Another Sh*thole Country?
Trump Administration Adds Laos to their "Third World" Blacklist
Image: The Laotian Times
In addition to the primarily African nations Trump has notoriously referred to as “shithole countries,” under the newly worded disparagement of “Third World* Countries,” Laos has been added to the administration’s immigration blacklist.
Other than Myanmar, Laos is the only country in Southeast Asia to be included in Trump’s travel ban.
Myanmar’s inclusion, one might assume, relates to its international status as a pariah, a cruel military dictatorship with a horrible human rights record.
One would assume wrong. The Trump administration is singling out Myanmar (Burma) on the dubious pretext of migrants from that country to the United States overstaying their visas at a high rate. (Note that virtually all immigrants from Myanmar went to our country as refugees, which relates to aforementioned disregard for human rights generally and even more so for religious and ethnic minorities.)
What about Laos? Why is this small, high-poverty country facing a full travel ban?
The administration initially placed Laos on a “partial” travel ban, but its status was changed to “full travel ban” with the recent expansion of the blacklist to some 40 countries. Visa overstays were also cited as the primary reason for the partial ban, but again—most immigrants from Laos went to the US as refugees and are either permanent legal residents or naturalized citizens.
In addition to the pretext of visa overstays, the administration states that Laos is now facing the highest category of restrictions—the full travel ban—because of the government of Laos saying no too often to accepting people the US wants to deport to their country.
Again, it must be emphasized that much like Myanmar, immigrants with roots in Laos fled that country decades ago as refugees. In many cases, they were not even born in Laos, but in refugee camps outside their families’ country of origin.
Under the Trump regime, they are vulnerable to being deported if they never went through the process of becoming naturalized US citizens (which they’re eligible to do) and at some point in their lives in the US they were convicted of minor, nonviolent crimes—no matter how long ago the crimes took place.
For a case in point, see the case of deported Wisconsin resident Ma Yang, who came to the US as a baby. She was born to a Hmong family in a refugee camp in Thailand, and prior to being deported there earlier this year, had never set foot in Laos, knew none of its language (which greatly differs from the Hmong language), and is an insulin-dependent diabetic and mother of 5 US-born citizens she was forced to leave behind.** I previously wrote about her case here. (The posted poem appears in my recently released poetry collection, I Am Not Spiro Agnew.)
US Immigration authorities, unable to find enough “worst of the worst criminals” to meet the administration’s deportation quotas, is resorting to picking the low hanging fruit, digging through old criminal records to identify anyone they can to deport.
They’re now targeting legal immigrants, searching for pretexts to strip nationalized citizens and legal permanent residents of immunity from deportation.
Laos, which I visited recently, has come a long way in recent years, although they do have a fairly dismal record of abusing human rights. When the US government restricts immigration and travel from that country, not based on human rights violations but as punishment for not accepting US deportees carte blanche, it’s time to look in the mirror.
We also need to look at the cruelty and upheaval of indiscriminate deportations on families of all backgrounds—including citizens and citizenship-eligible immigrants—we long ago welcomed to our shores.
Otherwise, when we take that look in the mirror, we may be seeing the face of what, courtesy of Trump, is truly a shithole country.
*”Third World Countries” as a descriptor for under-developed/developing economies was rejected decades ago as being obsolete, unclear, and demeaning.
**I reached out to the family of Ms. Yang requesting an update on her circumstances and well-being but received no reply.