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    Emboldened by Trump, the ‘liberal’ UK is giving free rein to its colonial impulses | Kenneth Mohammed

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    As Donald Trump rains chaos down upon the US – dismantling the rule of law trading in rage-fuelled nationalism and bullying the rest of the world – his ideology is now being eagerly imitated not just by the expected rogues of global politics, but by supposed bastions of democracy.These democracies now wear only a mask of civility over that old colonial impulses: control, divide, exploit.Most disturbing is the UK’s quiet complicity, sneaking its own brand of institutional cruelty. Like seasoned illusionists, they use chaos abroad to obscure injustice at home, to legitimise morally indefensible immigration policies.It is as though the UK and the US exchanged a sly nod across the Atlantic, and said: “Let’s see just how far we can go.”The US is now overseeing the deportation of thousands. Not illegal migrants. Legal. Some have lived in the country for decades, built families, contributed to society, paid taxes. As detention centre doors slams, dreams are extinguished in real time.Caribbean nation’s citizenship-by-investment (CBI) programmes, including Antigua & Barbuda, Dominica, Saint Kitts & Nevis, and Saint Lucia, are now under investigation by the US due to perceived security concerns, potentially facing travel restrictions. So, too, Africans are facing bans and visa cancellations.Not to be outdone, the UK has begun tightening visa restrictions on African and Caribbean nations under the thinnest of pretexts. To us, the message is clear: if you are the wrong colour and hail from a former colony, you’re not welcome. Of course, you’re more than welcome if you are Ukrainian or bringing money or minerals.View image in fullscreenA report on the roots of the Windrush scandal posted on the UK government’s website summarises, “major immigration legislation in 1962, 1968 and 1971 was designed to reduce the proportion of people living in the United Kingdom who did not have white skin.” Sixty years later, the UK still engages this socio-political ideology.Take the absurd treatment of Trinidad and Tobago. British authorities last month slapped exorbitant visa fees on Trinidadians, similar to Jamaica and Dominica. The justification? A spike in asylum claims – from an average of 49 a year between 2015 and 2019 to 439 in 2023.In the year ending June 2024, the UK’s net immigration was 728,000, a 20% decrease from 2023’s peak of 906,000. Yet 439 Trinidadians cause a “crisis”? This is political theatre staged for a frothing few with empire nostalgia and immigrant paranoia.But the Trinbagonian government cannot be let off the hook. For over a decade, gang violence triggered by smuggled guns from the US, the drug trade from South America and the influx of gang members from Venezuela has worsened under an impuissant minister of security and a government in paralysis.This new UK immigration policy for Trinidad and Tobago isn’t policy, its punishment. It’s the empire rearing its head again – this time in the guise of “immigration control”. If the UK was truly concerned, it could have picked up the phone and spoken to the high commissioner to the UK or even the Prime Minister to find a proportionate solution – as fellow Commonwealth members. But what does the Commonwealth mean any more? A glorified nostalgia club presided over by a monarch few in the Caribbean have ever seen.The Commonwealth is a relic. An expensive, hollow monument to a colonial past Britain refuses to apologise for and the Caribbean refuses to walk away from. Common means subservience, and wealth flows only one way. For example, the judicial committee of the privy council remains the highest court for many Caribbean nations – a colonial backdoor that ensures British influence remains after the union jack has been lowered.View image in fullscreenWhy does the Caribbean still genuflect before a throne that sees it as a holiday destination at best and an aid burden at worst? Why do African nations tolerate the condescension of aid when their stolen minerals fuel the west’s riches? As Bob Marley demanded, we must “emancipate ourselves from mental slavery”?The truth is: the west cannot function without us. It feeds off our resources, our oil and minerals, our intellect. Yet it treats us like pests at the door: unworthy of entry, let alone equality.Why are we still playing this rigged game? Why are we still begging for visas, pleading for asylum, when our presence build these nations in the first place?It’s time we stopped asking for permission, withdrew our labour, our brilliance, ourselves – and left them to stew in their nostalgia, mistaking walls for strength and xenophobia for sovereignty. We’ll build something better.Trump’s sledgehammer approach to diplomacy has torched relationships with Canada, Panama, Greenland, South Africa and the broader African continent. The Caribbean is not spared, least of all that US favourite: Cuba.This time, he unleashed his bulldog secretary of state, Marco Rubio,on Cuba’s quiet but powerful diplomatic engine: its doctors. For decades, Cuban medical professionals have travelled the world, from rural outposts in Africa to hurricane-ravaged villages in Haiti, treating the sick and delivering babies, with the soft diplomacy the US abandoned around the time it thought regime change was a sustainable foreign policy model.Cuban doctors have long symbolised international solidarity, emerging from a nation routinely vilified – because nothing terrifies Washington more than socialism in brown skin. But