Joe Biden's lazy, unguarded border policy has incentivized tens of thousands of illegal migrants to pour into the U.S. from our south.
That's billed as a crisis here (and an opportunity for Democrats), but in the background, it's also created some frightful-looking catastrophes for Mexico and Central America, our neighbors to the south.
Hence Mexico's swift, fierce, scramble to halt illegal migration through its territory, unilaterally, with neither the request nor any help from doddering old Joe up north.
According to a report that just ran in the U.K.'s left-wing Guardian, emphasis mine:
Mexico has stepped up immigration raids — hauling hundreds of people off trains in recent weeks — to stem an increase in Central American migrants heading for the United States since Joe Biden took office, according to advocates and data from immigration authorities.
The crackdown by immigration agents backed by the military and police marks an escalation of Mexico's efforts to control migration.
While Mexico has welcomed Biden's pledge to tackle the root causes of migration from Central America, it is concerned that the new administration's efforts to make it easier for people to claim asylum in the United States is encouraging migration and putting a burden on Mexico.
About 1,200 migrants from Central America — including more than 300 children — were swept up in raids between 25 January and 16 February along train routes in six southern and central Mexican states, as well as in the capital, according to Mexico's immigration agency.
Biden leaves the U.S. border unguarded and lays out a whole goodie table of incentives, and it doesn't take long for Mexico to find itself in a crisis. Mexico now is just doing the job Joe Biden won't do.
Crisis is the right word for it. According to this analysis from RealClearPolitics, Mexican cartels and their cruelty are the crisis at the border.
Every transmission of an illegal migrant into the U.S. is another load of cash into the pockets of Mexico's vicious cartels, who corrupt and threaten Mexico's state.
RCP's Josh Jones writes (emphasis mine):
Organized crime involving even the police is an integral part of the worsening immigration crisis. Criminal organizations are involved at every stage of the migration process, from motivating migrant departures for the United States to security along human smuggling routes through Mexico, to the mechanisms for entering the United States undetected.
There are two kinds of criminal groups at work here — transnational gangs and transnational criminal organizations. The brutal violence and unchecked extortion perpetrated by transnational gangs in the Northern Triangle (the nations of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala), targeting both civilian populations and rival gang members, motivate Central Americans to uproot their lives and families in the hope of a better, safer life in America.
Transnational criminal organizations control, regulate, and tax every land port along the southern border. They also control smuggling routes through Mexico and impose a tax, called a piso, on the smugglers and migrants who use them. These groups control the flow of migrant caravans, strategically diverting Border Patrol resources from sectors of the border that are used to smuggle illegal drugs into the United States.
For those who choose to leave the Northern Triangle for a better life in America, the escape from territory controlled by transnational gangs leads them into territory controlled by the transnational criminal organizations.
This, for Mexico, most certainly is a problem. It's not just Mexican citizens protesting the crime and disorder of unvetted migration from elsewhere, their nation turned into an illegal immigration superhighway. It's the specter of cartel cash growing from "taxes" and smuggler fees, and government offices corrupted by that cartel cash, as well as violent cartels shooting it out among one another for control of territory and routes, all of which makes life in Mexico unliveable.
For Mexico's president, Andrés Manuel López-Obrador, all of that decreases his power, popularity, and actual sovereign control in Mexico. AMLO knows well what the cartels are about and their quest to steal the power and democracy of the entire Mexican state. Sure, he's some kind of lefty, but he was right about the signs of electoral fraud in the U.S., and he sure as heck knows a threat to the state under his own administration when he sees one. The cartels, which make money on unchecked border crossings, are establishing themselves in the absence of the Border Patrol, brought on by old Joe. That's a threat to Mexico.
For migrants, the deal is horrible, too. Hollywood filmmaker Namrata Singh Gujral set about to write about the illegal immigration experience from the perspective of those from India who slip in from Mexico with the aid of the human-smuggling rackets and cartels and found the whole thing to be a horror, something no one should ever get involved with, given the criminals involved. According to the Washington Times:
Ms. [illegal alien Maria] Garcia's tale is a horror show of rape and abuse handed out by what she calls "a cartel" masquerading as an immigration service. They held her hostage and extorted more and more money from her before eventually trying to bring her across the border in a locked car trunk.
"America's Forgotten" concludes that, for many, the surprisingly large sum of money they expend on their illegal odyssey isn't worth it.
The grim 1983 indie flick El Norte tells the same kind of story for migrants.
The horrors already are happening. Jones cites a migrant massacre in Mexico not far from the Texas border, where 19 migrants from El Salvador were discovered burned beyond recognition in two trucks, apparently having been shot first, but this can't be entirely known.
In the U.S., 13 illegal migrants were killed in a car crash outside Holtville, Calif. on March 8 in Mexico-bordering Imperial County. Another eight were found dead in a head-on crash in Mexico-bordering Val Verde County in Texas yesterday.
To say this isn't about crime and empowering crimes is to ignore the carnage all around one, in all its many forms.
Biden is indifferent. All that matters to him is amnesty and expectations of wheeling in the Democrat votes. Let the Mexicans solve this, doing the job he won't do.
In Central America, the crisis is equally frightening. I had a look at just the Salvadoran press, three of the top newspapers: El Diario Hoy, a mainstream publication; El Faro, an investigative paper; and La Prensa Gráfica, a tabloid.
There was a curious silence in all of them about the migration crisis affecting them. None of the three had this crisis on its front pages. But there was some coverage — not just about dead migrants, but a broader picture suggesting something negative.
In El Diario de Hoy, a columnist who apparently runs a migration brokerage, urges would-be migrants to jump right in and claim benefits while the Biden window is open.
