 Okay, we're back. We're live. This is Think Tech. I'm Jay Fidel. This is Global Connections here at the 11 o'clock clock on a given Wednesday. And we are joined with the regular host of this show, Carlos Suarez, in Mexico City. Buenos tardes. Buenos tardes to you. Good day. I'm delighted to join you here indeed in Mexico at the moment, Mexico City. We look forward to just a dialogue we can have about these just unfolding, you know, play. It's always confusing. It's hard to keep up with what's happening. But right now this issue of the asylum crackdown that was announced over the weekend, but even, you know, new rules that have been, you know, put forward by the Trump administration adding more confusion, don't have the buy-in of the Congress, of the other countries in the region. So just try to unravel some of this ongoing chaos. And, you know, it really speaks up the core. We had a chance to talk a little bit about this earlier, Jay. But basically, you know, what is the United States about? It has a long history of being a place that receives people from anywhere, everywhere, fleeing persecution, violence, war. We have a president today who in a very rather draconian way has, in fact, been pushing what he calls a common sense America first solution. But of course, it plays out as a very draconian border control, but not just that, really a denial of people who are coming into the U.S. And so let me just open with that and just say, gosh, I'll try to make some better sense of this because these are complex issues. The president may want to seek simple answers to them, but they require a lot more, a lot of cooperation, coordination that is not really happening today. I think he's playing to his base and he's racist. We know that. I mean, it's, if it hasn't emerged yet, it's clear. And he wants to stop anybody crossing the border. He's lawless. He's not following the rule of law, the statutory law in this country. He's denying sanctuary. And he was denying it in so many little ways, you know, making it hard, separating families, making the application process really impossible and dribbling out, you know, the number of people who could apply and who were permitted in. Sanctuary has been a part of American law for a long time and it has allowed many people to enter this country. Remember, Emma Lazarus, the poem on the base of the Statue of Liberty, which, you know, was the welcoming for so many millions of people. Give me your tired, huddled masses yearning to breathe free. It tears me up when I see what's happened to that poem and that whole ethic of the late 19th century, early 20th century when America was the, was the welcoming beacon to the world. Now we have a fellow who doesn't want to let anybody and especially Hispanic. And this latest move, this is, it's, it's actually very clever. But as you say, Carlos, it's Tritonian mean. It is mean and it is racist. And it is a violation of the rule of law and the spirit of the United States as you and I have known it through our lives. So, you know, how does that change things when you say that you have to apply for a sanctuary in the first country you arrive at after you leave your home country? I guess in many cases, that would be Mexico, no? Well, you know, and, you know, we don't have a map to look at right now, but we should just be aware they're crossing through several. They're crossing through perhaps Honduras, perhaps El Salvador, but certainly Guatemala and then Mexico. And what's happened now, this new, I guess, rule that has been issued on Monday, the president unveiled it without any real buy-in from either the Congress or obviously the Latin Americans themselves, Central Americans and Mexico. Mexico has said that they in fact do not stay rejected altogether. And the reality is in Mexico and Guatemala, these are probably the two main ones, they simply are going to struggle and not be able to cope with it unless, you know, there's more effort made to, I don't know, simplify, clarify, coordinate, co-operate. None of that's happening. Instead, the U.S. simply announces a draconian new measure. Mexico today and Guatemala for that matter are already struggling where they are today to manage what they have and what this is telling them is now you have to basically process migrants live for asylum countries that they pass through on route or they will simply be ineligible. Really, it's just a rule that allows us to set up a situation where they can more easily deny any asylum seekers, but it doesn't solve the problem. It just creates again a backlog that already exists, a mess. So just everywhere you look, it's just, it's a disaster in the making that's not solving the problem. It's simply, you know, adding more, I don't know, marbles in the air and more confusion. I mean, I don't know even where you can need to begin, but obviously part of it is you've got to both work within the U.S. political system. The Congress is the one that writes our rules and laws and they were not involved in this new rule. Moreover, diplomacy and multilateralism. Again, ideas that Trump doesn't seem to deal with. It requires the U.S. to work with Mexico, to work with other Central American countries, and that is just not happening now. Well, it also puts the burden on them, doesn't it, Carlos? Yes, absolutely. Because, you know, you see, you don't like my retention, my detention camps. You don't like my bob wire and my cyclone fence. You build it because that's what's going to happen, isn't it? Doesn't it mean that when you, when you, you're a migrant