THE ROLE OF THE HOUSTON COMMUNITY

Transcription

1 THE ROLE OF THE HOUSTON COMMUNITY The Rights of Unaccompanied Alien Children and The Duties of Federal, State & Local Governments July 31, 2014 State Bar of Texas/Harris County Attorney CLE Houston Community College (Southwest Campus) by Vidal G. Martinez Good afternoon, and thank you to the State Bar of Texas, the Houston Community College and the organizers of todays fascinating event. We ve all learned a lot from these excellent presentations. I would also like to offer a special thanks to our Harris County Attorney Vince Ryan and his office for organizing this effort and inviting me to speak with you today about our community perspective in handling this. Whatever your belief is regarding immigration -- whether the national government should do more regarding immigration reform; or whether local governments can or should intercede I am going to leave that to the political arena there s enough debate at every level on who or what is to blame for this crisis. 1

2 But the fact is that this child migrant crisis is a unique problem for Texas, and particularly for Houston. Statistics from a recent New York Times article show that since October 2013, 70% of the child migrants apprehended are crossing the south Texas Rio Grande Valley -- 42,164 since October As a comparison, the second major place where migrant children have been taken into custody is Tucson, Arizona, but only 13% of apprehensions have taken place there. Ninety-eight percent of unaccompanied minors currently arriving at the border are from Honduras (28 percent), Mexico (25 percent), Guatemala (24 percent), and El Salvador (21 percent). This breakdown represents a significant from 2012, when more than 75 percent of unaccompanied children were from Mexico. Houston is particularly center stage in today s problem because it has the largest Latino population between the two coasts of the United States. In Houston, we have close and historic cultural ties with Latin America, and many of the children now entering the US are seeking to be reunited with family members or sponsors in the Houston area. So why is Houston at the epicenter of this crisis? Let s take a look at our community then. Houston is about to rank #3 in our nation in population -- shortly jumping over Chicago well within this decade. We 2

3 are also the largest city in terms of square miles 600 square miles of any of the top ten largest cities in America. Los Angeles, the next largest, is at 468 square miles for instance. What many people don t realize is that our city is also the most culturally diverse city in America. Dr. Stephen Klineberg of Rice University, who each year produces the Houston Area Survey, reports that Latinos are the dominant group in nearly half of Harris County, and represent the largest dramatic population growth over the past thirty years. Most persons would also tell you that San Antonio has the largest Latino population in Texas not so. Whatever matrix you wish to use, whether it be actual population numbers, contiguous metro or SMSA data, Houston is number three in the nation behind Los Angeles and New York and has over double the number of Latinos than San Antonio... which is also larger than the entire Valley of Texas put together. In many cases, we have the largest or the second largest populations from El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala in the nation, exactly the places where many of these these children are coming from... and they re coming here to Houston. So how does our community, which is at the front line of this influx, respond? Both the Pew Research Center and the Public Religion 3

4 Research Institute data show that over 70% of Americans support shelter and support to child migrants while figuring out whether they should stay in the U.S. It s the figuring out if they should stay that regards the very exercise all of us are engaged in today. The United Nations Refugee Agency has called on the United States to provide access to asylum determination procedures, pushing the US to classify more child migrants as refugees. Based on the UN report, some 30,000 of the 52,000 children who have entered the US in the past eight months may qualify for refugee status, due to the ongoing insecurity crisis in their home countries. Every one of those cases will have to be handled, one on one, and hopefully with a lawyer involved as each child is processed through the immigration infrastructure of our nation under the 2008 federal statute. However, for our own practical purposes, we now need to separate the political issues from the local economic and social issues. The fact of the matter is that Houston now has at least 40,000 children inbound or at our doorstep, and we need to take action. If we as a community do not begin to address this influx of children, then who is going to do it? And when? With the lives of children at risk, we need to think first of the human crisis involved here, and that means that we must accept 4

