by Austin Kocher, Bashir Mobasher, Sofía Guerra, Makenna Lindsay, Diana Garay Flores, and Ernesto Castañeda*

Although tens of thousands of Afghans were brought to the United States before and after the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan, many remain in legal limbo, and some are still struggling to resettle in this country. We still know little about the lives of Afghans in the United States, even two years after the military final withdrawal.  

Washington, D.C. is an area with one of the largest Afghan communities in the country. In order to fill in the gap in knowledge about recently arrived Afghans in the United States, researchers at the Immigration Lab and the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies at American University interviewed Afghan immigrants through the D.C.-Maryland-Virginia (DMV) region and beyond about their experiences. We use pseudonyms rather than names to keep confidentiality.  

This first report from the project presents the preliminary results of interviews with 21 Afghans to discuss their educational and work experiences in Afghanistan and after arriving in the United States. Most Afghan migrants in our study had a high educational attainment. Most of our interviewees—87% of the total—had at least a bachelor’s degree, while nearly half (10) also had a master’s degree.  

Our interviewees often situated their own educational attainment relative to their parents’ educational attainment as a way to demonstrate the value of intergenerational progress and social mobility. One 32-year-old male refugee, Abdul, who, like his father, had completed a master’s degree, described the impacts of years of war on Afghanistan and child-rearing duties as placing limits on his mother’s education. His mother completed the equivalent of high school but could not pursue additional education “because Afghanistan has struggled with four wars,” and she had to “take care of five to six children.” At the time of the interview, Abdul was working in the food service industry, which he reported enjoying, although he also aspired to join the army and pursue further education once his immigration status is resolved.  

Most participants reported higher educational attainment than their parents, either by studying abroad or in Afghanistan. The above image shows the educational attainment of interviewees and their parents. Only the 12 participants where full data was available are shown in the graph; the remaining nine included only partial data. 

Despite high educational attainment, many of our research participants worked jobs that did not appear to capture their full employment potential. Three participants were unemployed. Two worked in the gig economy as Uber or DoorDash drivers, while others worked part-time or in customer service shifts. Nearly all expressed an interest in pursuing higher education and more competitive careers in government service, journalism, or business. Others reported more stable professional positions, including security guards, senior project coordinators, customer service specialists, and human resources.  

Even if they aspired to have more competitive jobs later in life, many of the Afghans we spoke with described their determination to work jobs that were available to them as a function of their ongoing responsibility to their families both in the United States and in Afghanistan. As with many other immigrants, the Afghans we spoke with felt a responsibility to provide for their family as they settled into the DMV and often reported sending money to support family members who could not leave as they had been able to.  

A 35-year-old male refugee, Sayed, described the responsibility he and many other Afghans felt towards their families still in Afghanistan. Sayed had only been in the United States since 2021 and, like many of the people we interviewed, had received his education abroad rather than in Afghanistan. He completed his master’s degree in India and hoped to pursue a Ph.D. However, his current situation demanded more practical considerations. When asked about his work schedule, he described “working hard” with lots of “overtime that only left him just one day free each week. When asked if he felt he was working hard enough, he replied, “No, it is not enough. But we are in a tough position right now. We have problems. You know, the situation in Afghanistan is not normal. We have to be hard working; we have to help our families in Afghanistan. I am working here to support my family, my friends, and my colleagues in Afghanistan.” 

Similarly, Ahmad arrived in the United States in 2021 and settled immediately in the D.C. area. When asked if he sent remittances to Afghanistan, he said, “Yeah, sure. Why not? The situation is still terrible. No jobs, no work, no money. So, I have to support my family, my mom, even my brothers. They need healthcare, they need food, they need a lot of things. But there is none. So, I have to support my family.” Ahmad went on to describe the responsibility he felt for family members in the United States as well as abroad. “And I have to provide financial support right here in America, as well as to my sons, my daughter, my wife, and my mom.” Ahmad works as a customer support specialist and as an interpreter for a furniture company. 