and you leave Nicaragua and you wind up in, I don't know, whatever the next country is? Or you're in Honduras, for example. Honduras, then you have to stay there and you have to, you have to play around with the sanctuary application. Where are you going to live? Where are you going to stay? How does Honduras feel about that? Are they going to be kind and gentle? And who pays the bill? Are they going to be able to pay the bill? Remember, he's cut them off. He's frozen them for many U.S. aid. The whole thing, you know, devolves on a racial basis. Everybody south of the U.S. border, we're going to punish them, including the countries. Yeah, I mean, there is a mean spirited element to it and there's just a total lack of basic governance. I mean, let me just suggest that we can parallel this, what in the last two or three or four years, we saw a huge, huge migration crisis that played out in Europe. I mean, it hasn't disappeared, but it has today reached a level where it's a bit more manageable. It hasn't, in 2015, and I recall we had conversations back then, you had a million immigrants flowing, mostly from Syria, Afghanistan, Middle East, many from Africa. Of course, it's not a total solution, but a major part of what brought that under control was the European Union working closely with Turkey, not a member of the EU, but obviously that was the gateway country and setting up massive camps. This is not ideal. It's not the end of the solution, but it was able to address it. But the point here is that the European Union is funding it and coordinating it as a way of addressing this crisis. That's not happening with the U.S. and Central America. I mean, maybe I would suggest that a real solution would mean having to bring the leaders together. Okay, let's figure this out temporarily. Let's do this. The U.S. clearly is the big power and also the one that can, the only one that can really fund it. And frankly, you know, what you need is almost a new sort of peace core or an armed U.S. immigration experts, human rights experts, public health experts, who are going to help process this humanitarian crisis. That's what we're talking about. But none of that is in the works. So none of that is here. Instead, Mexico and Guatemala and Honduras are simply given the task of doing the dirty work for the U.S. with no money attached. And so go figure. I mean, obviously it's a mess and it's not going to solve anything. It just creates more of the tension and uncertainty. Now, there was an article in the paper a couple of days ago about how one reaction in Mexico was to, you know, was to treat the migrants worse. I'm not sure what exactly that is, whether you don't help them or maybe you even hurt them. But have you seen or heard anything about that? Well, it's certainly not a government policy. No, I mean, the U.S., I'm sorry, the Mexican government overall wants to promote more focus on human rights and on development issues. But it is simply, you know, it is simply at an impasse. It's got a huge backlog. It doesn't have the administrative, the personnel capacity. It doesn't have the ability to manage things today as they stand, let alone a massive influx of new asylum case issues. So from up until now, Mexico has been more willing to say, Okay, look, they're passing through, we'll help them out as best we can a little bit here and there. Now, of course, we were here a month or so ago when the U.S. and Mexico reached this very critical crisis that was threatening tariff and positions, etc. We're coming up close on that deadline here in a few more weeks about whether Trump will come back to that. But my real point is that Mexico sort of had to cave in to the U.S. pressure and say that it would do more. Now, it has tried to, but again, within its limited capacity and setting up its new National Guard, all of that is continually out. Let me maybe say a final word about that is the treatment of Central Americans. On the one hand, in general, Mexico has sought to provide basically safe haven, humanitarian support. It has integrated many of them into the economy as best it can. But I think we're going to see increasingly critical mass and tensions that can flare up. And there are aspects of discrimination here within Mexico towards many of those. I wouldn't say it's as blatant or overt and it's certainly not racism in the way we see reflected by the U.S. administration. But it's simply more a capacity issue. Mexico does not have the ability, the capacity to manage it. And so it's going to lead to, again, more chaos, more difficulty. The U.S. today, we should add to, does have a system in place with Canada, which, of course, you can speak to a lot of differences there. Canada and the U.S. pretty equal in level of development and administrative law enforcement capacity, so that if an immigrant wants to come into the U.S., they can indeed apply in Canada and wait out their situation there. But to assume the same is going to be possible in Mexico or Central America, that's just, it's not there yet. And there's many, many differences. We're seeing a play out right now along the border with the recent effort to sort of force migrants to stay on the Mexico side. That's created its own set of different challenges and issues. So all around lots of challenges here, maybe a few days ago, I saw a report issued by Amnesty International that says it all, where they basically said that the Mexican asylum system is underfunded absolutely beyond its capacity and inadequate to address the issue. And that's today. So these new