US in denial over cause of refugee crisis

Watching the ongoing debate between US liberal and right-wing pundits in the mainstream media, one rarely gets the impression that Washington is responsible for the unfolding crisis in Central America. In fact, no other country is as accountable as the US for the Central American bedlam and resulting refugee crisis.

So why, despite the seemingly substantial ideological and political differences between right-wing

Fox News and liberal CNN, are both media outlets working hard to safeguard their country’s dirty little secret?

In recent years, state and gang violence — coupled with extreme poverty — have forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Honduras, among other countries in Central and South America. Much of the mainstream US media, however, is rarely interested in the root cause of that reality.

Fox News is tirelessly peddling the offensive language used by the US administration, which perceives the refugees as criminals and terrorists who pose a threat to US national security. CNN, on the other hand, has labored to counter the growing anti-immigrant sentiments that have plagued the US. However, few in the liberal media have the courage to probe the story beyond convenient political rivalry, persisting in their hypocritical and insincere humanitarianism that is divorced from any meaningful political context.

The fact is the Central American refugee crisis is similar to the plethora of Middle East and

Central Asian refugee crises of recent years. Mass migration is almost always the direct outcome of political meddling and military interventions. From Afghanistan to Iraq, Libya and Syria, millions of refugees have been forced — by circumstances beyond their control — to seek safety in some other country.

The irony is that the hapless refugees, whether those escaping to Europe or to the US, are perceived to be the aggressors, the invaders, as opposed to the US and its allies that had, in fact, meddled in these once-stable and sovereign homelands.

Both Democrats and Republicans are responsible for the current refugee crisis. In 1996, Democratic President Clinton unleashed a war on refugees when he passed two consecutive legislations: The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, and the AntiTerrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act. Millions of people — who had escaped US-instigated wars and military coups — were deported back to Central and South America. A terrible situation was exacerbated; violence and want flared even more. The US has offered little by way of redressing an unjust reality, but the refugees keep on coming. Without proper political context, they too were duly blamed for their hardship.

Considering Fox News and

CNN’s lack of quality coverage, this is not surprising. Few Americans know of the sordid history of their country in that region, such as the CIA-engineered coup d’etat in Guatemala in 1954, or the US support of the coup against the democratically elected Honduras President Manuel Zelaya in

2009, or of everything else that happened in between.