Headlines from The Washington Post and New York Times report yet another new record number of families pouring across our southern border. Why are they coming?
If they were fleeing violence, they might have applied for asylum in safe countries nearby, Costa Rica or Panama. The Washington Post reports “poverty and lack of opportunity are the major driving force behind the latest migration trend, rather than an uptick in crime.”
According to a UN report, roughly 91 percent of the Guatemalan migrants who left their home country in 2016 did so for economic reasons. The progressive Jesuit organization ERIC-SJ, reports 83 percent of Honduran migrants left in 2017 for economic reasons, with only 11 percent because of violence.
But economic migrants don’t meet U.S. legal criteria for asylum. Immigration court denial rates for some Central Americans have been as high as 80 percent in 2018, and even the less stringent USCIS denial rate is more than 60 percent.
But they keep coming. Why? Three reasons. First, It works. Fewer than 1.4 percent of illegal families from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador who arrived in 2017 have been deported. Second, Central America is receiving $1.5 billion every month in remittances. Third, in the past, most illegal migrants were single males. But in response to the 2014 unaccompanied minor surge, the Obama administration was required per court order to release child migrants held in detention.
The message was clear: Bring a child, apply for asylum, and be released within days. In 2017 49 percent of those who arrived with children failed to appear in court. And drug cartels discovered a lucrative trade in trafficking.The Washington Post described cartels offering discounts to migrants accompanied by children and even helped to finance their trip. What began as an act of compassion actually put children at risk and enriched criminals.
Not surprisingly, asylum claims skyrocketed by 1,675 percent from 5,000 in 2009 to 94,000 in 2016. Family arrivals went from 14,850 in 2013 to 107,212 in 2018 to over 35,000 this January alone. Gang violence? Nope. Most are economic migrants, and their applications will be denied.
And here’s the big question: what do we do with those migrants whose applications are turned down? Will Congress deport these families? And if they don’t, how’s that different from open borders which nearly everyone claims to oppose? A government that passes seven amnesties for illegal immigrants, tolerates millions more and debates another mass legalization has a credibility problem. No wonder people keep coming. Gallop reports that 158 million people want to migrate to America; 42 million from Latin America.
Obviously, any solution must address both the push factors (poverty, corruption) and the pull factors (access to jobs and an abusable asylum system). Remittances to Central America increase consumption for a lucky few, but they don’t solve the underlying structural problems in these Central American countries of political corruption, inequitable land distribution, and economic stagnation. Encouraging the poor to solve their poverty by migrating to America, providing us with abundant cheap labor, reduces pressure on Central American elites to share wealth and tolerate reform. It also lessens pressure on American employers to increase wages and hire Americans.
As Angela Nagle writes in The Left Case Against Open Borders,“Today’s well-intentioned activists have become the useful idiots of big business… open borders radicalism ultimately benefits the elites within the most powerful countries in the world, further disempowers organized labor, robs the developing world of desperately needed professionals, and turns workers against workers.”
The solution? Put the cartels out of business — both Central American trafficking cartels, and our cheap labor cartel. Adopt foreign aid policies for Central America incentivizing anti-corruption measures for police, judiciary, and elections, and anti-corruption provisions with teeth in all trade agreements. No deal on DACA until Congress ends the jobs magnet, preventing the next group of Dreamers from arriving. Go after law-breaking employers by passing mandatory E-verify. Slash the court backlog by hiring more judges. Pass asylum reform.
America has a checkered history with Central America, and we’ve ignored the pervasive political corruption, its connection to crime, and wealth inequality. Addressing the push and pull factors would undo much of the damage from former policies and alleviate the chaos at our border.
Jonette Christian of Holden is a founder of Mainers for Sensible Immigration Policy.