Although educational attainment is typically thought of as a resource for immigrants who are joining the U.S. labor market, educational and work-related background may also be in the list of factors that forced immigrants to leave their country in the first place. A 32-year-old Afghan woman, Zahra, represented an important segment of our interviewees who had parents with relatively high education.Zahra’s mother possessed a master’s degree in criminology, and her father possessed a bachelor’s degree, while Zahra had completed a master’s degree in the United States. Under the Taliban regime, highly-educated women are seen with distrust and may be targeted.  

Although from Afghanistan, Zahra reported spending much of her early childhood in Pakistan. Interestingly, the U.S. military operation in Afghanistan prompted her family to return to the country. “After the U.S. captured Kabul,” she said, “we thought it was our time to go back to Kabul.” Her family’s education and careers shaped how they experienced Afghanistan before and after the withdrawal.  

“My mom was a governmental official, and I used to work with the U.S. embassy, and my brother was also working with the U.S. embassy. So when the Taliban captured the city, the first thing that came to my mind was that they would harm my family… During the evacuation, the U.S. government was trying to evacuate all of those people who were working with the U.S. government and their allies.” 

She went on to describe how their jobs working with the United States government exacerbated their risks once the U.S. military left. 

“We have been threatened. The night before coming to the Kabul airport, the Taliban came to our house. They were asking for my mother, and that was very scary. My mother has like the governmental vehicle and some laptops and stuff, but they actually came just to see if my mother was still in Kabul. But they just made an excuse that they were here to ask for the car, documents, and stuff. Then they also asked about us, about me and my brother.” 

Zahra’s story illustrates the ways in which the educational attainment and careers of Afghan individuals create cycles of opportunity and precarity. In Zahra’s case, her family’s education created opportunities for work with the U.S. government, which then contributed to their vulnerability after the military withdrawal and may now help her resettle in the United States and join the labor market here. In a future report we will explore further whether their education fits the jobs they obtain in the U.S. 

About the Study 

This report is part of a larger research project titled Immigration to the DMV. The project relies on a mixed-methods research project conducted by faculty and students from the Immigration Lab and the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies (CLALS) at American University. Researchers solicited information about migrants’ identities and experiences using a survey form that collected quantitative data and asked open-ended follow-up questions to collect narrative-rich qualitative data. This project was supported by the Mellon Foundation through the College of Arts and Sciences and the Faculty-Student Scholarly Collaboration Grant from the Office of the Deputy Provost and Dean of Faculty at American University. The larger team includes Tazreena Sajjad, Mubbashir Rizvi, Lauren Carruth, Daniel Jenks, Joseph Fournier, Montse Hernandez, and over 30 students working at the Immigration Lab. We aim to interview more Afghans and compare them to other immigrant and asylum-seeking groups. 

* Austin Kocher, Bashir Mobasher, Sofía Guerra, Makenna Lindsay, Diana Garay Flores, and Ernesto Castañeda are part of the team at American University’s Immigration Lab, housed in the Center for Latin American & Latino Studies.

Reproduction with full attribution is possible with modifications such as not including the “About the Study” section are permitted for non-for profit purposes by newsmedia and education purposes.

by Claudia Heiss*

This joint effort by El Colegio de México in Mexico City, Universidad de Los Andes in Bogotá, and Universidad Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires, supported by the Ford Foundation, deserves to be celebrated. The report is the result of a series of meetings and scholarly works meant to contribute to the agenda coming from the Summit of the Americas by including the perspective of academia and civil society. Its main message is the need to strengthen multilateralism and Inter-American cooperation. 

The weakening of intergovernmental dialogue, coordination, and action that we witness today goes hand in hand with the weakening of democracies at home. Democratic backsliding and the increase in authoritarianism in the world signal bad times for deliberative and participatory democracies at the national and international levels.  

The report pays attention to the needs not just of intergovernmental politics, but also stresses the role of academia and civil society by incorporating experts from different backgrounds. It proposes an Inter-American strategic agenda: a roadmap for collective international action around three priority areas of inequality, migration, and climate change. I would like to focus on the first. 

According to the World Inequality Report 2022, the richest 10% of the region’s population owns 75% of wealth, whereas the poorest 50% barely owns 2%. Inequality worsened with the pandemic. The share of the wealth captured by Latin American multimillionaires increased by 14% between 2019 and 2021. 

Inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean is rooted in a historical legacy and economic models based on the extraction and export of commodities, and an institutional structure that perpetuates it. This is what Roberto Gargarella (2010) calls “the legal foundations of inequality.” Political struggles between radicals, liberals, and conservatives in the early days of the new republics, he argues, ended up constitutionalizing an exclusionary political structure. 

Unlike poverty, inequality is a disputed topic in public policy. This report makes the case for addressing it as a specific challenge to building cohesive societies capable of dealing with their needs and protecting political pluralism. The study shows that the economic and social gap increased after the COVID-19 pandemic, creating a worrisome social regression that feeds political discontent. “Regionally, the social agenda is a top priority,”—states the report—”Policies agreed at an inter-State and transnational level are needed to reduce entrenched socioeconomic inequalities, eradicate poverty, expand rights for everyone, and provide universal access to basic services.” The discussion of this topic ends with concrete recommendations: 

• Empowering sectors of the population that have been left behind. This includes narrowing the gap between formal and substantive equality and building more democratic and participatory institutions. 
• Promoting fiscal reform which is necessary for building an inclusive welfare state and improving wealth redistribution.  
• Reducing gaps between more dynamic and poorer regions. 
• Establishing a minimum basic income and more universally accessible public assets, including innovative connections between public, private, social, and community associations. 
• Gender equality policies, including caregiving, political representation (electoral gender parity), and measures to eradicate violence against women. 
• Improve multilateral cooperation programs. 

Interdependence: Democracy and Equality 

This work is based on decades of social research analyzing the tension between inequality and democracy. Inequality is inseparable from the current crisis of political representation and the failure of political parties to effectively channel social diversity. In Latin America, economic development built on inequality has been coupled with a constitutional structure that preserves the power of economic minorities (Gargarella 2021). Understanding and addressing inequality requires considering the conditions for both economic and political exclusion. Democracy, which is a promise of political equality, becomes meaningless in the face of wealth inequality and the absence of mechanisms to alleviate the material struggles of citizens.  

Exclusion in the social and political spheres have recently triggered massive protests, as seen in Brazil (2015), Venezuela (2017), Nicaragua (2018), Ecuador and Chile (2019), Colombia, Paraguay, and Cuba (2021), Bolivia (2019, 2020), and Peru (2020 and 2022). In a recent work, Roberto Gargarella (2022) advocates for what he calls a “conversation among equals,” which leads to broadening popular participation and creating more inclusive deliberation to overcome this distrust in politics. In a similar vein, María Victoria Murillo (2021) argues that citizens with unsatisfied demands look for a democracy that listens, pays attention, and seats them at the table where decisions are made. For Murillo, this demand for democratic legitimacy is more important than the limits on public policy inherited from the previous military, which made scholars of transitions to democracy fearful of military regression (see also Garretón 2023). 

While this diagnostic seems correct, I believe the legacies of dictatorship are deep and permeate current politics in ways that need further attention. The increased worldwide tolerance of and even support for authoritarianism should not be studied without reference to Latin America’s recent political history. To make the return to democracy possible, elites often negotiated impunity for state crimes, accepted military-imposed limitations over the political process, and suffered significant constraints on the authority of the incoming governments (Loveman and Davies 1997). After transitions, many democracies were weakened by severe restrictions on political participation and inclusion as well as on public contestation of political decisions. Restrictions on mass media, political opposition, the right to organize, labor unions, and the exercise of civil rights and liberties remained. 

Institutional Barriers to Change 

It is true that deep institutional change took place in most countries (notable exceptions are Panama and Chile). The constitution-making in Latin America after transitions to democracy shows a tendency towards the expansion of social and political rights, but as Gargarella (2013) argues, the concentration of power in the executive remained. In recent years, political crises in Latin America have often been constitutional crises: ones that combine redistributive struggles with disagreement about which the basic political rules should be. 

An important legacy of military dictatorships was the supposedly “apolitical” nature of their institutional arrangements: ones that, while claiming to be above party and ideological disputes, severely restricted the political scope of action of new democracies (Loveman and Davies 1997). This fed into the institutional crisis of highly unequal societies unable to build effective and legitimate mediating capacities. Attempts to overcome these difficulties have included new constitutions guaranteeing social rights, granting new group rights to indigenous peoples, and creating participatory and deliberative mechanisms. Unfortunately, the latter have often increased the capacity for unilateral decision-making by power holders rather than empowering citizens or civil society (Heiss 2022). 

