The Crisis on the Border
Quite a bit of time has passed since my last post, and it occurred to me that I have been bottling up my observations for too long. Everyone seems to have an opinion about the problems on our southern border. They have someone to blame and solutions to offer. The blame is often misplaced, the solutions are overly simple.
The roots of the problem lie in the political and economic conditions that have prevailed in a number of Central American countries for years. In spite of revolutions and protests, power and wealth has continued to be concentrated to a degree unimaginable to people in this country.
To make matters worse, we have encouraged unbelievable levels of violence by providing initial training in our prisons for the leaders of gangs like MS13. These gangs forcibly recruit young people and demand tribute from older people. The penalty for non-compliance is usually death. The governments have been unwilling or unable to gain control of the streets. The wealthy hire private security or pay tribute. Everyone else suffers.
The pressure from this set of circumstances has been building for decades. The response from our government has been to provide economic assistance and not very subtle encouragement for democratization efforts. The economic assistance, frankly, did not help the poor much. Much of it was diverted to those who held political power. Law enforcement assistance seemed to result in excellent “crowd control” and little effective control of the gangs. Sooner or later, the pot had to boil over.
It would be disingenuous to argue that all of those massed at the border are the result of the problems listed above. Indeed, there are probably some gang members, narcotics smugglers, and human trafficers among them. However, there is no evidence that the number of these undesirables is large. The largest group appears to be those who are seeking asylum for their personal safety.
It is common these days to respond to a societal problem by asking, “Who is to blame?” In the absence of an easily identifiable individual, we tend to identify a group (or political party).
On one hand, we could say that the crisis is the fault of previous administrations. They obviously failed to provide adequate assistance to Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, etc. Furthermore, they clearly did not anticipate the inevitable result of this failure by expanding the facilities at the border to be able to respond to an influx. They “kicked the can down the road.”
Certainly, the current administration has done little to address the root problem. They have responded by cutting aid to the host countries including that to non-governmental organizations. They have been slow to admit the true nature of the conditions at the border and to identify corrective actions. They have largely contended that the plight of these people is a problem that other countries should deal with. One doesn’t have to be an unreasonable activist to characterize the recent increase in appropriations as “too little, too late.”
But regardless of who is at fault (if anyone), what can we do now? Almost everyone agrees that doing nothing is inappropriate. Perhaps we should address the problem at its roots. If economic assistance doesn’t work, there is always our old friend “regime change.” We have a bad history of attempting this solution in Central America. There is no reason to believe that, short of occupation, this solution would work now. Besides neither political party nor a majority of the American people really likes these military solutions.
Well then, let us just follow the current course and keep the rascals out. We can build a wall. We can force people to request asylum in the “first safe nation.” We can change our immigration laws. Building a wall would be very expensive and, in the eyes of many experts, fail to keep the rascals out. The second approach depends upon finding a willing nation that is truly safe. So far, neither Mexico nor Guatemala appears to meet both criteria. Changing our immigration laws to prohibit so-called chain migration by relatives of legal residents seems unnecessarily cruel, as I am sure that our First Lady and our nephews wife would agree. I am also mildly amused when I imagine where we would be as a nation if the educational, economic, and linguistic requirements proposed by the current administration were adopted. Few of us would be here, including the President.
In addition to practical objections, the “keep the rascals out” approach seems to me to fail on moral grounds. Many have already pointed out that this is equivalent to the approach we took toward refugees from the Holocaust. Those of us who are religious cannot turn our back on the naked, the hungry, and the oppressed. Surely, we must do something.
I only wish that the “something” we can come up with were not so inadequate from the point of view of those massed on the border as well as from out point of view. We can spend more money on food, housing, and medical care for those who await adjudication of their cases. We can provide more judges to speed the adjudication process and provide more legal assistance to those seeking entry. The inadequacy of this approach lies principally in the amount of time it would take under the best of circumstances. Those circumstances would include support from a majority of the American people and a willingness of Congress to appropriate and the President to approve such vast amounts of money.
I am not hopeful. We are approaching an election year when candidates will want to simplify and blame. I cannot imagine anyone running on a platform that will identify the exact amount of money and time involved in my “solution.” I am afraid that would be political suicide.