policy announcements are simply adding more to that to say now everyone has to get processed starting back there. That's again, it's a major hurdle. Well, let's look into the future on this. I was telling you before we began our show that two years ago, Ai Wei Wei, who was a Chinese visitant and artist of international acclaim, made a movie called Human Flow. And he showed you all the camps around the world of migrants who who are unable to get to their intended destination. You know, I think we have to remember that when when a migrant moves, first of all, he's got reasons, usually or she. And the reasons are very compelling in life and death. In many cases, there are many asylum seekers, migrants are largely asylum seekers, one way or another. Okay, then they get to the next country. So call it the bridge country. They have no money. The bridge country is under under a burden to take care of them. And bridge countries deal differently. Your comment about Europe, I think, is worthy because Europe sort of got together a little bit. And they're, you know, collectively funding these camps. But the fact is that it's not great to be in a camp. And you can't necessarily continue to move north. If you do move north, as a lot of people have moved north over the years, I mean, three, four years, you know, it's not necessarily a better roses as you move north because you may not be able to get a job. And the country you move to may not like you much. And they may not help you much. Some countries more than others. But the whole thing about, you know, about these migrations is painful. It's painful for the original migrant. It's painful for the bridge country. It's painful for the destination country. And we're seeing that, aren't we? We're seeing a parallel in this hemisphere. We're seeing the same kind of thing. So the question I put to you, Carlos, is what's going to happen? Are we going to wind up, I mean, I can see there's a possibility of this. Are we going to wind up with camps of people from south of the border? We already have these horrible camps in the U.S. But we may wind up with camps elsewhere, too, camps that are semi-permanent, camps that go over decades or generations for people who have, you know, they're people without a country. They can't go back. They can't go forward. They wind up in a camp. And the camp is not well funded. The result is they have a nightmare of a life to follow. You think this is possible? Well, I think it's already a reality. And so much of what we've seen now is it's one of those issues that it's not going to go away easily, quickly, overnight. It's going to require a continuous effort and coordination. But the reality is you have right now that on the U.S.-Mexico border where this flow has been sort of building and growing and basically NGOs and religious groups have been the ones assuming that burden because the local authorities themselves are also limited and constrained. But again, I just go back to this idea. This is a complex set of issues and it requires moving on many levels at the same time like several chess games. It requires obviously working with the leaders of these countries to address whether there are facility needs, whether there is obviously expertise in understanding this. But then there's the whole question of the causes of this. What is it that's pushing this recent phenomenon? And it is violence and security. It's the criminal organizations. It's the underdevelopment and poverty and inequality and all of those, each of them has their own challenges and problems. They have to be addressed. We have to be realistic. They're not going to happen in six months, but you have to tackle all of them simultaneously, different ways, different strategies. Obviously, these people who are fleeing have to feel a sense of safety and that's not easy. They've been traumatized. They've lived in a world now where for years it's been the control of weak states and powerful criminal organizations, these gangs, these networks. Gosh, it's just again, there's just so many pieces going on here. In an ideal world, it means coordinating intelligence, law enforcement, and yet we have a world where the US in particular has abandoned diplomacy and there's a total lack of trust and I would say even political will to work with the US because that comes at a cost for some of these leaders, especially Mexico's new leftist leader. He's got to walk a very fine line, not seen to be sucking into the US and so speak out when he can, but then he turn around and make it sound as if he's the more human rights left disoriented, but with what capacity? So many moving parts, so many challenges and yet they all need to be addressed. There's no way around it. Very tragic and one of the things we also talked about before the show is that hatred is like a virus. If you have a leader, we do, who is into hatred, racial hatred, who is into xenophobia and quote nationalism and quote, then that spreads and it goes, it confirms his quote base and it also spreads to other countries. I predict for you, I mean you're into international relations Carlos and let me throw a theory at you. You have a leader in the United States who's a powerful force in the world even if he doesn't deserve it and he doesn't. What he's doing is going to have an effect on other countries. It's going to have an effect on the way countries treat homeless migrant citizens, people who are coming for a better life because they have to. For them it's life and death and I suggest that over time what he's doing is