While a certain DL is promising to SHUT DOWN THE BORDER, other (actual) presidents are working on the problem.
In attempting to curtail immigration, the U.S. looks for allies in Latin America
Last week President Joe Biden announced Executive Actions which, with some exceptions, effectively closes the border to most undocumented asylum seekers.
This is the latest of a series of measures the administration has enacted in recent weeks with the goal of curtailing illegal immigration into the country.
In pursuing that objective, the administration has also been leaning on governments of Mexico and Central America, where the outcome of recent presidential elections could impact the flow of migrants to the US.
US immigration policy is toothless without Mexican cooperation, which has been in effect for decades.
Current President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has been accepting deportees, and last year deployed the Mexican national guard to police migration, leading to serious accusations of human rights abuses.
The recent election of President Claudia Scheinbaum is unlikely to change much, migration has become a major issue in Mexico.
“It now is a priority for Mexico”, says Lila Abad, of the Wilson Center. “And that’s because Mexico is no longer just a transit country. It is now a destination country.”
Like her predecessor, Scheinbaum has said that in order to stop immigration, root causes like poverty must be addressed.
While the recent Mexican elections don’t change much, there have been several significant shifts in Central America. Panama recently electedPresident Jose Raul Mulino, who has vowed to close the Darien Gap, the dangerous jungle region that hundreds of thousands of migrants trek through to get to the U.S. every year. It’s not clear how Mulino would do that.
At the end of the day, immigration analysts say deterrence alone doesn’t work long term to curb irregular migration, certainly not when people are fleeing for their lives.
To that point, perhaps one of the most impacting of migration is happening in Venezuela, a country going through a severe humanitarian crisis. Around 7.7 million Venezuelan migrants and refugees have been displaced as of last year. The exodus shows no signs of slowing down.
Estefani, a Venezuelan mom living in a New York City shelter, recently told NPR she knew the route to the U.S. could be dangerous, even deadly, but she didn’t feel she had a choice. She asked for her name to be withheld because she was sexually assaulted on her journey.
“Raising a child in Venezuela is very difficult. You can feed them lunch, but then there’s no dinner,” she said.
Estefani tried to live in Colombia and Ecuador, and eventually got desperate enough that she ventured to the U.S.
As presidential campaigns intensify in the United States, there is a growing pressure for Latin American countries to help enforce immigration. But analysts say that as long as people like Estefani see no other choice but to pick up and leave their country, any deterrence policies in the U.S.-Mexico border is no more than a short-lived fix.
The jig's up, leftards. All DL can do is make threats, come to power, do nothing and pretend he never promised in the first place.
The only way to stop people fleeing for their lives over a porous land border is to work with the countries in between. There are no other workable options on the table.
Far from emptying their jails, mental hospitals and worse - mental institutions, which for some unknown reason are a level far higher - neighbouring governments are trying to assist. After all, they're getting illegal border crossers too.
Sure, we can all pretend we'll "close the border", but if DL gets erected, he'll face exactly the number of illegal arrivals Sleepy Joe's getting today, but we all know what he'll do with figures like that, now don't we?
He's always been a fan of alternative facts.