rather than acknowledge this medical diplomacy for what it is – a humanitarian gift – Rubio has instead accused Caribbean nations of exploiting these doctors, underpaying them and “trafficking” them. The audacity is breathtaking.Rubio threatened to revoke US visas from government officials and their immediate family members in any Caribbean country that accepts Cuban medical workers. Because America now exports moral lectures it no longer even pretends to live by.But this time, the Caribbean didn’t flinch. Leaders across the region responded with collective eye-rolling and a resounding: “Come take your visa.”These are independent nations, not subsidiaries of the US. Caribbean leaders made it clear: Cuban doctors are paid on a par with local medical professionals, they are not coerced, and are free to leave at any time. They are crucial to the region’s healthcare systems.Rubio’s daring to speak on behalf of doctors who have done more good across the global south than the aid-slashing US state department has in decades, is an insult not just to the Caribbean but to common sense.What we are witnessing here is a petulance from a fading empire that has replaced its moral compass with paranoia, and outsourced its diplomacy to the whisperings of an erratic billionaire, delusional oligarchs and baby-faced thinktanks addicted to colonial cosplayAmerica’s diplomacy had died, been cremated and scattered over Mar-a-Lago.So while Washington plays imperial hardball with nations trying to provide healthcare to their citizens, the rest of us are left wondering, again, why we allow ourselves to be bullied by a country that cannot keep its own citizens out of medical bankruptcy.At some point, the Caribbean – and the wider global south – must draw a red line. Not just rhetorically, but structurally. We need new alliances, new trading currencies, new friends, new models of cooperation rooted not in colonial debt but mutual respect.Because it is increasingly clear that the US is not interested in partnerships – it wants puppets. Preferably black or brown-skinned, desperate and pliable. More

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      Is circular migration a solution to the crisis at the US border? Guatemala provides a clue

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      Arnoldo Chile, 33, drives his old Toyota pickup truck through the orchards that stretch across the slopes of the mountains surrounding the Guatemalan community of El Rejón in Sumpango, about 45 minutes from Antigua Guatemala, one of the country’s leading tourist destinations. People in this small village in the Sacatepéquez department rely almost entirely on agriculture as their primary source of income.View image in fullscreenHowever, most struggle to make a living, leading to poverty and social exclusion. Facing these challenges, several of Chile’s neighbours have emigrated illegally to the US, hoping to make enough money to support their families.His case, however, is different. Thanks to the circular migration programme by the Cuarto Pinos agricultural co-operative and the Juan Francisco García Foundation, he obtained an H-2A visa that allows him to work in agriculture in the US for several months each year.“At first, I was a bit sceptical that this project could work; I thought it might be a scam like others that have happened in Guatemala before. But since my first time in 2016, I’ve been to the US several times under this programme,” says Chile.He harvested broccoli, cabbage and lettuce in the early years, eventually being promoted to row boss, assisting the supervisor. “I earned $19 (£14.50) an hour and made about $3,500 (£2,700) a month, while here in Guatemala, I could only earn about $450 (£340) a month,” he says.Using his earnings, Chile bought a small plot of land near his village, El Rejón, and now provides work for several family members, primarily in blackberry production.View image in fullscreenAs migration across the US-Mexico border hit its lowest level in three years in the first few months of 2024, driven by the Joe Biden administration’s strict enforcement policy, the humanitarian costs of crossing are mounting. People arriving from South and Central America stranded in Mexico are facing increasing dangers, and reports of deaths at the border are on the rise.In this context, Guatemala’s circular migration offers legal, safer pathways for workers to make a living in the US and support their home communities – surely a better alternative to the migration crisis in the Americas.An estimated 2.9 million Guatemalans live outside their country, mainly in the US. According to Úrsula Roldán, who has a PhD in geography and is the director of the Institute of Socio-Humanistic Sciences at Rafael Landívar University, they usually migrate to escape low incomes, poverty and the risk of social exclusion in a country where the state often fails to meet their needs for education, health and other basic public services.Another reason, she says, is chain migration, when individuals already established in the US call for their relatives to join them. “With the climate crisis, the country has been facing floods and droughts that further worsen this situation. This results in crop failures, leaving rural families in even more dire conditions in Guatemala,” Roldán adds.The results of circular immigration leave scholars such as Roldán in little doubt about its efficiency. The immediate families of regular migrants who participate in these programmes receive better education and healthcare access, which is crucial in avoiding social exclusion.View image in fullscreen“This project was created in response to a combination of economic, social and environmental factors affecting rural families in our country,” says Vanessa García, the head of social responsibility at Cuatro Pinos. “Many families seek better job opportunities, and remittances sent by migrants have become a crucial source of income, motivating many to migrate irregularly.”Different studies suggest that over the years, gender roles tend to shift within families with regular migrants, showing a greater focus on gender equity and a gradual empowerment of women, those who migrated and those who remained in the home country managing the family income.