going to spread to other places and other leaders are going to take the same approach and it's going to be Trump all over. You think looking at it as an international relations issue, a global issue, a humanity issue, do you think there's any reality in that? Well, there are several angles. On one hand, for example, Trump's effectively changing the norms, changing the narrative. It has spawned a lot of similar hatred and negative attitudes in other places either among leaders pushing populist singular agenda items. The most recent big example would be the president in Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, who came to office much like Trump, very powerful use of social media to alarm and fear and try to put as he's the only one that can solve this dilemma. Again, I think I would say as well that my concern is that what we've seen coming from the US, a very negative hostile attitude towards Mexico, towards brown people, foreigners, these are issues that have always been there, but now they've been put so forcefully that I fear it's going to take some time for people who generally have always had a lot of criticism of the US, rightfully so, especially US intervention. Latin Americans know their history and they know that it is not abstract. It's very real that the US has continually for decades and decades pushed a very interventionist unilateral, asymmetrical, let's say hegemonic role. But what I want to say there is that there's always, on the other hand, there's been a strong on a cultural people to people level, maybe affinity, Mexicans, other Latin Americans, they have big communities in the US connections, family, but today with this fear and hatred, my concern is that it's not going to be easy to turn it around and it'll just, it'll have implications in other ways. Many rejecting the US, maybe turning more to other places, whether Europe or Asia or elsewhere. And it's going to be, I think, a tragic loss for the US of the image of the credibility. That's harder to measure, but it is there, it's a reality. And again, it's the continuity, what we see coming out of Washington, or not Washington, let's be blunt, what's coming out of Trump in his singular view. But many, many increasingly seeing that it's not just him, that he does in fact reflect a very large sector of the US opinion towards outsiders, foreigners, brown people, harder. So that tension, that hatred, the racism, it's all now out in the open and can only make some ugly things. Really funny thing, and there was a piece on NPR this morning about this, is that some Hispanics in this country agree with him. They say, I'm here, I got mine, I don't care about the guys that followed me, and I agree with him about keeping them out. I find that really extraordinary, how quickly we forget about our own journeys. But let me go to the whole thing about what is it going to take to solve this problem? It's going to take in my, and I'm just confirming what you're saying, it's going to take some kind of international effort. Because we have global warming, global warming accelerates the whole migrant move. In large part, that's what's happening in Africa, to some extent in the Middle East. Of course, it's the failure of governments too, but I think we're going to see more migrants. Highwayways of 65 million people has already turned to 70 million people, and from there it goes to 80 or 90 or 100 million people more around the world. And somebody has to deal with this. We can't just leave our fellow human beings behind a cyclone fence. That's immoral. But it's not up to Amnesty International to fix that. It requires something like COP 21. It requires a global effort, an organization of nations that come together and say, we have to find a way to deal with these migrants. We have to fund the camps. We have to build the standards. We have to provide medical care. We have to make a world for them. We can't see them just die in detention. I know that's not happening, at least not at the governmental level. Don't you think that's the only really, the only really workable solution over time? Well, it's the only way that we'll genuinely address it. And the question is how and when will we get there? It requires political leaders who step up and say that, no, we can't scapegoat and blame all the problem on immigrants. We have to instead recognize that we live in an interconnected world, and that even some of our decisions, and effectively the climate change you made reference to, that's driving some of these Central Americans. They simply don't have options of farming like they might have in the past, and the situation has left them with few options. So, boy, I think it's going to be a real challenge for us in global governance. Broadly speaking, it's going to require political leaders to step up and challenge the current leader of the U.S., in particular, saying, no, no, no, no, wrong. And maybe gradually move this through not just the top leader, but our Congress has to obviously step up and do its role. We live in such a strange time of this polarization. It's not unique to the U.S. It's everywhere now of unable to kind of maybe compromise and reach consensus on things. That's what requires. So that's the only option here. Let's just hope we get there sooner than later. And for now, we're not there. And the writing on the wall at the moment is not very promising. It looks like we're more likely to be into more chaos before we get to any solution. Yeah, really. And I'm not sure the chaos will lead to a resolution either. It just