 Okay, we're back. We're live. We're here on a given Wednesday with Carlos Suarez and I'll be his guest host and he'll be my host guest, or words to that effect. Hi, Carlos. Aloha, Jay. So good to hear you and reporting to you live here from Cholula Puebla in Mexico. Yeah, where you are the director of the International Relations School department or department at that school, yeah? Tell me what it is. Tell me about the International Relations Program. Well, let me clarify. I am a professor here. I'm actually in a more enjoyable road. I'm just a full-time professor at the moment and a research scholar, but I don't have administrative duties. I had been a dean in a department at many, many years at HPU, but at the moment just a lowly faculty, which is a good place to be under the radar and with less paperwork, more teaching and more, you know, engaging with students and, of course, scholarly activity. But I'm here in Cholula Puebla. It's a city about two hours east of Mexico City, the University of the Americas, a very international community. Students actually come from all over Mexico, but also many international students. So it's a very exciting place to be and a vantage point, of course, as we're going to talk in a moment about the infamous caravan that's coming up to the Rio Grande. It's not quite here yet. It's still in southern Mexico, but I'm looking forward to offering some reflections about, you know, from the Mexican point of view and Mexico's role in all of this and how it's playing out. Yeah. Let's talk about that, Carl. So I'm very curious from where it stands for you. I mean, yes, they're south of you. They have every intention moving north. That's not without risk. There are people in Mexico that would attack them. Who knows what. I'm sure that not everybody loves them. How do people feel about it? What do you expect is going to happen as they move north to the U.S. border? Well, you know, first, I want to put it in some context. I mean, the process of migration has been going on for a very long time, and it's obviously heated up in recent years. But what I mean by that is a steady flow from Central America, particularly the countries we call the Northern Triangle, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua. These are countries that all have some, you know, difficult, challenging, you know, environment, a lot of violence, insecurity, underdevelopment. So there's been a steady flow for quite some time. So this is not the first caravan by enemies. Indeed, there's a regular train that, you know, comes up much of the way from South Mexico to the border area, and it brings again on a regular basis many. Why don't they just take a train? Why do they have to have a caravan? Yeah, I think, you know, here, there's a couple of things going on. On one hand, it is, you know, in some ways somewhat more organized to draw attention to it, so you have a mass group. But these things are coming from Honduras, the country of Honduras, although, like everything, it's in flux. We probably have some Salvadorans that have joined in. But primarily this specific group that we're, you know, looking at and calling attention to stems from Honduras, a lot of violence and underdevelopment there. So it's a mixture, you know, they're seeking asylum in some cases, just coming away from, you know, very conflict-ridden places. In some cases, they're simply looking for job opportunities, connections, reconnections. Some of them, perhaps, have been in the U.S. and are coming back now or have family there. We've heard, you know, of course, a very sensational perspective from the U.S. government. So here in Mexico, well, it's a complex issue, too. On one hand, there's a lot of alarm and maybe, I would say, you know, disconcerting feeling about the Trump administration's very aggressive policy towards it. Mexicans, I think there are many who are sympathetic and understand it, and even the Mexican government has reached out to offer asylum and even, you know, encourage some of them to consider staying here. And even as far as providing them work, these are opportunities. That has had mixed feelings, too. Again, many who are sympathetic and, you know, this is a small group, three, four, five, whatever thousand it is, you know, Mexico can absorb them when and some of them will be doing that. Well, will Mexico absorb them? I mean, why does Mexico say, look, we'll make a home for you. We like human resources. We like people who are interested in work. We'll find jobs for you. We'll take care of you. We'll treat you as refugees. We do have some kind of refugee policy. Why doesn't Mexico just take them in? Well, it does. And it is doing that for some. And indeed, their Mexican migration policy does have special provisions for neighboring countries like Guatemala and Honduras and El Salvador. They are able to qualify for legal residency, legal work permit. You know, when it comes to asylum also there's a formal process they can apply for and the Mexican government has, in fact, right now set up to address that. We also know, however, many of these are wanting to really continue farther. They