“The communities have seen improvements in development as migrants have bought more land and increased their vegetable production for export, providing jobs for women and men in their communities,” says García.View image in fullscreen“There have also been improvements in housing, education, and the nutrition of their children, which is essential. Some families have also started businesses within the community,” she adds.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionElsewhere in El Rejón, Juan Francisco Yucute, 32, reviews the accounts of the small store he managed to open with his wife, thanks to the money he made working in the US under the circular migration programme, where he earned about $12 (£9) an hour. He participated in the scheme on four occasions, and was away for four to five months each time.View image in fullscreenHe is has left the programme, as the company he worked for in Arizona no longer needed him. However, the money he saved allowed him to start his small business and build two adjacent premises he now rents to neighbours.“My wife and I used to work in the fields before I went to the US, just like most people in our community,” says Yucute, who thought about going to the US illegally until he heard about the circular migration scheme. “My idea of opening the store was so that she and my daughters could have a less strenuous job than agriculture, where you have to spend hours under the sun and rain, and in a village where the roads to the fields are dangerous.”According to a report, the expenses for circular migration typically range between $500 (£382) and $1,000 (£765), covering administrative costs, travel and other fees. This is significantly less than the $12,000 (£9,200) to $15,000 (£11,500) demanded by smugglers for irregular entry into the US, a method that does not always guarantee success.“For migrants, using coyotes [people smugglers] is an alternative route to reach the US. We know that US anti-immigration policies have tightened border controls, which has increased the risks posed by drug trafficking and organised crime along the migration route, making circular migration a viable option,” says Roldán.View image in fullscreenThe process to obtain a temporary work visa in the US is complex. It can take up to 120 days, as the Department of Labor requests certification to justify hiring foreign workers where there is no local workforce. If no local candidates are found for the position, the employer can apply for a visa for foreign workers and often starts international recruitment with the help of specialised agencies.Despite increasing numbers of Guatemalans seeking H-2A and H-2B visas to take part in circular migration programmes, irregular migration continues to prevail. In 2022, it was estimated that about 11,000 temporary workers from Guatemala arrived in the US under circular migration programmes.However, these numbers are significantly lower compared with the 55,302 Guatemalans deported by air from the US or the 222,085 encounters with law enforcement while attempting to cross the US border illegally in 2023.View image in fullscreenBlanca Paola Canel, 25, is well acquainted with this situation as her husband emigrated to the US irregularly. She choose to stay in their village of San José Yalú, near Sumpango, where she now runs the bakery they started together two years ago. Since then, her business has thrived. Not only has she succeeded, but she has also employed some of her relatives and several local young people.“I know many people from here who went to the US illegally. As for me, I never wanted to leave because I have this business that I need to oversee and manage,” says Canel. “I’ve been able to sustain and expand the business and offer employment to five or six people. I hope we can continue to create jobs in Guatemala.” More

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      in US Politics

      Arizona improves college access for undocumented students. Activists say it’s a ‘first step’

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      Arizona improves college access for undocumented students. Activists say it’s a ‘first step’Proposition 308 now makes higher education more affordable for undocumented immigrantsAndrea Vasquez, a social worker at a high school in Tucson, Arizona, was approached by a student in her senior year. She was asked how difficult it would be to attend college as an undocumented immigrant.Vasquez, 29, immediately flashed back to a younger version of herself, studying at the school where she now works, Palo Verde Magnet high school, and remembering her own struggle to get to college while being undocumented.More than a decade later, she has better news for the latest generation.