could be chaos upon chaos. So, you know, Trump is, in my view, Trump is definitely responsible for this whole attitudinal problem, or at least he reflects it and he enhances it around the world. And hopefully he won't win in 2020 and will have someone else. But the problem I see is that it's going to take a really enlightened president, not only to change American policy and retract all these proclamations that he's been making, such as the one about asylum, but also to have an effect on his base. You know, the engagement with his base is a two-way street. He's playing to the worst of them. But another president might play to the best of them and say, come on, you know, enough of this. We have to be more humane and change the way they think and ignore them if they are, you know, not thinking morally. I'm not sure he's going to lose Carlos, and I'm not sure that his successor would be a Democrat. His successor may be a Republican who feels the same way. It could be that our beloved United States has turned a corner and we are never going to be sympathetic to people crossing the border, that we're going to be xenophobic for the future, not only in the Western Hemisphere, but all around the world. And I think we have a real problem there. So to me, the solution is in a global agreement, a global organization of nations. But we're not going to have that. It's not going to work very well if you have a destructive president. Look at the havoc he's wrought with NATO. Look at the havoc he's wrought with, you know, the family of nations in general. Without any benefit to anybody, he's wrecking all these relationships, the national relations of every kind. And so, you know, I'm not sure that we have a way out unless we have a new kind of president who changes the way the U.S. thinks and who also changes the way the world thinks. And then we wind up being truly a family of nations. Yeah, it's a tough one. When you say unless, it's more like until because at some point, we have to continue to believe that there will be a post-Trump world. It may come after 2020's election. It may come well after that. But, you know, you can only maintain some hope that maybe there will be some common sense to come back to us that future leaders will have to say, no, no, no, we got it wrong. And here's we got to go back to what we and yet I think for the U.S., it remains a challenge. And part of it is having to carry out with this policy shift with some humility, with some recognition of the limitations of American power. That's not easy because, you know, there's a strong widely included the U.S., you know, this very much, this special, powerful actor that alone helped shape the world. But we live in a world now where 75 years after the end of World War II, the U.S. no longer carries the power. In every way, it seems all revealed. So my question to you, my closing question here, and I never promised you a rose garden on this, Carlos, is what do you say to those migrants now? Because he's done this. I don't know if there's a maybe there's some kind of ACLU, you know, court contest on it. I don't know. And I don't know if that would be successful anyway. But he's changed the rules on filing for asylum, making it really hard and cutting off a lot of people. What is, what should those people do? Should they stay in their countries? Should they try anyway? They don't have this same kind of options they did, which were poor anyway, two weeks ago. Now their options are fewer. What's your advice to them? Do you have advice or is it all, you know, a downhill slide? It's a downhill slide. I mean, to be honest, I mean, it's not like you can just go back and say, hey, everybody may sit tight because we don't know the rules and, you know, better off, not leaving because we don't. So on one hand, the solution has to come from the pressure of the problem. And to somehow eliminate that pressure, there's no easy solution for that. So I think we're stuck kind of in limbo with this chaos. This is a problem that's going to continue. So we have to manage it. We can't just wish it to go away. And, you know, boy, it just remains a real challenge because we don't, I don't see it getting solved with President Trump in office. In other words, he's going to continue kicking McCann down the road, using it for his whole, you know, whipping up his base. And that just means that it's basically muddling our way through and hoping for the best in what is a very bad situation. And yet, maybe again, voices, you would hope more and more voices of reason, voices pushing back. Clearly, Trump is going to continue to be hampered by the U.S. court system. Even this current asylum policy change has gone through. Again, we just have until we can probably see a transition of the regime, the administration of Donald Trump in the U.S., we're just going to continue muddling our way through and just chaos and turmoil. I don't see an easy solution in the near term. Well, it's almost when it's our days here. It's actually lunchtime. I don't know how you say that in Spanish, but I think I'm going to go out and have a liquid lunch, Carlos, because I'm really unhappy about the state of affairs. I will only leave you with one thought, and that is it is the moral obligation of every person on the planet that they care about neighbors, to care about humanity. This is not something that we as human beings can push down the road. We all have to be concerned. We all have to find a way to help solve the problem. Thank you so much, Carlos. It's always wonderful. Thank you.