Victoria Murillo (2021) argues that this difficult coexistence between democracy and inequality has been exacerbated by the recent explosion of discontent in the context of economic and health crises, creating unstable political equilibria. Legitimacy is necessary to sustain democracy, but it must be associated with a hope for greater social well-being—a combination of inclusion and responsiveness. 

The Chilean Example 

This September 11 of 2023, was the 50th anniversary of the military coup that ultimately ended the life of Salvador Allende, a democratic leftist that sought to reduce inequality and include the people as a political subject in an unprecedented way. The anniversary finds the country more divided than a decade ago. Chile has a prosperous economy when compared to other countries in the region, but at the same time, the country is among the most unequal. Its economic model of a “subsidiary state” that gives primacy to the private provision of public needs has been protected from change by institutional authoritarian legacies. A dysfunctional political system, described as “uprooted but stable” (Luna and Altman 2011), has resulted in the inability to adequately channel social demands.  

The rejection of institutions and political parties led to a search for “independents” in 2022 and for “experts” in 2023 to try to recompose political legitimacy. However, as Cristina Lafont (2020) has argued, there are no shortcuts to participatory deliberative democracy. Inequality is a fertile ground for left and right populists to capitalize on this discontent. It is sad that on the 50th anniversary of the coup in Chile, we see the appeal of right-wing authoritarianism threatening to come back. 

International cooperation reflects the will of governments, dominated by their local priorities. Thus, we should not expect miracles from a forum like the Summit of the Americas. However, the recommendations for “(Co)building a strategic agenda for the Americas” contained in this report are an important contribution to building an international public discourse that works for increased democratization and against the pernicious trend created by economic and political inequality. 

* Claudia Heiss is Head of Political Science at Universidad de Chile and Research Fellow at American University’s Center for Latin American & Latino Studies.

References 

El Colegio de México (2023). (Co)Building a Strategic Agenda for the Americas. URL: https://americas-tiempos-adversos.colmex.mx/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/co-building-a-strategic-agenda-for-the-americas.pdf (accessed 12 Sep 2023) 

Gargarella, Roberto (2010). The Legal Foundations of Inequality. Cambridge University Press. 

Gargarella, Roberto (2013). Latin American Constitutionalism, 1810–2010: The Engine Room of the Constitution. Oxford University Press. 

Gargarella, Roberto (2022). The Law as a Conversation Among Equals. Cambridge University Press. 

Garretón, Manuel Antonio. (2003). Incomplete Democracy. University of North Carolina Press. 

Heiss, Claudia (2022). “What Can a Constitution Do? Seeking to Deepen Democracy through Constitution-Making in Latin America“. LASA Forum 53:3, 10-15 

Loveman, Brian, and Thomas M. Davies Jr., eds. (1997). The Politics of Antipolitics: The Military in Latin America. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources. 

Lafont, Cristina (2020). Democracy without Shortcuts. A Participatory Conception of Deliberative Democracy. Oxford University Press. 

Luna, Juna Pablo and David Altman (2011). “Uprooted but Stable: Chilean Parties and the Concept of Party System Institutionalization”. Latin American Politics and Society, 53(2), 1-28. 

Murillo, Ma. Victoria (2021). “Protestas, descontento y democracia en América Latina”. Nueva Sociedad 294, 4-13. 

by Austin Kocher*

Migrants around the world who are seeking asylum in North America and Europe are finding pathways to safety increasingly blocked—not only by physical borders but also by digital borders. The most recent example of this technological obstruction in the U.S. context is the introduction of a smartphone app known as CBP One, which the government has been using since January to manage the flow of asylum seekers at or near the U.S.-Mexico border.

Beginning in January 2023, asylum seekers faced new harsher consequences for seeking asylum directly at ports of entry or crossing unlawfully between ports of entry. CBP required migrants to download the CBP One app onto their smartphones, register their information, and schedule an appointment at a port of entry. 