want to go to the U.S. and so it's a mixture. Some of them, we understand, have taken the offer and are deciding to take it. Many perhaps most are continuing this journey. But I guess what I want to really underscore is like not the first time Central Americans have headed north. It's been going on and will continue going on. But at the moment this has gotten a lot of attention and, you know, because of the math and the media able to focus on it. And in Mexico, again, mixed feelings about it on one hand, empathy, support, but also, you know, Mexico also has just been criticism of it. It's kind of stuck doing the U.S.'s dirty work, you know, having to deport them or stop them at the border. When on one hand we know many are seeking travel to the U.S., so it's a U.S. problem. Nevertheless, Mexico has to help facilitate and provide some assistance. But not, but also not be seen as, you know, just a poodle completely, you know, sucking up to the U.S. because at the same time, some of the U.S. responses just quite unrealistic and dramatized and sensationalized. So they don't want to play into that either. Let me let me back up a little bit. You know, I saw a thing about El Salvador on PBS yesterday. It was really shocking. And we've heard before these people are leaving these countries south of Mexico because there are gangs because there's violence because they can't really work. They're threatened all day in their neighborhoods and they can't work. They can't buy food and therefore it's impossible. And they would rather take a risk of, you know, crossing, what, thousands of miles than all the listed are attended to that than staying around. We're staying around as more risky. So, you know, it struck me. It struck me. And I said, here we are. It's 2018 going on 2019. And we have a number of nations, you know, in Central America that seem to me, Carlos, to be failed states. The government cannot protect its citizens. The citizens cannot go to work. And they can't buy food. It's all out of control. What is going on down there? Well, there is elements of that, of course, you know, limited rule of law, capacity of the state. There's another element to that I think many Americans are not fully aware. And that is there's a structural problem that also is deeply connected to the U.S. And more particularly, I mean, in previous times in the 70s and 80s, the U.S. helped to sponsor many right-wing governments there. There was a huge flood who came to the U.S. as a result of the Civil War in El Salvador, the crisis in Nicaragua. And many of these people, after coming to the U.S., often would find themselves getting into trouble, criminal activity in jail. And today, many of those gangs back in El Salvador learned their trade and actually, you know, sort of hardened themselves in U.S. prisons. They would be deported. Now, that's not to say it's entirely the U.S.'s responsibility. But my point here is that there is a nexus, a connection with the U.S. that this didn't just come out of its own random, you know, underdeveloped poverty. Some of it was a result of, you know, U.S. policies that also kept these countries languishing and, and, you know, favoring certain groups of our others. But most certainly, these are countries that are in a real challenge in addressing, you know, rule of law, law enforcement. You have gangs, you have violence that is, you know, quite substantial. Now, I would tell you that the answer for the U.S., and we do provide assistance, it's got to be to help them build that capacity. Now, we've been doing that for decades and, you know, the results are somewhat, let's say, limited in scope. But rather than the solution of somehow sending only troops to the border and threatening them, and even more specifically, Trump has threatened cutting off aid, that is not a solution. That's simply going to put more people in poverty and violence and going to lead to more migration. So ultimately, it's one of those issues. There are so many different layers. The solution has to be multi-faceted. We need to help these countries learn to take care of their problems. We need to support them to build, you know, better institutions. It's in our interest to do so. We can't have chaos, you know, in Central America. We can't afford that. Anyway, going, going to, let me see if I can, you know, create a hypothetical for you. The hypothetical is that the caravan, or caravans as it may be, cross Mexico. They get, they go north through Mexico and they somehow arrive at the U.S. border. Do you have, do you have a vision? Can you imagine what is going to happen when they get to the U.S. border? I try to figure out how that would look and feel, but I can't. Can you? Well, look, I would tell you it's happening every day. It's not like suddenly out of a void that the first time the U.S. receives immigrants every single day at Tijuana and El Paso and the Texas Southern border. You have got people arriving now. It's a backlog, obviously. It's a slow process. And these people, they're not going to be crossing, you know, I have this vision of, you know, Braveheart, the Scottish marauding, you