Is Migration Our Problem?
Reflecting on 200 years of the Monroe Doctrine
Is migration our problem?
One could argue, as the Trump administration does, that political corruption, gang violence, and domestic violence in Latin American countries don’t justify recognizing those issues as grounds for asylum. In Matter of A-B-, then Attorney General Jeffrey Sessions said, “The mere fact that a country may have problems effectively policing certain crimes – such as domestic violence or gang violence – or that certain populations are more likely to be victims of crime, cannot itself establish an asylum claim.”
That’s certainly true – respondents still have to demonstrate that they meet all criteria of the asylum law. When we prepare an asylum case in immigration court, we submit hundreds of pages of briefing and evidence to support that case. But Sessions and subsequent attorney generals under Trump have gone further: “Generally, claims pertaining to domestic violence or gang violence perpetrated by non-governmental actors will not qualify for asylum,” Sessions wrote in Matter of A-B-.
In order to establish that domestic violence or gang violence constitute “persecution” within the meaning of the statute, our clients have to demonstrate that the government of their country is “unable or unwilling” to protect them from the party that persecuted them. That effectively means showing that their government is corrupt, inert, or both. It’s pretty easy to make that showing in many of our cases. Our clients come to us with stories of having reported crimes again and again, receiving no protection – or seeing others report crimes and ending up victims themselves. Many governments in Latin America have little or no independence from organized crime rings that essentially set the rules.
The Monroe Doctrine
It can seem attractive for the United States to distance ourselves from all of that. After all, we can’t control how well Mexico or Honduras or Venezuela police crime.
The trouble with this argument is that the United States government has had a much more hands-on policy in Latin America since 1823. In that year, President James Monroe told Congress – in a speech written by then-Secretary of State John Quincy Adams – that the United States would be the watchdog of the Americas.
At that point, the ink was barely dry on the Treaty of Ghent that settled the War of 1812, and Monroe and Adams were nervous about Britain, Russia, and other colonial powers trying to sneak up on us from the south. They wanted to issue a warning that territorial expansion in the Americas would not be tolerated.
President George Washington had established the principle of U.S. non-interference in European affairs. But it was an altogether different matter, Monroe said, if European powers attempted to expand their territories in the Americas. Here’s what Monroe told Congress on December 2, 1823:
We owe it, therefore, to candor and to the amicable relations existing between the United States and those powers to declare that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety. With the existing colonies or dependencies of any European power we have not interfered and shall not interfere, but with the Governments who have declared their independence and maintained it, and whose independence we have, on great consideration and on just principles, acknowledged, we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them, or controlling in any other manner their destiny, by any European power in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States.
…
It is impossible that the allied powers should extend their political system to any portion of either continent without endangering our peace and happiness; nor can anyone believe that our southern brethren, if left to themselves, would adopt it of their own accord. It is equally impossible, therefore, that we should behold such interposition in any form with indifference.
What exactly that meant was unclear. Spain could not subdue the countries of Latin America all the way across the Atlantic Ocean, Monroe said, and the United States proposed to leave them alone too. “It is still the true policy of the United States,” Monroe said, “to leave the parties to themselves, in the hope that other powers will pursue the same course.”
But of course, they didn’t. Not only Spain but Britain, Russia, the Soviet Union, and others continued politicking in Latin America for the past two centuries. So what did the Monroe Doctrine really mean?
The Olney Corollary
Sixty years later, Secretary of State Richard Olney told Britain what it meant. Britain had continued to assert territorial claims in the Americas. For example, it had refused for years to have the disputed border between British Guiana and Venezuela submitted for arbitration. In 1895, it extended its claim 33,000 square miles further, into an area where, conveniently, gold had recently been discovered. Secretary Olney, instructing the U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain, made clear that the United States was and would remain in charge of all of Latin America.
No, that’s not hyperbole – Olney literally said so. Here are his words to Ambassador Thomas Bayard on July 20, 1895:
To-day the United States is practically sovereign on this continent, and its fiat is law upon the subjects to which it confines its interposition. Why? It is not because of the pure friendship or good will felt for it. It is not simply by reason of its high character as a civilized state, nor because wisdom and justice and equity are the invariable characteristics of the dealings of the United States. It is because, in addition to all other grounds, its infinite resources combined with its isolated position render it master of the situation and practically invulnerable as against any or all other powers.
This had to be stopped, Olney told Bayard. If we let one European power encroach, it won’t be long before they all do – and then the United States would find itself strapped with the expense of having to maintain an expanded defense department even during peacetime. The United States must step in, Olney said, even though the dispute was between two foreign states.
Britain must submit the boundary question to arbitration under the auspices of the president of the United States (then Grover Cleveland), Olney insisted. The Monroe Doctrine demanded as much. “Otherwise, if the United States is without the right to know and have it determined whether there is or is not British aggression upon Venezuelan territory, its right to protest against or repel such aggression may be dismissed from consideration.”