Via Google translate:
Now comes the good news, and it is that on February 24, President Joe Biden revoked the aforementioned proclamation made by his predecessor, so now there is no impediment for cases of permanent residence by family petition (the processes of greater demand) continue their course.
In fact, the National Visa Center said they will gradually resume all cases that were on hiatus. It is important to clarify that the provision did not affect the initiation or advancement of a family petition process, for example, it mainly affected their final appointments.
It should be noted that Presidential Proclamation 10059 that prohibits the entry of applicants — for the same reasons — of non-immigrant visas type H1B, H2B, L1 (all work) and J-1 (exchange) as well as their derivatives (accompanying family members ) is still in effect. However, the bulk of our people are in family petition cases, and that restriction has already been revoked, so take action on the matter now and reactivate your cases as soon as possible; yes, be patient because the reactivation process will be gradual, but you are already aware.
La Prensa Gráfica had an item on the rise of remittances, 95% of which come from migrants in the United States, noting that the only sizable dip due to COVID was last April.
It also had a reprinted item from BBC Mundo from Guatemala's former commissioner against impunity, warning that Joe Biden's solution for the immigration mess, which was to shovel $4 billion at Central America's governments, was going to do nothing.
Iván Velásquez, the former head of the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (Cicig), analyzes in an interview with BBC Mundo the deterioration of Central American democracies and the idea of the US president to attack the causes of emigration with investments . Honduras is branded a "narco-state" in a trial in the United States. El Salvador has an increasingly powerful leader. Guatemala saw its Congress burn in a recent protest. And in Nicaragua the opposition has been harshly repressed.
Central America has become the epicenter of a phenomenon that runs through Latin America: the deterioration of democracies that seemed to flourish years ago. El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras were the three Latin American countries with the least popular support for democracy in the 2018 Latinobarometer survey, the last available.
In recent times, those three Northern Triangle countries and Nicaragua have accumulated accusations of lack of balance of powers, corruption, human rights violations or attacks on freedom of expression.
"There are many common negative signs in these countries," says Iván Velásquez, the former Colombian magistrate who headed the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (Cicig) Created with the backing of the United Nations in 2007, the Cicig led by Velásquez helped uncover dozens of corruption cases in Guatemala that involved authorities and led to the resignation of President Otto Pérez Molina in 2015, until it was dissolved in 2019.
During an interview with BBC Mundo, Velásquez analyzes the deterioration of the Central American democracies and the idea of the president of the United States, Joe Biden, to allocate US $ 4,000 million to countries in the region to attack the causes of emigration, such as poverty. or violence.
"The US $ 4,000 million is not going to change reality," says Velásquez. And it warns that "economic aid should not be granted if there is no commitment from the countries to respect the rule of law and the strengthening of democracy."
So the migrants will continue to pour over. And threatened Mexico can stop it alone.
In El Faro, a column by Carolina Rovira appeared with the translated title "The Costs of Migration No One Is Talking About," warning of a host of ills for El Salvador and the region if Joe Biden continues to entice migrants to get involved with cartels and smuggling rackets and leave the borders open.
According to data from the latest study that we published in the Foundation for Higher Education (FES), there are 2.7 million Salvadoran migrants. In other words, the equivalent of 35% of Salvadorans decided to build a life far from their native country and with the hope of a better future.
I deeply question the idea that leaving is a free decision for everyone, that is, one that they made among several alternatives, choosing the one they considered best. Certainly you can migrate with the privilege of a real option, like studying or getting your desired job. However, the history of Salvadoran migrants is usually less happy, since more than half emigrate illegally: they go in search of a job that they cannot find in our country, urged to send remittances to their families so that they survive or fleeing from the citizen insecurity. Among these migrants there are undoubtedly stories of resilience that end in successes, but there are also too many stories about lives sacrificed and precariousness, all in exchange for sending a monthly respite to their family or saving their lives.
She writes of broken homes, children growing up without fathers, educational opportunities sacrificed, children without values, opportunity costs, and underdevelopment — all a result of this illegal migrant trade Joe Biden is encouraging.
From another perspective, the constant flight of compatriots in conditions of social vulnerability has functioned as an escape valve from the social pressure that poverty generates and as a source of income for consumerism in an economy with very low productivity. Without a doubt, migration has been useful to the country's politics and economy. Millions of dollars equivalent on average to 15% of GDP have entered the country for decades, offsetting crises such as civil war and economic depressions. But these remittance inflows have had a high cost that we do not always want to account for.
The first cost has to do with the loss of human capital measured in average years of education. El Salvador has been stuck in meager growth for more than 20 years and its social indicators have been deteriorating rapidly for a decade. The need to transform the country's productive matrix to generate resources to satisfy social demands and face the pressures of the global economy is evident. Achieving this requires a vision of the country, political leadership, awareness and citizen solidarity to increase tax collection and reduce evasion. But even with all that going for it, the country would need the human capital prepared to carry out the necessary transformation.
This is what's going on now, and this is what Joe has wrought. He's doing it to satisfy open-borders activists, but obviously, he has no problem dumping all the problems from this onto our southern neighbors. He's empowering cartels. He's letting Mexico fight this surge alone. He's destroying the development and family structure of families in Central America. He's empowering their elites and criminals.
And insanely enough, he calls it all a "more humane" border policy, which is one of his biggest crocks. There is nothing human about leaving Mexico to fight cartels alone, or enticing migrants to put themselves into the claws of criminal organizations, becoming forever their slaves. The picture is frighteningly bad south of the border. Biden is amazingly ignorant and callous, wrong on every foreign policy question, as Bob Gates noted, and especially wrong on this one.
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