In an article in the Wall Street Journal Jillian Kay Melchior summarizes the perverse incentives that have been created for people from Mexico and Central America:
“It’s great that the U.S. is welcoming women and children,†Pastor Abraham Barberi tells me when I visit the migrant shelter he runs in Matamoros, Mexico. “But they’re also sending the message to families: ‘Let’s leave everything behind because our children will make it across the border.’ †Andrea Morris Rudnik of Team Brownsville, a volunteer group that helps migrants, agrees: “We’re basically encouraging moms and babies to cross the river, which is not right. And they’re willing to do it.†Parents with infants, toddlers and young children are crossing together, while others make the difficult decision to entrust children over 8 to coyotes and send them to the U.S. alone. “The trauma of telling your child, ‘You have to go now, cross the river. I’ll reach you later’—they let go of their children and hope for the best,†Mr. Barberi says. “I can’t even think of how that would feel, the trauma of that for the parents and the kids.â€
There are some heart-rending anecdotes in the article as well.
IMO it is possible to be merciful without strengthening the Mexican cartels. I’ll repeat and elaborate my proposals:
- Create a guest worker program expressly for Mexican workers with a greatly expanded number of work visas.
- Reinstate the practice of repatriating unaccompanied minors to their home countries.
- Institute a tough program of workplace enforcement.
- Reassert the purpose of asylum is for political asylum not economic asylum.
- Congress should pass a DACA-type program and whatever standards it establishes and requires should be enforced.
- Hire enough judges, etc. so that adjudication of asylum claims could be done quickly.
- We should do what we can to encourage Guatemala, Honduras, and Salvador to liberalize their governments and improve their economies.
The main objective of these measures is to align incentives in the right direction. For everybody.
We have to let these children in to save them from the predation of the adults in their home counties, right?
https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/the-lost-girls/
Given that a significant proportion of migrants come from the Northern Triangle, how would a guest worker program for Mexico alleviate the issue, unless it implied the guest worker program includes those countries as well?
While I’m open to that possibility, I think it’s difficult not to create bad incentives in extending the guest worker program beyond Mexico. However, I do need to add to the post my support for efforts to improve their governments and economies. I’ll do that.
Mexico may need some incentives to control its own southern borders.
People desire to come here for a number of reasons. However, Grey points out an icky reality people don’t like to include in their analyses, glowing descriptions of immigrants, or the claimed virtues of open borders. Trafficking is real and not rare, and advocates in the Biden Administration and elsewhere have blood on their hands while they play their political games.
Dave addresses it in #2. The other 5 are good faith attempts at multiple issues. How likely they are to work is a jump ball.
As always, the politics of these issues is unspeakably grotesque. A pox on the politically motivated advocates. And just turning a blind eye is immoral as well. Very few of those desiring immigration are STEM workers or asylum seekers. This is primarily about money, corruption, relative wages, the welfare state and votes.