know, coming over to attack the English. They're not going to be arriving with, you know, weapons and then attacking the British region. Remember the Alamo That's what our president is referring to. Yeah, they're going to be arriving and in many cases, after having gotten maybe some advice along the way, they're going to be requesting, in some cases, requesting asylum, essentially like a refugee status of sorts. Now, there may be some requesting legal crossing, not going to be easy for many of them because it's something you normally have to do in your home country at the U.S. embassy. So it's going to be backlogged. They're not going to be all crossing into the U.S. I mean, the U.S. obviously has a border that, you know, it's going to simply not allow that and doesn't under normal conditions. But there is a process where they come, they apply, and then they're granted some kind of hearing. They may end up if they do overload the system being stuck in some temporary, you know, arrangements there. But I guess I just want to underscore it's not as if we haven't had this happen before. Every single day of the year, there are hundreds and thousands of people trying to cross over and it's a time lag. They often language and say in the Mexico side for a long time, once they get in, then they get into a process in the U.S. side that some of them get let in, others are going to kind of put in limbo. So it is a very situation. It's not neat and orderly. Well, what's, yeah, I can imagine, what is limbo? I mean, so I can't cross the border. Somebody going to stop me in one way or the other. I hope the army doesn't shoot anybody. That would be really, really gross. But somebody going to stop me. So I have to stay on the Mexican side until I can be processed. If Trump is willing to process anybody, anyway, process. So what does that mean, a camp? Does that mean an intense at a barbed wire? What does that mean? In the case of the Nectar Decide, it means very large places right now that for years now have had a cumulation of migrants. They're coming not just from Central America, from Haiti, even from as far away as Africa. We've had in Brazil and then South America, but particularly many, even Cubans, large numbers who've come in through Mexico, find themselves on the border. And I was reading recently some reports about how they actually have a very informal process that just evolved among those in the Mexican side themselves, where they take your name down on a notebook. And because the U.S. can only process so many people at a time, they're, you know, every day, there's like so many are allowed in. And so they wait their turn and then they, the rest are stuck in Mexico. There are some NGOs and shelters that provide some help and assistance yet. The Mexican government also plays a role in that. A lot of it is more driven by NGOs that are there to support the group. So what I said in limbo, part of it is stuck in limbo in Mexico before they even try to get over. For others, once they do get to the U.S. and go through the formal process, they're often left in a limbo where that's also been changing, you know, where the past they would come in and be able to be in the U.S. and have to report back, but a lot of concern that some of them simply vanish after that, or that they might be deported after a short time. So a lot of complexity, of course. I'll give you a prediction, is that, you know, if Trump is putting thousands of American army troops, not even National Guard, army troops, real serious, at the border, you know, loaded, locked and loaded like that. And as we know, he's been slowing down the process in ICE, in immigration, so that you can wait a lot longer now to get the simplest paper from immigration. That's their way of keeping them shutting you out. I can imagine, I wonder how you feel about this, I can imagine that this process we're talking about is like indefinite. You know, you can put in your papers, but you won't going to hear from anybody for a long time. What do you think? Yeah, absolutely, and pretty that's the message the president wants to convey. Don't come, you're not welcome, and yet, you know, these are people in some cases fleeing, you know, they would rather risk it and see and roll the dice. But beyond that, back to the question of the soldiers, the truth, I mean, I have been reading and certainly the media caught attention to this, that the soldiers being sent will not be able to have direct contact with these migrants. They're not going to literally be on the border and showing their guns. Instead, they're going to be more in role of supporting the ICE and border patrol and others, perhaps, you know, building Kaplanments, providing medical assistance, you know, intelligence gathering from above, et cetera, but ultimately, for rules, I don't know the names of the laws right now, there are limitations on what the U.S. military troops can do. That's different from the guards and obviously the border patrol and other, you know, law enforcement agencies, but what it underscores is how this whole movement of the troops is really more for show and for, you