How to Know You Have Repressed Memories
Us-Leap Migrants in Southern Mexico Are Counseled on Controversial 'Repressed Memories'
Two United Nations-sponsored groups in southern Mexico are reportedly coaching immigrants arriving there on "repressed memories" that would allow them to gain aviary cards in Mexico for passage northward and so illegal entry into the United states of america.
Both the Jesuit Lodge of Refugees and an outfit called Fray Matias de Cordova, based in the Mexican city of Tapachula near the edge with Guatemala, are advertizing "psychological" aid in shop windows there, according to Todd Bensman, a security beau at the Eye for Immigration Studies, which favors greater restrictions on immigration.
At these sessions, in which thousands of immigrants have reportedly participated, people are helped to recover memories of alleged trauma they suffered in their abode countries, Enrique Vidal of Fray Matias de Cordova told Bensman during a visit to the southern region last month. By claiming they are victims of such abuses, immigrants can qualify for aviary in United mexican states even if, every bit in many cases, their initial application on economic hardship grounds has been rejected.
"With their newfound memories of more eligible claims," Bensman wrote for his organisation's website, "the immigrants get aviary (a term many utilise interchangeably with refugee condition) and Mexican residency cards, which many and so promptly employ to pass through Mexico and make illegal entry over the American border."
The concept of repressed memory and its reliability as evidence has proved controversial in American jurisprudence. In the 1990s, several high profile cases involving day care centers made headlines, with stories of children subjected to bizarre sexual and satanic rites.
In the aftermath, some experts take sought to debunk the validity of "repressed memory" as a source of reliable evidence. While there is widespread understanding that a remembrance of horrific and traumatic experiences may sometimes exist buried, such memories can also be created, according to academics who have delved into the psychology.
Bensman asked Vidal of the border assist group if "the people you are helping [take] already fabricated the mistake of not telling the government their traumatic experiences that qualify" for aviary or refugee status, pregnant on their appeals.
"Aye, that's how it is," Vidal replied.
Co-ordinate to excerpts transcribed from the interview, Vidal told Bensman that his group has achieved "a loftier percentage of success"—more than than 90 percentage—in helping clients overcome previous Mexican denials and obtain the necessary paperwork for immigrants from the "Northern Triangle" countries of Guatemala, Honduras, and Republic of el salvador; Republic of haiti and other countries to continue traveling due north.
The Jesuit Society of Refugees did not respond to questions it requested in writing from RealClearInvestigations on its activities in Tapachula and, in particular, the psychological counseling sessions.
The United nations and the Mexican diplomatic mission likewise did not respond to questions. RCI left a phone message for Vidal in English and Spanish but the telephone call was non returned.
Bensman said he had travelled to southern Mexico in January because Mexican authorities were bottling up thousands of immigrants in Chiapas and Tabasco states at the request of the Biden administration, which wants to slow the torrent of people heading to and crossing the U.S. southern border.
The throngs of immigrants in Tapachula take led to strained relations between Mexicans and the newcomers, and last week the urban center of some 350,000 was in the news when a dozen illegal immigrants sewed their mouths shut in what Reuters called "a bid to convince the state's immigration authorization to grant them passage toward the U.South. edge."
During his trip, Bensman said he was puzzled by the storefront signs offering "psychological" services in Tapachula, some 1,500 miles south of the U.Due south. edge. Immigrants told him the sessions offered a new path to an aviary card which, in one case granted by Mexico, permits a person to travel freely within the country.
"They demand Mexican aviary, residence cards," he said. "That's the card that lets them travel to our border."
During their interview, Vidal told Bensman that his group offered the counselling because many people are unfairly denied asylum cards. He agreed that many people desire to migrate to the United States for economic reasons, but, he said, that is non the just one.
Hence the psychological counseling, which appears to be offered on both an individual or group basis.
"They [have' need of a lot of psychological assistance to clear things in their memories so that they can call back what they went through in their country," Vidal said, mentioning "different acts of violence, sexual abuses, detentions and or tortures."
When Bensman pressed, asking if the counseling couldn't veer off into "coaching" such memories, Vidal pointed to the better-than-90 percentage success charge per unit of getting refugee status in Mexico every bit proof the people were telling the truth.
"If in the majority of the cases the people would be lying we wouldn't exist successful, the government would not corroborate of our cases as refugees," Vidal said. "If we have a high percent of success [it] is considering it [is] the truth about what the people are saying. Considering for a migrant it is much difficult to prevarication because of the furnishings of immigration that implies itself and the government would find out about that."
Vidal added, "The other matter is that we have a very skilful human relationship with the authority in accuse of the procedures of refuge that is unlike of that of the Immigration Police. And this say-so believes in us in our work and our organization."
RCI asked ii prominent experts—Elizabeth Loftus of the University of California at Irvine and Richard McNally of Harvard University—about the topic of "repressed memory." While the two are not familiar with what is happening in Tapachula, the exercise is problematic, they said.
"I simply know about the suggestive activities that occur in therapy that lead people to sexual practice abuse memories," said Loftus, who helped unravel a hoax of "repressed memories" in Wenatchee, Wash., that led to 29,726 counts of sexual crimes in the 1990s. "It'due south possible that similar activities could be going on in the immigration interviews that lead people to construct memories that will serve a useful purpose for them."
This article was written by James Varney for RealClearInvestigations.
Source: https://www.theepochtimes.com/us-bound-migrants-in-southern-mexico-are-counseled-on-controversial-repressed-memories_4304302.html
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