CBP representatives claimed that this would streamline border processing, and for many migrants it did. But for others, the app introduced new digital barriers that reflected old ones: migrants with darker skin reported trouble with the facial liveness test, many migrants did not own newer (and more expensive) smartphones that could run the app well, or access to electricity and the Internet connection. The app disadvantaged migrants who were living at community shelters and camps on the outskirts of border towns in which the Internet was inaccessible.

My recent article on CBP One titled “Glitches in the Digitization of Asylum: How CBP One Turns Migrants’ Smartphones into Mobile Borders,” unpacks the various types of technological hurdles that migrants have faced when trying to use the app, and further attempts to analyze how this app fits within the broader landscape of borders, migration, and technology. But in this blog, I want to expand on those aspects of the digitization of asylum that represent a real concern for the right to ask for asylum going forward.

Specifically, we must think about the larger and longer-term consequences of CBP One for the asylum system writ large. Although CBP One and the current policies surrounding it may be an improvement for many migrants seeking asylum now, the question we should ask ourselves is, how might this app be used in restrictive, dangerous, or capricious ways that could undermine, rather than expand, the United States’ commitment to human rights? 

A recent example of this provides some early clues about the fragility of CBP One as a tool.

In June 2023, Customs and Border Protection suspended access to CBP One appointments at the Laredo port of entry in South Texas, effectively (though indirectly) suspending access to asylum itself in that spot. CBP’s rationale appeared to be tied to concerns about migrant safety in Nuevo Laredo, the city on the Mexican side of the border that is among the more dangerous border cities. Immigrant rights advocates reported at the time that migrants who were coming to Nuevo Laredo to seek asylum were being targeted for extortion and kidnapping. That is those presumed to try to present themselves to the appointments they had secured through CBPOne were being asked for money along the route in order to make it to the U.S. border. As a result of CBP’s decision to halt CBP One appointments, migrants would have to travel many miles on perilous roads to the nearest ports of entry that did accept CBP One appointments, such as those in Eagle Pass and Hidalgo, Texas. 

A closer look at CBP’s website reveals that Laredo was removed as an official CBP One location late in the day on June 8, although CBP’s website did not make any public announcements related to their decision to suspend access. The lack of public announcement or justification for this decision raises some questions and concerns. While the intentions may have been good ones, could canceling asylum appointments at precisely the moment that migrants were facing increased targeting put them at greater risk for violence? Is it lawful or ethical to essentially switch asylum off and on through an app in this manner? 

Immigrant rights advocates appear to share these concerns. Human Rights First published a scathing report that called the Biden administration’s new asylum policy a “travesty,” and pointed out the various additional hurdles that asylum seekers face including challenges to using the CBP One app and the additional risk that migrants face while waiting in Mexico. Amnesty International claims that as part of the new, broader asylum policy, CBP One likely violates migrants’ right to seek asylum. Additionally, a new lawsuit by a number of immigrant rights groups, including the ACLU, allege in their complaint that the challenges migrants face when using CBP One frustrate their attempts to lawfully seek asylum. And yet another lawsuit filed by the immigrant rights group Al Otro Lado at the end of July specifically alleges that CBP One created a “turnback” policy that violates the United States’ asylum obligations.

Indeed, the suspension of CBP One appointments in Laredo in June were an important red flag that reinforce immigrant rights groups’ concerns and presents us with a real-time example of these concerns. Thankfully, CBP reopened access to asylum by the end of June—although, once again, no announcement of justification was provided, leaving the public in the dark about what criteria the agency is using to make these decisions. It is entirely possible that CBP had good reason to suspend the use of CBP One. The app may well present the agency with novel security risks. However, without providing justification for this move or another pathway for migrants to seek asylum, this specific example may foreshadow a new era of on-again/off-again access to asylum that is likely to generate ongoing criticism and possibly even more lawsuits. 

None of this should be construed to suggest that the U.S. has been unwavering in its commitment to migrants’ rights prior to CBP One. Rather, the mandatory use of an asylum smartphone app has the potential to both accelerate and further invisibilize the life-and-death authority to decide who gets access to migrant protection (and when and where).