know, beating our chest and maybe trying to send a signal that, hey, don't come because you're going to have this, you know, militarization. It's flying to his base. Here we are, the midterms. This is not a coincidental timing. Carlos, let's take a break on your show. We'll come back in one minute and then I'd like to talk to you about Trump's threats of changing the Constitution all by himself and rearranging our immigration provisions in the United States Constitution by FIIA. We'll be right back. Hi, I'm Bill Sharp, host of Asian Review here on Think Tech, Hawaii. Join me every Monday afternoon from 5 to 5.30 Hawaii Standard Time for an insightful discussion of Contemporary Asian Affairs. There's so much to discuss and the guests that we have are very, very well informed. Just think we have the upcoming negotiation between President Trump and Kim Jong-un, the possibility of Xi Jinping, the leader of China remaining in power forever. We'll see you then. Aloha, my name is Mark Shklav. I am the host of Think Tech, Hawaii's Law Across the Sea. Law Across the Sea is on Think Tech, Hawaii every other Monday at 11 a.m. Please join me where my guests talk about law topics and ideas and music and Hawaii Ana all across the sea from Hawaii and back again. Aloha. Okay, we're back with our old friend Carlos Suarez. He's in a university near Mexico City. This is Global Connections. I'm his guest host and he's my guest guest or host guest. And we're going to have this conversation whatever you call us. Anyway, we've been talking about the events in Mexico around the caravan, but now, and it's directly related, we should talk about Trump's latest great idea about immigration. God, the people in Mexico must love him. Everyone in Latin America must love him for what he does. In fact, all the Hispanics, Latin American people in the United States must love him for what he does. And the latest, okay, is he wants to change the Constitution and say that you can have, you know, citizenship and your citizenship is in birthright citizenship, which is, you know, back to the Constitution. So, and you are, tell us about your story so we can appreciate how far this reaches. Yeah, well, one of the things that has made it more personal for me is I am a birthright citizen of the U.S. My parents came as young adults from Mexico back in the 1950s. I was born in the 60s as a young, you know, child of immigrants. And certainly for me, I mean, the U.S. has been, you know, it's been my country of birth and education and professional experience. I'm only in Mexico the last couple of years and I'm here in many ways as an American, although with my ex-conherited. But, you know, so it has been a very personal painful thing to hear him say that. I'm actually comforted even to hear Paul Ryan come out and say, well, wait a minute, this can't quite be that easy. So he, as we know, the president likes these executive decrees, so you can have a press conference and show this signed document. But this is a constitutional amendment that has even conservative justices and I'm sorry, judges have affirmed that, you know, it can't be changed, you know, with the struggle of pants. Certainly the Congress, perhaps, could take more action in that. The president can certainly restrict the immigration policy, but birthright citizenship, which is guaranteed by this 14th amendment, is not something he can easily take away or even take away, let's say, period. But it's just, again, it's an ugly statement again of this anti-immigrant xenophobia. We don't have a reality. The reality again is we don't have marauding, you know, hordes of migrants coming in. Of course we have a network and indeed the economy requires a steady flow of immigrants to come in and it will in the future, an aging society, not enough people to do some of the dirty work that immigrants, especially from the south of the border, do. But that aside, even, you know, again, the president openly says we're the only country in the nation that allows us, not quite, more than 30 countries do. Now that doesn't mean we can't or should, that's a different debate. But again, just, you know, let's be real and understand what we're saying and what the limitations are. But as I heard him, you know, spew this out and repeat it again even today and more sweets and then oppress the, you know, conference, I think on the lawn, if he was leaving to Florida today, they're repeating the same thing. But it is the, it's more of the ugly fear mongering, as we're seeing. You see it as racist? Yes, absolutely, openly. You know, if they were Norwegians or Slovenians coming in, I doubt that he would be closing the door quite as much. It is, it is, you know, touching these emotional issues, you know, the brown, you know, dark people coming from below. Even in other discussions, he's calling them these big men, you know, brawny, you know, sweaty or whatever. I mean, it's trying to just conjure up this image of these, I don't know, these, you know, evil, bad ombre coming north. What they're coming is to basically do, you know, the hard work and labor and to fill a void that the US economy