Human Rights Watch has just compiled a report tracking what happens to refugees and asylum seekers who return to El Salvador. Its findings are a blow to one’s conscience. At least 200 El Salvadorans migrants or asylum seekers have been killed, raped or tortured after being deported. HRW traced 138 Salvadorans who were killed by gang members, police, soldiers, death squads and ex partners between 2013 and 2019. The 70 others were subject to beatings, sexual assault and extortion. Of course El Salvador is one of the most violent countries, and many have sought to leave. A measure of this is that from 2014 to 2018 the US deported 111,000 Salvadorans but only granted asylum to 18.2% of those who applied for it. It does not mean that those who were deported fared well. They just were not part of those HRW tracked. Obviously current policy had a big role to play in all this but too it brings to mind a larger issue. Although some means are in place, the world tends to not respond, or not adequately respond, to humanitarian crises. Politics, often under the guise of sovereignty, more often than not interferes. The tragedy in Northern Syria is but one example. The death of those Salvadorans, the fate of those deported, and the need for people to leave El Salvador to begin with reach deep into many aspects of the foreign and humanitarian aid communities. Regardless, we must find better ways, ways free of politics, to address those crises wherever they are. As a civilization, a world, a country, we must institute whatever is needed to help those in need survive, whatever it is we might want if we were in that position.
Governance
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Fiscal Quagmire in the Cards?
A newsletter I receive had a small notice about an article in Fortune magazine which really caught my attention as I hope it will yours. The article which headline included that “America is moving towards a tax increase for the middle class”, was making a case for VAT, and in doing so shared some valuable if scary statistics—because a value added tax it claimed would raise more money than any other means. According to the CBO, Congressional Budget Office, federal spending will jump from $4.45 billion in 2019 to $7,375 billion in 2029. Although revenues are projected to grow, expenses are projected to outgrow the revenues collected from taxes. This means that the federal deficit which was $984 billion last year will grow to $2.156 trillion in 2029. The US would be borrowing 25 cents for every dollar it spends. The federal debt would rise to $29.6 trillion or 104% of national income when last year it was 79%. The gap between revenues and expenditures would be so wide that taxing the rich alone would not suffice. In this article the author claims only a VAT might help, a tax which would begin at the manufacturing level, make prices rise and be hard on most wage earners. It’s a tax some in Washington may be led to consider but it need not be the only solution.
The CBO’s numbers are sobering, distressing and frightening, at a time when no presidential candidate is addressing the issues they speak to and when another round of tax cut is possible. Yet we need not be experts to realize this looming fiscal quagmire (the author’s words) needs to be at the very least acknowledged. Policy makers’ silence and ignorance need not be ours.
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Homelessness and Solutions
Homelessness is now well-known as a national problem, one that had been worse in California. As I follow the progress of this issue I rarely read something that to me at least addresses a potential real solution. Mainly because I’ve been wondering who understands the source of the problem, until I read a NYT piece on Dr. Margot Kushel, a longtime advocate for the homeless, now director of the Benioff Homelessness Initiative at UCSF which has a $30 million endowment from the billionaire Salesforce founder. She reminds us that we know what works: Housing First, programs where finding housing is the first and fundamental step to being able to help many who are homeless. But she also acknowledges that “We’ve always known that homelessness is a result, pure and simple, of poverty: the lack of a living wage, the lack of affordable housing and the insidious impact of racism. If we don’t fix the fundamentals, we are just patching a leaking ship. And that is what has happened.”
In my neighborhood as in many others new apartment buildings are going up on almost every block, apartments which are by law exempt from rent control and called luxury units partly to justify their high rents with a slew of amenities. These units are touted by many in politics and elsewhere as the answer to homelessness—implying that a shortage of units is what makes rents unaffordable. And yet when one remembers as was the topic of a post not long ago, that 44% of the labor force work at low paying jobs, economic inequality does seem to emerge as an underlying cause of homelessness. As the California legislature is struggling to come up with a new version of recently defeated AB 50 which wanted to supersede local zoning laws to be able to build more apartments such as those in my neighborhood, the views of Dr. Kushel gain added importance. Let her voice be heard.