The humanitarian crisis in Central American countries like Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and El Salvador is causing a surge in asylum seekers and illegal crossers at our Sothern border from these countries. The main reasons people flee these countries are the violence instigated by drug traffickers, poverty, and Natural disasters. These countries needed our help badly because of back-to-back hurricanes hitting these areas are making people homeless and internally displaced. On top of this, the increasing violence and crimes from the drug gangs make them flee for their lives. As per the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees report below from last year, In Honduras, there are around 250,000 internally displaced people and in El Salvador, 73,000 IDPs. Please see the map from UNHCR below. Quoting the report below "In El Salvador, six out of ten women have suffered sexual violence according to a survey". Just imagine, in addition to being without food, shelter or water, they are being sexually abused too. Who wouldn’t flee? This is what constituted all the caravans you saw which were mostly comprising women and children traveling in small groups towards Mexico and the US. Trump called them criminals. But these are not criminals, these are regular people who lost their houses, hungry, faced with Violence, fleeing for their life.
Who can forget the kids in cages and Who can forget The bodies of Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his 23-month-old daughter Valeria tucked inside his T-Shirt, were found in the Rio Grande river. It’s a photo that is heartbreaking for any parent. Please see the NY Times article on that Incident.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/25/us/father-daughter-border-drowning-picture-mexico.html
Climate change is also one of the factors for the repeated hurricanes and flooding in these regions causing internal displacement. Please see the unhcr article below.
Last Year in April, Vice President Harris announced that the United States is providing $310 million in increased assistance to the Northern Triangle, including $255 million in assistance to meet immediate and urgent humanitarian needs for people in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, refugees, other displaced people, and vulnerable migrants in the region. Later there was another 20 million dollars added to make it 330 million dollars in total.
Please check usaid.gov article below for details.
President Biden also offered another 4 Billion dollars to help development in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. Please check apnews article below for details.
In addition to the migrants from the Central American Countries, Last year People from Haiti also started fleeing to the US because of the lawlessness and Gang wars that erupted in Haiti after the assassination of their President and the massive earthquakes which struck Haiti. Coincidently Biden administration extended temporary protected status for the 150,000 Haitians already living in the US in May of last year. So those people who were fleeing Haiti, though that, unlike the Trump administration, the new US administration welcomes Haitians. They thought that the Biden administration might let them into the US if they seek asylum in this country. So obviously they started fleeing to the US. Similar to the aid to the Central American Countries, Biden administration also allocated 75 million dollars in aid to Haiti last year to address the humanitarian crisis in Haiti in order to stop this refugee flow.
Now you know that this administration spent large sums of money last year to address the migrant crisis in our southern border. But why we are still seeing Caravans being formed and heading towards the US from these countries?. As we all know these countries have the most corrupt governments and there is a good possibility that all our taxpayer money in aid might be going to the corrupt politician’s pockets without reaching who its intended for. Why the cant United States just tell the Heads of states of Honduras, El Salvador that if they don’t put their act together to reform their countries and make them livable for their Citizens, the consequences could be bad for them. Why not threaten a few heads of state to reform their countries so that people there don’t have to flee? It will be quite all right to use some force in this case because we are giving them billions in aid.
80% of Americans think that you cannot have open borders or accept any asylum seekers from the Sothern border. This is mainly because of the Brown menace fears Trump instigated showing the pictures of caravans to raise his poll numbers during his presidency. If there is another caravan before any other election including the midterm election, Trump and Republicans will use that to win those elections. He knows that the open border policy scares the independents away and the pictures of caravans crossing the border will make his comeback easier. So if Democrats want to avoid this from happening, they need to make sure that the aid to those countries is well spent. They should also fix the current flawed immigration system to reduce the time a legal immigrant spends to obtain a permanent residency/citizenship. Believe it or not, it’s currently more than 15 years for many. Minimum 10 years to obtain the Greencard and another 5 years for Citizenship. They can also try to provide a pathway to citizenship for over 10 million existing illegal immigrants, some of them who are in this country for a long time living in Shadows. First Please show some kindness to those people and Dreamers who are already here before overhauling the existing immigration system by opening the borders for everyone. If again Trump comes back in 2024, He will instruct ICE to restart those raids to arrest and deport those poor people who are here for a long time along with the people who are crossing the borders now.
I have heard horrific stories during the Trump Presidency where the illegal immigrants were afraid to come out of their houses even to drop their kids at schools or to go to work to make money. I read that they used WhatsApp platform to message each other to stay out of trouble every time they went out. There were instances where Self-proclaimed Vigilantes were targeting their families and kids because those vultures knew that these poor illegals cannot go to the police and complain. They can get arrested instead. So unreported Human rights violations peaked during the Trump Presidency. During Trump’s presidency, the Dreamers who never saw any other country in their life other than the US were being picked up by ICE and getting Deported. They were flown to crime-infested countries where no one spoke English and these Dreamer kids didn’t know any other language than English. I have no clue how they could have survived.
While mentioning all these we should also understand the main cause the Central American Countries have high crimes It’s due to Drug Trafficking to meet the demands in the United States. Do you know who is the biggest consumer of illicit drugs in the world?. It’s the United States of America. Those countries have a drug trafficking problem because there is a demand for drugs exist in the united states. We are ruining their Social system. what steps are our government are taking to stop the use of drugs in this country so that it won’t destabilize those poor neighboring countries?
You should also know that Illegal Immigration to the US is not just border crossings, It’s only a small percentage. Illegal immigration through our Airports and other ports and subsequent Visa Overstays outpaces the Border crossings. Please see the NPR article and the graph below on Illegal Immigration to The US.
by Hari Ramachandran