CANCELLED: Lecture Digs Into Child Immigrant Crisis
UPDATE: As of Jan. 28, this event has been cancelled. Rescheduling details will be announced at a later date.
In 2014, the perennial crisis of child immigrants from Central America came to a head. 63,000 children emigrated from Central America by illegally crossing the Texas border from October 2013 to July 2014, a 90 percent increase over the previous year, according to the Migration Policy Institute. Though the surge in child immigrants has slowed, it has not stopped, and officials looking to stem the tide must balance the need for border security with a deep understanding of the forces which compel children to leave their homelands behind.
On Thursday, Jan. 29, the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University will host the latest in its Inaugural Year Lecture Series with a lecture and discussion entitled Crisis: Children Immigrants from Central America. What Can Be Done?
The event will be in the Metcalf Trustee’s Ballroom, 1 Silber Way, 9th Floor, from 4 – 6:15 p.m. A reception will follow the keynote lecture and panel discussion.
Keynoting the lecture will be Liduvina Magarin, Vice Minister of Foreign Relations for Salvadoreans Living Abroad. Magarin has been in the spotlight as awareness of the plight of children immigrants has spread, helping to open a consulate in McAllen, Texas and slamming the condition of juvenile border detention centers.
“These centers do not meet the appropriate requirements for receiving children. [The children] are prisoners, they sleep on the floor, with respiratory diseases, underfed, with the air conditioning very high,” said Magarin in a 2014 conversation with Salvadorean President Sanchez Ceren.
Magarin is a lawyer by profession and holds a Masters degree in Local Development from the Universidad Centroamericana, as well as several degrees in public administration.
During the administration of President Mauricio Funes she served in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as advisor to the Minister’s Office on Legal and Administrative Affairs, Director General of Human Resources, Executive Director of the Mesoamerica Project and Director General of the Foreign Service.
Magarin will be joined in a panel discussion by Salvadorean Ambassador Francisco Altschul, as well as professors Sarah Sherman-Stokes and James Iffland.
“The roots of the heart-breaking child immigrant crisis are complex and need to be analyzed thoughtfully,” Iffland said. “Intelligent (and compassionate) solutions need to be developed on both the Central American and U.S. sides of the equation.”
The event is free but requires pre-registration. Please email eventsPS@bu.edu to register.