US: Human Rights and Moral Regression

In the context of the opening of its regular sessions, the International Human Rights Commission (IHRC) yesterday demanded that the United States apply mechanisms to regulate its communications surveillance so as to not infringe on human rights. This comes in the middle of the scandal caused by the divulgation of massive and systematic espionage practiced by Washington against citizens and governments.

Felipe González, commissioner of the hemispheric entity, claimed that it must advance toward a mechanism that, assuming the legitimacy of the security work of the states, does not become invasive of human rights. As such, his counterpart Rodrigo Escobar highlighted that the responsibilities of the United States in matters of security cannot be an absolute power and that our neighboring country must be submitted to some limits, some rules and some procedures.

Significantly, the timing of the IHRC coincided with that of the publication of an editorial in The New York Times that denounces the Barack Obama administration for maintaining a frenetic rate of deporting undocumented immigrants — 400,000 in one year — based on political decisions and not public security; it asks the president to suspend deportations of persons that have not committed any serious crimes and affirms that many of the terrible characteristics of the U.S. immigration system — which the president has described as useless — can be fixed without having to approve immigration reform.

Despite differences of origin and subject, the expressions of the IHRC and The New York Times article can relieve the deplorable situation of human rights in U.S. territory and the constant danger that people in that country face — independently of the immigration situation — of having their civil liberties trampled by the government in Washington.

In fact, the massive espionage of governments, organizations and citizens — for reasons of security, of course — is the most immediate example of the moral regression experienced by the institutional operation of our neighbor country, regression that has translated into a deterioration of individual liberties at a global scale. Of course, such violations do not only happen outside U.S. territory: It must be remembered that, with the pretext of the war on terror tied to the root of the 9/11 attacks, Washington’s government authorized the violation of its own citizens’ liberties and legalized telephone espionage, the interception of emails, the clandestine opening of mai, and the theft of personal documents without there being a real threat to justify such measures. Whatever else can be said of the policy of persecuting undocumented immigrants, The New York Times editorial points out that the policy is the consequence not of a legal consideration, but of political and economic decisions, in view of the fact that the massive deportation of undocumented immigrants allows for control of the manual labor market in the U.S. economy.

Until now the Obama administration has not been able to — or has not wanted to — move its proposals of change in immigration matters to the terrain of actions; rather, he has shown resistance to abandoning the traditional interventionist policies that characterized his predecessor, which at the end of the day are hegemonic and in violation of human rights.

It remains clear, in sum, that Washington lacks the moral fiber necessary to erect itself as model and judge in matters of human rights and that only with difficulty will it be able to attain the full validity of these rights in the world if it persists in exercises of negation, simulation and damage control such as the ones the White House has pursued in recent weeks and months after the broadcasting of the espionage activities leaked by the ex-collaborator of the National Security Agency, Edward Snowden.