Volunteer nurses, doctors pitch in to help migrant caravan

The Canadian Press

Published

6 years ago

6 minute read

PIJIJIAPAN, Mexico — The main plaza in Pijijiapan quickly became a makeshift triage centre as thousands of Central Americans trudged into this southern Mexico town.

A severely dehydrated woman connected to an IV line sat on a plastic chair in the gazebo. Nearby, volunteer nurses took temperatures and treated coughs, handing out donated medicine as migrants lined up.

Two weeks of walking have taken a toll on a caravan of migrants now estimated at more than 4,000 as it slowly marches through Chiapas, Mexico’s southernmost state that is far from their goal of reaching the United States.

In the first four hours Thursday, Dr. Jesus Miravete treated more than 120 people. Many had burns on their feet from walking in plastic sandals on the steaming highway.

“So many tell me: ‘I can’t rest. I have to go on,'” Miravete said. “It’s really hard. I feel overwhelmed, above all by the number of dehydrated children I have seen.”

Yet the migrants were planning what would be their most ambitious single-day trek since they crossed into Mexico, setting their sights for Friday on reaching Arriaga, about 62 miles (100 kilometres) up the coast.

Like in many places in Chiapas, residents in Pijijiapan turned out in force to aid the travellers as they streamed in on foot, offering shelter, food and medical treatment. Some people offered rides to the plaza. Others showed up with used clothes and boxes of sandwiches.

The caravan was earlier welcomed in a similar fashion into Mapastepec, a municipality of 45,000 residents 30 miles to the south where city officials put up tents around the main square offering everything from medical attention to donated clothing to baby formula. Local churches offered free showers and set up food distribution points.

“They are human beings. You have to do something to help them,” said Cesar Cabuqui, who handed out dozens of homemade bean and cheese sandwiches and bags of water.

Chiapas is home to some of Mexico’s poorest communities. Yet the towns on the migrants’ route have organized to offer them shelter, medical treatment and donations as best they can.

Grateful for the hospitality, many of the migrants have tried to be respectful visitors.

Jose Reyneri Castellanos, from El Progreso, Honduras, hung back behind the rest of the caravan with his wife and two young sons to help sweep and tidy up in Mapastepec — as they’ve done at each stop, figuring it well help ensure a continued warm reception as they head north.

“I think it is important to leave the community and the city clean,” Castellanos said.

Many of the migrants say they are dreaming of finding better lives in the United States. They say they have been driven to leave their homelands by severe poverty and rising gang violence.

Such caravans have taken place regularly, if on a smaller scale, over the years, but U.S. President Donald Trump has seized on the phenomenon this year. He has been warning about this caravan and illegal immigration, repeating hitting Democrats on the issue as the U.S. heads into the hotly contested Nov. 6 midterm elections.

Defence Secretary Jim Mattis was expected to sign an order to send 800 or more additional troops to the southern border to support the Border Patrol, according to a U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly because the details had not yet been finalized.

The caravan is still some 1,000 miles from the nearest border crossing at McAllen, Texas, but the journey could be twice that if the migrants head to the Tijuana-San Diego crossing. That was the destination of a smaller caravan earlier this year, and only about 200 in the group made it.

This group also has begun to thin. Authorities say 1,740 have applied for refuge in Mexico and hundreds more have taken up offers of bus rides back to Honduras. Sickness, exhaustion and police harassment have helped whittle down their numbers.

Immigration officials appeared to be intervening more aggressively with the migrants’ movements amid the sweltering 90-degree heat.

A taxi driver in Mapastepec said he had seen immigration agents force migrant passengers out of cabs at a checkpoint.

An official from the country’s Human Rights Commission said migrants could go through if they were in vans or trucks that offered them free rides, but if they had paid they would have to get out because of insurance regulations.

On Thursday, the long column stretched for miles along the highway. Families with young children packed sidewalks asking for donations and rides.

Candy Guillermo, 37, said she had heard from others in the caravan about Trump intending to send U.S. troops to the border. A single mother of four, she was puzzled that the leader of such a powerful country would find her and the families travelling alongside her a threat.

“It surprises me because there are children here. President Trump should be more humanitarian,” Guillermo said, wiping sweat from her brow. “We only want to give our kids a better future.”