needs, but even more than that, many of them, women and children are coming because they are, obviously, facing very, very difficult realities back home. So there is a humanitarian aspect of it. There is a, you know, an element of violence that they're fleeing from. And, you know, I just go back. I mean, this is a country where we all grew up learning the US, one of the famous words on the Statue of Liberty. It doesn't say just send us your, you know, your white model, you know, Central Europe. It is the story of immigrants coming to this land who bring both new energy and ideas, but also to flee persecution and violence and to have a second chance. And that's the story of the US. You can't just erase that and suddenly change it so easily. Yeah, the words of Emma Lazarus at the base of the Statue of Liberty. Send me your, send me your tired, huddled masses, yearning to breathe free. Yearning, exactly. Let's not forget that. I mean, I doubt that he's aware of what that says, but anyhow, it is ugly and it is painted with a, I mean, I have to be blunt with a certain element of racism in there. And even if he will say he's not racist, he's certainly enabling and mobilizing those who do have more openly and blatantly racist views. Yeah, let me, let me take a moment and shift a little bit with you. I mentioned before the show, Carlos, that last night, the night before, there were two very interesting episodes of a program about Facebook, about the development of Facebook, and about how Facebook did play a significant role in the 2016 election and is also today playing a role in the midterms. Really remarkable how they haven't really been able to stop all the hostility, the hate and all that, that comes onto Facebook. And Facebook is a primary player in that still, today. And it talked about the Russians, how the Russians would set up in the 2016 and thereafter. The Russians would set up counter-protests on both sides of a given issue. I remember that in New York, they had counter-protests come to find the Russians and set up both of them. Then why do that? Well, it's to foment unrest. It's to foment argument. It's to create polarization and an argument among everyone in the country to break down the country, to go to a kind of chaotic thing. And in this program, they talked about Myanmar. They talked about the argument in Myanmar between the Hindus and the Muslims and how Facebook was a significant part of that huge and inhuman process was still going on. One argument with the other group and before you know it, they both hate each other. So my question is, where does this play? Is this visible to the people in Mexico? Is this playing out among the people in Mexico with Facebook or observing Facebook, observing this issue about throwing race against race and group against group from your point of view? Well, yes, in some ways, and I'll elaborate just a moment. Let me first step back and say, years ago when this new technology, social media, were beginning to come out, there was an idea that, ah, this is going to help democratize everything. The people have access to information, et cetera. Well, the reality today is quite different, more somber, what we have seen and certainly the researchers who've looked into this have shown that increasingly, we tend to want to be more likely to look at information that just reinforces our biases and because of the ease with which you can kind of move information or, as you suggested and obviously you've made clear, not to just the people who want to do harm, like whether they're Russian hackers or others, you can plant information, you can really change the narrative. And so it has gotten very ugly. Here in Mexico, it has been reflected in some level too. They're in a transition right now in July, there was an election, a new president is about to be inaugurated December 1 in a month. And so you have many who are supporters of him, a populist leftist leader and obviously taking on the establishment. And so there's been elements of that, a lot of, you know, tension and polarization on some level there. But perhaps what's not been as clear in my mind is that, you know, a deliberate effort from an outside foreign government to do that, it's more the dynamics happening within here. So you have, you know, groups that simply use the social media both as a positive way of mobilizing, you know, people and information, but also to put out, you know, a narrative that can often be very biased and very critical and polarized the dialogue more. So what we see today is this, you know, much less stability, more ugliness and racism and the like. Things that, you know, perhaps in the past were not as common, the norms have been changing. And this new technology, I think, has shown us that it really has a mixed bag. It has some positive elements, you have to, you know, access to information, but also the ability to really control that information and put out false information and, you know, and so it is a real problem that we have yet to figure out how to handle. And it can happen inside a given country even without external interference in pretty much