At The Hill Nolan Rappaport outlines some measures that would be more effective at stemming the tide of migrants from Central America to our border. His first point is one that had not occurred to me—remittances going to Central America are far larger than our foreign aid to Central America:
In 2017, migrants from the Northern Triangle who work in the United States sent billions of dollars home to their families. These remittances totaled more than $5 billion for El Salvador, $4 billion for Honduras, and $8.68 billion for Guatemala. This was 20.1 percent of the Gross Domestic Product in El Salvador, 17.4 percent in Honduras, and 11.5 percent in Guatemala.
What is the aid supposed to do?
In 2016, the United States gave $131.2 million in aid to Guatemala, $98.3 million to Honduras, and $67.9 million to El Salvador, and Congress has appropriated about $2.1 billion for the program since then.
I’m skeptical that our foreign aid to Central America is doing much good for the people there. I think it’s mostly being siphoned off by elites in those countries.
Other measures proposed by Mr. Rappaport include:
- Appeal the Flores Settlement Agreement to the Supreme Court. The Flores agreement is what prohibits the administration from holding migrants in detention longer.
- Process persecution claims outside of the U.S.
- Eliminate the exploitation magnet, i.e. tighter workplace enforcement of labor regulations.
In other words the primary effect of cutting aid may be to put pressure on elites to curb emigration. If it’s tight enough it may be worthwhile. I continue to believe that a bigger, stouter wall will only be of limited effectiveness, mostly serving to change the composition of the migrants rather than to prevent illegal entry.
But there are other, more cost-effective measures that deserve consideration.
The amount of money we send probably isn’t doing much to help anything. I doubt sending it or holding it back will make much difference. What drives immigration from those places is the conditions and safety of those countries. If we hold back our money and tell the crooks that run the country we will only start sending it again if they clean the place up? Doubt that too, first just because I doubt that they know how to do it. Second, there are alternative income sources, like those remittances. My caveat here would be that I could see the crooks closing down the roads so that the big caravan groups could not travel together in order to get their money again. I think that would just mean smaller groups.
To your list I would add taking the wall money and using it to reinforce security measures at our points of entry, including increasing the ability to process people faster. If your neighbor leaves, then 4 weeks later you see them back and find out they made it to the US border, got processed and rejected, that should go a long way towards making people not want to come here.
Steve
Don’t believe the press releases, steve. People say what they need to say to apply for asylum. Most applications by people from Central America are denied—they aren’t asylum-seekers at all. What drives immigration is higher wages.
El Salvador and Honduras lead the world in intentional homicide rates. Guatemala just misses the top 10. It is more than press releases. However, I also said conditions which I meant to broadly include economic conditions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate
Steve
steve, use your own eyes rather than Wikipedia. Look at the pictures of the young people coming from Central America. They don’t look desperate or terrorized. They look like healthy, reasonably well-dressed, well-fed young people. Pretty much what you’d see in the lines at a job fair which is about right.
Let me ask you this. Why are the primary destinations for many of these migrants the places in the U. S. with the highest homicide rates? I think it’s because fear of violence is being exaggerated.
That is not to say that there is no violence. There is. But like here it is largely between and within the gangs.
If it wasn’t the wages and parasitic use of services they could go plenty of places. They could stop in Mexico. But they don’t. And all you have to do is watch some enterprising reporter who goes down to the border and interviews these people. They blurt out its for jobs; we don’t have to speculate.
More importantly, the US has no obligation to take these people at the expense of our own. It’s no different than having no responsibility to go around the world breaking shit in the name of spreading democracy.
That’s my main point. The new migrants are in competition for jobs with young black men and previous cohorts of migrants. Promoting the burning necessity of admitting an unlimited number of new job-seeking migrants is equivalent to saying you don’t give a damn about young black men or the migrants who are already here.
My primary concern is for young black men. Unless we start limiting inmigration of low-skill workers there’s no hope for them.
The overwhelming majority of immigrants go to California, Texas and Arizona. I suspect that is because they are close and there are already a lot fo other immigrants there who speak their language. For the secondary state like Illinois and Florida is suspect they are just joining already established groups.
As to how they look in the pictures, they look a lot like the pictures of people affected by violence in the countries they are leaving. They look like the photos you see from every day life in those countries. UE is about 7% and incomes are high enough that people can afford to eat. So economic conditions are not great but not horrible, and as far as I can tell have not gotten a lot worse recently. However, at least looking at El Salvador, we know that its homicide rate has skyrocketed and women even dye their hair black since they were told gangs only allow their girl friends to have red or blonde hair.
https://www.gettyimages.com/photos/el-salvador-violence?sort=mostpopular&mediatype=photography&phrase=el%20salvador%20violence
“More importantly, the US has no obligation to take these people at the expense of our own. ”
I agree that we have no obligation to take them in. I think most people understand that, but we do have the obligation, as I understand it, by treaty to at least assess them. I think that if we assess them quickly and send them back quickly it will send a message and they will stop coming so often. Drew’s preference, or his party’s but he pretty much supports everything they do, is to treat them brutally so they won’t come, and build walls in places where they dont try to cross. So far, it looks like the Trump approach is just ending up with more people at our border.
Steve
Whether that is Guarneri’s preference or not it is not mine. My preference is to discourage people from seeking employment here by sure and certain workplace enforcement and an information campaign in their home countries. I’m not as confident about walls as he. I think that even if we had a wall across the entire border we wouldn’t have it for long and even if the wall were tough enough to withstand attempts to breach it that would merely raise the ante for bribing border agents to look the other way.
If we reduce the total number trying to gain entry, it’s easier to concentrate our resources at the places where real bad guys are most likely to attempt entry.
So, President Trump was right. These countries are shitholes.
” it’s easier to concentrate our resources at the places where real bad guys are most likely to attempt entry.”
At this point it is pretty much the same places, at legal points of entry.
Steve
Face it, we can’t stop it without using measures we are not willing to use. This is going to become a much, much more dangerous country and law enforcement will be corrupted through threats or bribes as in Central America. Put your money on private police and security forces for those who can afford it. Increasing violence and the gang culture of the inner city heading for rural America.
It’s gonna get a lot worse around here, and may never recover.
That’s just dumb, Steve. But I’ve gotten used to it.