Christopher Sherman And Julie Watson, The Associated Press

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Ottawa’s avalanche of spending hasn’t helped First Nations

Published on November 19, 2024

Todayville

From the Fraser Institute

By Tom Flanagan

When Justin Trudeau came to power in 2015, he memorably said that the welfare of Indigenous Canadians was his highest priority. He certainly has delivered on his promise, at least in terms of shovelling out money.

During his 10 years in office, budgeted Indigenous spending has approximately tripled, from about $11 billion to almost $33 billion. Prime Minister Trudeau’s instruction to the Department of Justice to negotiate rather than litigate class actions has resulted in paying tens of billions of dollars to Indigenous claimants over alleged wrongs in education and other social services. And his government has settled specific claims—alleged violations of treaty terms or of the Indian Act—at four times the previous rate, resulting in the award of at least an additional $10 billion to First Nations government.

But has this avalanche of money really helped First Nations people living on reserves, who are the poorest segment of Canadian society?

One indicator suggests the answer is yes. The gap between reserves and other communities—as measured by the Community Well-Being Index (CWB), a composite of income, employment, housing and education—fell from 19 to 16 points from 2016 to 2021. But closer analysis shows that the reduction in the gap, although real, cannot be due to the additional spending described above.

The gain in First Nations CWB is due mainly to an increase in the income component of the CWB. But almost all of the federal spending on First Nations, class-action settlements and specific claims do not provide taxable income to First Nations people. Rather, the increase in income documented by the CWB comes from the greatly increased payments legislated by the Liberals in the form of the Canada Child Benefit (CCB). First Nations people have a higher birth rate than other Canadians, so they have more children and receive more (on average) from the Canada Child Benefit. Also, they have lower income on average than other Canadians, so the value of the CCB is higher than comparable non-Indigenous families. The result? A gain in income relative to other Canadians, and thus a narrowing of the CWB gap between First Nations and other communities.

There’s an important lesson here. Tens of billions in additional budgetary spending and legal settlements did not move the needle. What did lead to a measurable improvement was legislation creating financial benefits for all eligible Canadian families with children regardless of race. Racially inspired policies are terrible for many reasons, especially because they rarely achieve their goals in practise. If we want to improve life for First Nations people, we should increase opportunities for Canadians of all racial backgrounds and not enact racially targeted policies.

Moreover, racial policies are also fraught with unintended consequences. In this case, the flood of federal money has made First Nations more dependent rather than less dependent on government. In fact, from 2018 to 2022, “Own Source Revenue” (business earnings plus property taxes and fees) among First Nations bands increased—but not as much as transfers from government. The result? Greater dependency on government transfers.

This finding is not just a statistical oddity. Previous research has shown that First Nations who are relatively less dependent on government transfers tend to achieve higher living standards (again, as measured by the CWB index). Thus, the increase in dependency presided over by the Trudeau government does not augur well for the future.

One qualification: this finding is not as robust as I would like because the number of band governments filing reports on their finances has drastically declined. Of 630 First Nation governments, only 260 filed audited statements for fiscal 2022. All First Nations are theoretically obliged by the First Nations Financial Transparency Act, 2013, to publish such statements, but the Trudeau government announced there would be no penalties for non-compliance, leading to a precipitous decline in reporting.

This is a shame, because First Nations, as they often insist, are governments, not private organizations. And like other governments, they should make their affairs visible to the public. Also, most of their income comes from Canadian taxpayers. Both band members and other Canadians have a right to know how much money they receive, how it’s being spent and whether it’s achieving its intended goals.

Author:

Tom Flanagan

Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Distinguished Fellow, School of Public Policy, University of Calgary

Uncategorized

Musk, Ramaswamy to lead Trump efforts to cut waste, fraud in federal government

Published on November 13, 2024

Todayville

From The Center Square

By Brett Rowland

During his campaign, Ramaswamy proposed cutting 75% of the federal workforce. Musk recently suggested that he could cut $2 trillion from the federal budget, or about one-third of total U.S. spending.

President-elect Donald Trump picked Tesla CEO Elon Musk and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy to lead a newly created Department of Government Efficiency.

The department’s acronym, DOGE, is a nod to Musk’s favorite cryptocurrency, dogecoin. Trump said the new group will pave the way for his administration to “dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulation, cut wasteful expenditures and restructure federal agencies.”

Trump laid out lofty goals for the group in his announcement this week.

