Latin American countries that were the final destination for many migrants, currently all countries in the region have both migrants coming in to settle down and passing through,” said Doña-Reveco.

Venezuelans are central to the region’s current humanitarian crisis. Since Nicolás Maduro took power almost a decade ago, political turmoil and a plummeting economy have led Venezuela to collapse. Hyperinflation, power cuts, shortage of food, water and essential medication, as well as political persecution have pushed more than five million Venezuelans to leave their country, according to the IOM, of which 79% have moved to other nations in South America.

Venezuelan migration started with highly skilled professionals, who had the means to travel and settle in other countries without much trouble, but it increasingly has included poor, working-class people. Experts say the volume of this emigration is comparable to the Syrian refugee crisis.

Marcela Tapia, a researcher at the Institute of International Studies of the University Arturo Prat in Iquique, said that each day on her way to work she sees hundreds of Venezuelans camping on the beach or in the streets.

“What has changed here more recently is the impact of the pandemic and the border closures to stop Covid-19,” she said. “Those who have been coming in the past few months are entering illegally and we estimate that only one-third of them traveled directly from Venezuela. The rest came from Colombia, Ecuador, or Peru because they lost their jobs there.”

Tapia said she recently took a woman and her four children, including a baby, to a shelter. The woman told Tapia that she had hitchhiked from Venezuela to Chile after her husband abandoned her, in hopes of reaching relatives in Santiago.

“They spent days without eating, depending on charity to survive,” Tapia said.

Chile is one of the wealthiest countries in the region, and a natural draw for migrants looking for work.

But the journey through the village of Colchane — a common point of migration on the border with Bolivia — is treacherous and involves walking long hours through a high plateau at an altitude of more than 12,000 feet, experts said. According to the mayor of Colchane, speaking to a local radio station on Tuesday, 15 people died this year while trying to reach Chile, a number higher than ever before in the country.

Meanwhile, many Haitian migrants — once the fastest growing group of immigrants in Chile — are choosing to leave the country after years dealing with overt racism and new government policies that make it increasingly difficult for them to meet visa requirements and work legally. Thousands of Haitians formerly established in Brazil and Chile arrived in Texas in September, and spent days in makeshift shelters in Del Rio, drawing global attention.

“There already is tension through the region both because of the Venezuelan migration flows and the Central American flows, and I think that the Haitians pose a particular challenge for some of these countries because they have been ignored for so long,” said Caitlyn Yates, a Ph.D. student of anthropology at the University of British Columbia, who has worked on mobility experiences of transnational migrants moving in and through Latin America.

“We are going to see some very tense situations in the next weeks or months,” she added.

‘At first, I wanted to go back to Bolivia’

Covid-19 restrictions have also exacerbated unauthorized border crossings and crushes at chokepoints, said Jorge Martínez, a researcher at the Latin American and Caribbean Center of Demographics.

In Iquique, the migrant population has swelled in part because many migrants don´t have the Covid-19 vaccine required to continue their travel by bus or just can´t afford to continue their journey, experts say. This is happening in other countries as well, where border closures have trapped some migrants in a sort of limbo.

“There are people who were migrating when the pandemic started,” said Doña-Reveco.

“They wanted to go to Chile, for instance, where relatives were going to give them jobs. But when they reached Peru, borders closed, and they couldn’t continue to Chile. Their whole plan collapsed. They ran out of money, have no contacts and are stuck in makeshift camps.”

In several countries, authorities have often been unable or unwilling to respond adequately to the basic needs of vulnerable migrants in such situations. Only after last month’s violence in Iquique did the Chilean government announce a series of measures of emergency assistance for migrants in the north of the country: In addition to stricter border control, there will be new shelters or vouchers for lodging to keep migrants out of the street; a center to provide them with health care; and a reception center to help those planning to transit to other parts of the country, where they have relatives, reach their destination.

“Governments have the responsibility to protect those people to avoid the precarity and local populations’ negative reactions,” Martínez said. “There are international agreements that were signed, and Latin American countries should coordinate plans of action to face this emergency.”

One 26-year-old who didn’t want her name to be published because she fears being deported told CNN that she left Bolivia with her sister at the end of July.

Neither could find work in their home country, and the few gigs that she tried — cleaning houses, as a cashier in a supermarket and in the production line of a drug manufacturing company — paid less than the local minimum wage. Both have children to feed.

They paid smugglers to take them to Chile first by minibus, then by foot, crossing through the altitude and cold of the Bolivian altiplano. “It was really scary because I didn´t know what would happen to us,” she said.

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Study finds ‘mixing and matching’ boosters safe, but Moderna, Pfizer are best

© Getty Images

Receiving a booster dose of a different vaccine than what was initially administered is safe and effective, though people who received Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine may get more benefit from a booster of an mRNA vaccine such as Pfizer’s or Moderna’s, according to data released Wednesday.

A highly anticipated preprint study on “mixing and matching” vaccines from the National Institutes of Health found that boosting with any of the three vaccines currently licensed or authorized for emergency use in the U.S. will generate an immune response.

However, people who received a booster dose of either the Moderna or Pfizer vaccines had a higher increase in their antibody responses more often than those who received an extra dose of J&J, according to the study, which has not yet been peer reviewed.

The results: People who received an mRNA-based booster vaccination had a four-fold increase in their neutralization response more frequently than those who were boosted with J&J’s adenovirus vaccine.

A booster dose of Moderna’s vaccine provided the highest boost of neutralizing antibodies in people who received any of the other vaccines as the primary dose. Those who received a prime dose of Moderna’s vaccine and the same booster had the highest levels of immune response. But the increase in immune response of a Moderna booster compared to a Pfizer booster was likely not significant enough to make a noticeable difference.

What’s next: The data from the study will be presented to an outside advisory panel of the Food and Drug Administration later this week as part of a series of meetings to consider requests from both Moderna and J&J to authorize booster doses of their vaccines.

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