The Roosevelt Corollary
Olney suggested that the Monroe Doctrine gave the United States the right to “repel such aggression” anywhere in the Americas, but to avoid such action, he demanded “peaceful arbitration” – with the United States president making the decisions – as the remedy. In that instance, Britain relented and submitted the Venezuela-British Guiana boundary dispute to arbitration by President Grover Cleveland.
A few years later, though, President Theodore Roosevelt filled in the gaps that Olney had left. While the United States wished only to mind its own business and support the progress of other states in the Western Hemisphere, the Monroe Doctrine meant that the United States might sometimes have to intervene - as it had already done in Cuba. On December 6, 1904, Roosevelt told Congress:
It is not true that the United States feels any land hunger or entertains any projects as regards the other nations of the Western Hemisphere save such as are for their welfare. All that this country desires is to see the neighboring countries stable, orderly, and prosperous. Any country whose people conduct themselves well can count upon our hearty friendship. If a nation shows that it knows how to act with reasonable efficiency and decency in social and political matters, if it keeps order and pays its obligations, it need fear no interference from the United States. Chronic wrongdoing, or an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society, may in America, as elsewhere, ultimately require intervention by some civilized nation, and in the Western Hemisphere the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine may force the United States, however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence, to the exercise of an international police power. …
While [the nations of the Western Hemisphere] thus obey the primary laws of civilized society they may rest assured that they will be treated by us in a spirit of cordial and helpful sympathy. We would interfere with them only in the last resort, and then only if it became evident that their inability or unwillingness to do justice at home and abroad had violated the rights of the United States or had invited foreign aggression to the detriment of the entire body of American nations. It is a mere truism to say that every nation, whether in America or anywhere else, which desires to maintain its freedom, its independence, must ultimately realize that the right of such independence can not be separated from the responsibility of making good use of it.
The Monroe Doctrine in the Cold War
During the Cold War, several administrations used the Monroe Doctrine to defend anti-Communist involvements in Latin America. President John F. Kennedy evoked the Monroe Doctrine (and others in government expressly cited it) to justify his stance during the Cuban Missile Crisis. In defending the United States policy of training the Contras in Honduras to overthrow Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega, CIA director Robert Gates was quoted as saying that any other policy would be to “totally abandon the Monroe Doctrine.”
Trump and the Monroe Doctrine
For a while, presidents backed away from it, acknowledging the criticism that policies justified under the Monroe Doctrine had interfered with Latin American government and threatened or undermined stability in those regions.
But during Trump’s first administration, National Security Advisor John Bolton said, “We’re not afraid to use the word Monroe Doctrine.” Trump himself cited the Monroe Doctrine in a 2018 speech to the United Nations:
It has been the formal policy of our country since President Monroe that we reject the interference of foreign nations in this hemisphere and in our own affairs. The United States has recently strengthened our laws to better screen foreign investments in our country for national security threats, and we welcome cooperation with countries in this region and around the world that wish to do the same. You need to do it for your own protection.
The United States is also working with partners in Latin America to confront threats to sovereignty from uncontrolled migration. Tolerance for human struggling and trafficking is not humane. It’s a horrible thing that’s going on, at levels that nobody has ever seen before. It’s very, very cruel.
Illegal immigration funds criminal networks, ruthless gangs, and the flow of deadly drugs. Illegal immigration exploits vulnerable populations, hurts hardworking citizens, and has produced a vicious cycle of crime, violence, and poverty. Only by upholding national borders, destroying criminal gangs, can we break this cycle and establish a real foundation for prosperity.
What about the Monroe Doctrine?
For two centuries, the United States has relied on the Monroe Doctrine to justify involvement in Latin America. Would those governments have been more stable without U.S. involvement? Does migration lead to drug trafficking and organized crime, or is it the other way around?
These questions point to wicked problems – but at a minimum it can be said that, under the auspices of the Monroe Doctrine, the United States long has been and continues to be involved in political questions throughout Latin America. With that history, can it claim to be wholly innocent of the conditions that cause mass migration throughout the hemisphere? If not, what responsibility – if any – does it bear for the protection of the individual migrant?
Feds Cut Funding for Child Migrants
And, hot of the presses, the feds have just announced that they’ll no longer fund lawyers for unaccompanied migrant kids, including the fellow who works in the WVU Immigration Law Clinic. According to Immigrant Justice Corps, that funding supports lawyers representing 26,000 kids across the country.
WVU and IJC will be scrambling to fill the gap and keep our fellow employed for the rest of her two-year term. If you’d like to help us make that happen, you can click here to donate to the WVU Immigration Law Clinic. In the notes section, you can direct your donation to Fund 2W2000. Feel free to designate it to support “Immigrant Justice Corps Fellow” if you want.