It is not all bad news for CBP One. At the end of June, CBP expanded the number of daily CBP One appointments to 1,450, up from 1,000 in early May, a significant increase. The agency also improved how the app functions, both by issuing a series of software updates and by reconfiguring the way that migrants schedule appointments. Instead of a first-come, first-serve basis, migrants have a full day to enter their information into the system, then the backend system slots migrants into available appointments overnight. These improvements are not trivial and the responsiveness within the agency stands out in a positive way. However, as I say in my article on CBP One, when the question of who has access to the fundamental human right of seeking asylum is answered with successive rounds of glitches and software updates, we have, to quote Alison Mountz, “lost the moral compass of what is at stake.”

* Austin Kocher is a Research Assistant Professor with the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University and a Research Fellow at the Immigration Lab and the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies at American University.

by Jaime Baeza Freer*

Chilean voters on May 7 handed right-wing parties a massive victory in the elections for the second Constitutional Convention– reaffirming popular rejection of the first draft and showing frustration with the sagging economy and soaring crime rates – but the extreme-right Republicans will have to deliver a balanced Constitution that reflects the country’s democratic values or get the boot in the referendum on it in December.

• The Republicans and several more moderate right-wing parties won three-fifths of the seats in the country’s second Constitutional Convention – in stark contrast with the previous convention’s wide range of socialists, leftists, indigenous leaders, environmentalists, and former social activists. The election outcome was in tune with last year’s referendum, when 62 percent of the electorate rejected the previous convention’s draft Constitution.

The electorate’s sharp U-turn suggests a rejection of the former convention and current administration of President Gabriel Boric more than an embrace of the Republicans, some of whom are conspiracy theorists, far right extremists, and loners. Conservative Luis Silva, the most-voted candidate in the country, has caused outrage by stating his “admiration” for dictator Augusto Pinochet (whom he called “a statesman”), and he has adamantly proclaimed that issues like abortion, gay marriage, and migration are simply off the table and should be expressly banned in the draft Constitutional. Mr. Silva is a numerary of the Opus Dei. Press reports also allege that many candidates were nominated to fill vacated lists with no hope of winning. Some newly elected Republicans are unfit for office; one resigned his seat due to an indictment (still in trial) for domestic violence.

• Most voters who cast their ballot for the Republicans, however, are not extremists. Indeed, party leader José Antonio Kast – who placed second in the 2021 presidential election (with 44 percent of the second-round vote) – is not an extreme right-wing supremacist or anything closely related as some of his opponents have alleged. Indeed, polls show a correlation of voters’ discontent with the Boric administration and support for Kast. According to Decide Chile pollster Cristóbal Huneeus, 16 out of the 35 percent of the votes the Republicans received were “circumstantial” and from persons who usually vote for the left.
• The outcome has created the appearance that voters have swung to the other extreme of the political spectrum, but people are not against liberal values like marriage equality, women’s rights, or LGBTQIA+ rights. According to Bicentennial Polls by the Pontifical Catholic University, less than half of Chileans regard themselves as Catholics.

The main lesson of the election is that voters are annoyed with the patronizing attitudes from some quarters of the liberal elites, who went too far and too quickly to the left in the first draft of the new Constitution while the economy could not recover its pre-2019 levels. Most of the population is still trying to fulfill basic needs like housing, jobs, lowering crime rates, and dealing with an impoverished economy after the pandemic and uncontrolled immigration.

• On the new Constitution, the message of the population is a wish for one that stands on the idea of order and economic freedom as the most precious assets without rejecting individual freedoms – a position that some Republicans are unable to accept, as they want to go all the way to extreme conservative positions. Kast gained enormous credit from this election, and he’s hoping to take power in two years in the general election. As poised as the Republicans appear, however, reality can change anytime. A lack of moderation, including expressions of admiration for Pinochet, can lead to their defeat when the new draft is put to a referendum in December.
• The defeat of the leftist coalition is a major setback for President Boric. His coalition, in power for over a year, had hoped to use the previous draft Constitution to enact several progressive reforms. Now they are stuck in a process that does not belong to them anymore. Even if the new draft is more conservative than middle Chile wants and is rejected December – near the halfway mark of term – Boric will have difficulty regaining the momentum to get his presidency off the launchpad.

* Jaime Baeza Freer is a Research Fellow at the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies at American University and Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Chile.