“Her dream is going to a four-year university,” Vasquez said.In last November’s elections, voters in Arizona, who typically support anti-immigrant policies, narrowly approved ballot measure Proposition 308 to make undocumented immigrants eligible for the same fees and state financial aid at state universities and community colleges as local US citizens.Previously, despite growing up in Arizona’s state public school system, undocumented youth wouldn’t have been able to apply for state aid for higher education and would be classed as out-of-state students, who pay much higher fees. This was the fate imposed on Vasquez when she was graduating high school.Vasquez recalled that as a teen applying for college, the base out-of-state tuition at the time could exceed $16,000 annually at a state university. That made financial means rather than academic performance the gateway to higher education for people like her.Vasquez, who was brought to the US from her native Mexico as a migrant at the age of two, said: “I was fourth in my graduating class, I played sports, did community service [but] I couldn’t afford a four-year university.”Revealed: Trump secretly donated $1m to discredited Arizona election ‘audit’ Read moreShe cleaned houses with her mother to pay for two years at Tucson’s Pima Community College.“I wish this Proposition [308] happened when I graduated high school,” she said.In 2011, when she was in high school, Arizona adopted the strictest anti-immigration state law in the country. It allowed local law enforcement to ask anyone suspected of being in the country unlawfully to present proof of legal immigration status during routine traffic stops. It made it an offense to be caught without those papers.Arizona’s large Hispanic communities effectively lived under siege, with the law championed by hard-right Republican governor Jan Brewer, notorious Maricopa county sheriff Joe Arpaio and the late state senator, Russell Pearce.Then, in 2012, US president Barack Obama turned Vasquez and other migrants brought to the US as minors into Dreamers – the scheme now under threat because of legislative inertia and legal fights that started during the Trump administration.Dreamers became eligible for work permits and renewable protection from deportation under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) program. Nevertheless, higher education barriers persisted nationwide – especially in Arizona.Until Proposition 308, Arizona was one of three states, alongside Georgia and Indiana, that barred undocumented immigrants from in-state tuition.In her first State of the State speech last month, Katie Hobbs, the first Democratic governor elected in Arizona in 16 years, celebrated Proposition 308 and pledged to expand opportunities by allocating $40m to a new fund, the Promise for Dreamers Scholarship Program.“I was so pleased that the governor and her budget included the program, which wouldn’t even ask for a citizenship requirement,” said Raquel Terán, an Arizona state senator and a proponent of Proposition 308.“It’s unfair that many of the students who have been part of our education system, part of our communities, had to pay three times the in-state tuition,” she added.The American Immigration Council advocacy group issued a report supporting Proposition 308, noting: “The state is facing critical workforce shortages across the skills spectrum … Arizona will need … global talent to complement US-born workers [and to] build career pathways for immigrants already living in the state.”At her high school, Vasquez tells undocumented students about Proposition 308 but adds that they’re still ineligible for federal aid. Every year, more than 3,600 undocumented students graduate high school in Arizona.Ex-Arizona governor’s illegal makeshift border wall is torn down – but at what cost?Read moreMeanwhile, another hurdle faces Fernando Contreras, 19, as he aspires to become a doctor. Arizona is struggling with critical healthcare staff shortages exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic. But when he was still a senior at Mountain View high school in Mesa, he found out most medical internships that he would need on the way to getting licensed require a social security number. He doesn’t have one: he arrived from Mexico at the age of 12 without documentation.For now, Contreras is studying at Pima Community College and is enrolled at Grand Canyon University, a private Christian school where Proposition 308 doesn’t apply, while working numerous jobs including babysitting.“The biggest downside is knowing you have to work twice as hard as anybody else to achieve what you want,” he said.Since the ballot measure passed, fees have dipped at the community college and he’s looking into whether it would be possible to transfer to Arizona State University.Jose Patiño, a 33-year-old Daca recipient and vice-president of education and external affairs at Aliento, a youth-led organization that advocated for the passing of Proposition 308, said that Contreras and many like him need a law like HB2796. It’s a bill that was introduced recently by Democratic state representative Flavio Bravo, allowing undocumented students to get licensed in the medical field by submitting a federal tax identification number in lieu of a social security number.But the bill never made it out of committee and died in the state legislature.“It’s unfortunate but there is very little understanding of the urgency of a bill like this one,” Bravo said.Patiño is still encouraged by Proposition 308, however.“The change in Arizona is partly because many of us were afraid for so long and now we are fighting back,” said Patiño, who was born in Guanajuato, Mexico in 1990 and brought to the US six years later.“Proposition 308 is the first step, but we have to keep fighting. We have learned from this country that nothing is going to be given to you.”TopicsArizonaMigrationMigration and developmentUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More