the same way. We've all learned how to do this, you know. But let's, this is a natural transition to what happened in Brazil. I would really like to have your thoughts about that election, why the result is to the right and what will happen now in Brazil. Brazil is the largest country even larger than Mexico in the south of the border. What does this mean? Yes, that's right. Well, first I think it makes very clear if anyone had any doubts that we have seen really a global trend of rising, right wing populism, you know, anti, establishment, anti-foreigner, anti, you know, sort of just many things, but in the case of Brazil, here in Mexico, of course, there was an election I've just made reference to. There's a populist left-wing leader coming to power. That's not the case in Brazil. What you have is the last Sunday, the election of a very, I guess, eye-opening left, right-wing candidates who's going to be the next president, Jair Bolsonaro, and he basically is a former military captain himself, but, you know, much of his sort of belief system is, you know, kind of looking back to the days when Brazil was under military rule in the 60s, 70s, into the mid-80s, where they had a pretty brutal repressive regime. His argument is that, well, they didn't go far enough or they didn't kill enough of dissidents or maybe we need, you know, and, of course, today, as a newly, you know, president-elect, he's trying to maybe initially tone down his rhetoric, but many are alarmed because of his past statement. Now, it reflects more than anything. Not so much of excitement and support for him, as it is really a rejection of the other side. And that is, for many years now, Brazil has been ruled by a left-wing left-party. They came to power very popular, the former president, Lula. He's behind bars now, and there's been a range of corruption scandals and sensationalism. The social media has helped to both portray that and maybe make it more polarized, so that, but let's be clear about that. It's not as if Brazilians are just excited about going back to military rule. More of them are simply very angry that the political leadership that they've just come out of is basically crooked, corrupt, and they have not solved some challenges of conflict and violence so that they want to change. And in that sense, many are comparing incoming leaders to Donald Trump, sort of shaking up the system, someone who is not the traditional party elite, let's say, but I think if you're alarmed by some of the things Trump said, this guy has got some even more scary pronouncements that he's made reference to, particularly the treatment of women or LGBT communities and so on, but even just the idea that the military in the past didn't go far enough. I mean, that's, you know, not a position most people are going to find comfort with, but people are apparently willing to give him a chance and we're going to see how that plays out. This takes me back to one last point. I'd like to ask you about before we close. And that is, we spoke before about El Salvador. That was, to me anyway, a failed state. The government wasn't able to control, you know, life in El Salvador. But if a dictator, I mean a serious right-wing dictator presented himself at the polls, don't you think people would vote for him in the thought that he could put a lid on things? Does this present in other failed states or near failed states south of the border? As a solution to the disorder, the chaos we see there now? Well, potentially it does. And I think perhaps even more than just in general to deal with the crime, but the ability to capture and make use of the media and to sort of mobilize where you have to demonize somebody, maybe it's the existing power structure or the old elites. And so like the Brazilian leader came to power as much by that an ability to really paint and portray and then mobilize support through particularly social media. So I do see that as a potential risk in some of these Central American countries. They've had experience with military rule in the past, very harsh, nasty. But the world today, people are more driven by their immediate here now. And if the situation is so bad, there is the possibility of them turning to more authoritarian rule. And then when we have a U.S. president that in some ways he provides a model of sorts. I'm not sure if we can say he inspired the Brazilian leader, but he certainly gave him some tips on how to, and we hear a lot of the same dialogue. Fake news and demonizing the media and somehow creating enemies that painting your enemies in very stark terms, Trump has rewritten the rulebook and now others who are wanting to emulate that have it there to go with and the success of Brazil I think could potentially lead to others trying to follow that path. Thank you Carlos. Carlos Juarez, Global Connections here on ThinkTech. We'll see you in two weeks. We want to follow all of these issues going forward. Aloha. Absolutely. Aloha. Aloha. Give it to me in Spanish. Well, it would be a saluego, adios. We don't have an exact translation, but Aloha has so many things that we well know. Thank you Carlos.