5 the likelihood that the majority of these children will be staying in the U.S. Today the debate continues on funding to handle this migration of children, with the issue unresolved as of this afternoon as Congress has apparently taken its 5 week recess without a border bill advancing through both houses. In order to cope with this challenge then, the private sector, philanthropy, and government will all need to contribute to digest those children that will be adjusted out of the immigration process into our community. We must also ask our local and state politicians to demand a return of the majority of any additional federal funds being appropriated for this effort to come to Texas, where most of the children are and will remain. The congressman from Wyoming, with a total state population of 577,00, has little interest in securing funding for his state from any federal dollars for this effort when roughly 10% the size of his population is sitting on the Texas border and we are being asked no, really forced -- to manage this. Houston has 26 Fortune 500 companies, second only to New York. Our Gross Metropolitan Product -- what we produce is $308 Billion dollars, bigger than the countries of Austria, Israel or the city-states of Hong Kong or Singapore. We are home to the largest medical center 5

6 in the world and just one of our school districts out of 27 in the area, HISD, is the 8th largest in the nation. There should be no doubt Houston has the infrastructure to absorb these children. Anyone who argues the opposite is purposely blind to the obvious wealth, capacity and strength of our city. But this isn t the first time that the U.S. has been confronted with a sudden influx of immigrants. Some of you may recall Operation Pedro Pan in 1960, when 14,000 Cuban children were sent to Miami by their parents after rumors spread that Fidel Castro was going to take children to military schools or Soviet-style labor camps. These children were absorbed into the United States with little difficulty and are some of the biggest success stories of our community. One of those children, Eduardo Aguirre, went from Havana to New Orleans to live with Catholic nuns, graduated from LSU and then became the worldwide President of Bank of America International Private Bank based right here in Houston. As if that wasn t enough of a success story, that very same Pedro Pan child who entered the U.S. not speaking any English, then became the first Homeland Security Director of U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services, and then followed by being appointed by President George W. Bush as our country s 6

7 Ambassador to Spain. There are several Eduardo Aguirre stories sitting right in front of us, and the information learned today from all of these expert speakers will result in these success stories over and over for our community. In terms of the future outlook, we also need to accept that this problem will not be quickly resolved. There are a number of push-andpull factors influencing the decisions of children and their parents to migrate, and the United States has limited ability to influence these issues. The persistence of gang violence in Central America will continue to push children to leave, while the presence of family in the U.S. will continue to be a strong pull factor. That pull factor -- coming from the corresponding large ethnic populations who reside among us - - is exactly why Houston is the most affected community of this child migration crisis and will continue to be at the front line of future waves. The solution here will involve the persons in this room getting these children in and through the immigration process first, and if you ll get these children halfway, it will then be up to business, educational, philanthropic, health and community leaders to take hold of this challenge and manage it -- regardless of the politics involved. I envision a third of this effort being that of government, a third from 7

8 social agencies like the ones sponsoring this event and attending this conference, and the final third from the community efforts I have just described: business, philanthropy, education and health organizations. Yes Houston we have a problem, but if we contribute to making all of these three sectors concentrate on a solution, I am confident Houston can and will solve this... right here, with all of you. Pope Francis said last year, A population that does not take care of the elderly and of children and the young has no future, because it abuses both its memory and its promise. Thank you to each one of you here today for your marvelous efforts and caring to learn of this unique situation facing us. Let s get this right Houston... we are not Murrieta, California. Vidal G. Martinez is the senior partner of Martinez Partners LLP and has practiced in Houston for 37 years. He is former Chairman of the Board of the State Bar of Texas; a former Port of Houston Authority Commissioner; a former University of Houston Regent; former Assistant U.S. Attorney with the Department of Justice; and a former member of the board and executive committee of the Greater Houston Partnership. Mr. Martinez received his BBA from the University of Texas in 1975 and his JD from the University of Houston in He can be reached at vidal@martinez.net. 8