“It will become, potentially, ‘The Manhatten Project,’ of our time,” Trump’s announcement said. “Republican politicians have dreamed about the objectives of ‘DOGE’ for a very long time.”

It won’t be an official government agency, which will likely allow Musk and Ramaswamy to avoid public financial disclosures.

Trump said the change he’s looking for won’t come from within the existing federal government.

“To drive this kind of change, the Department of Government Efficiency will provide advice and guidance from outside the government, and will partner with the White House and Office of Management & Budget to drive large scale structural reform and create and entrepreneurial approach to government never seen before,” the announcement noted.

Trump said he looks forward to what Musk and Ramaswamy can accomplish.

“Importantly, we will drive out the massive waste and fraud which exists throughout our annual $6.5 trillion of government spending,” he said.

Trump also gave them a deadline: July 4, 2026.

“A smaller government, with more efficiency and less bureaucracy will be the perfect gift to America” on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, according to the announcement.

Ramaswamy, who dropped out the race for the GOP nomination to endorse Trump in January, has previously proposed significant cuts. During his campaign, Ramaswamy proposed cutting 75% of the federal workforce.

Musk recently suggested that he could cut $2 trillion from the federal budget, or about one-third of total U.S. spending. He’s been tossing out ideas on X, previously Twitter before Musk bought the company and changed the name.

“The world is suffering slow strangulation by overregulation. Every year, the noose tightens a little more,” Musk wrote in a post on X on Wednesday. “We finally have a mandate to delete the mountain of choking regulations that do not serve the greater good.”

Musk also said he isn’t a threat to democracy, but a threat to bureaucracy.

DOGE already has an X account. It’s first post: “Working overtime to ensure your tax dollars will be spent wisely!”

Some budget experts have called Musk’s pledge to cut $2 trillion a pipe dream, noting that many of the problems DOGE wants to address have proven intractable.

Brian Riedl, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute think tank, called Musk’s proposal “a random number unattached to reality.”

Marc Goldwein, the senior vice president and senior policy director for the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, said it could be done with 10 aggressive policies, mostly focused on Medicare and Medicaid.

“The government can legitimately save trillions over a decade by reducing waste and improving efficiency – and I hope we do,” Goldwein wrote on X. “Achieving these savings requires major changes to how and how much we pay for health care.”

Medicare (annual cost of about $1 trillion) is a federal health insurance program for people 65 or older, and some people younger than 65 with certain disabilities or conditions. Medicaid (annual cost of about $558 billion) is a joint federal and state program that helps cover medical costs for some people with limited income and resources.

The Government Accountability Office, which serves as the research arm of Congress, estimated annual fraud losses cost taxpayers between $233 billion and $521 billion annually, in a report in April. The fraud estimate’s range represents 3% to 7% of average federal obligations. The Office of Management and Budget publicly questioned that estimate, calling it “not plausible.”

“OMB has significant concerns that this report will not further efforts to prevent and reduce fraud, but rather will create confusion and promote misleading generalizations that have no factual connection to specific federal programs,” Jason Miller, the deputy director for management at the Office of Management and Budget, wrote of OMB concerns in a three-page letter to officials with the Government Accountability Office.

On the campaign trail, Ramaswamy detailed his plan to reduce the federal workforce by 75% during an event at the America First Policy Institute in Washington in 2023.

Ramaswamy said he would shutter the FBI (about 35,000 employees); the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms a nd Explosives (5,099 employees); the U.S. Department of Education (about 4,200 employees); the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (about 3,000 employees); and the Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Services (about 1,500 employees).

Under Ramaswamy’s campaign plan, some 15,000 FBI employees would be moved to other agencies such as the U.S. Marshals Service, U.S. Secret Service, Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, Drug Enforcement Administration, Defense Intelligence Agency, and Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security.

Some groups called the Department of Government Efficiency goals a stretch. Others had more pointed things to say.

Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen, a progressive consumer advocacy organization founded by Ralph Nader, said the government agencies and regulations Ramaswamy proposed cutting are in place to protect people.

“The purpose of government regulations is to protect the American people,” she said in a statement. “We all depend on these regulations to protect our air, water, workers, children’s safety, and so much more. ‘Cutting red tape’ is shorthand for getting rid of the safeguards that protect us in order to benefit corporate interests.”