Commentary: The claim that there is an emergency at the U.S. Southern border is just plain false. Apprehensions are at their lowest level in the last 20 years, most illegal drugs enter U.S. through legal points of entry, El Paso has not and is not a crime infested city, more Mexican immigrants have returned home from the U.S. than have migrated here since the end of the great recession and legal and undocumented immigrants living here commit less crime.
Most asylum seekers at U.S. border are families with children fleeing poverty and violence from four Central America countries—Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua. Much of it caused by past U.S. government and corporate policies i.e. propping up tin-horn dictators (Iran-Contra fiasco) and protecting interests of companies like United Fruit and Dole.
Rather than spending billions on building a wall (that will not solve the problem), we should use that money for a Marshall-like plan to create good governance and economic opportunity--because most of the population now has little hope for the future. It is time we stop supporting land-holding oligarchs who have created this mess. They need real land reform and economic policies that benefit everyone.
People don’t want to travel 2000 miles through hazardous terrain to arrive at a new country unless they are extremely desperate. Families want to stay where they speak the same language and have similar cultural and religious beliefs.
Let’s step back and look at this situation realistically and not from not from the viewpoint of racist and fear mongering rhetoric.
We’re better than that.