Honduras Archives - Glimpse from the Globe https://www.glimpsefromtheglobe.com/tag/honduras/ Timely and Timeless News Center Tue, 16 Mar 2021 18:21:15 +0000 en hourly 1 https://www.glimpsefromtheglobe.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/cropped-Layered-Logomark-1-32x32.png Honduras Archives - Glimpse from the Globe https://www.glimpsefromtheglobe.com/tag/honduras/ 32 32 Caravans and Catastrophe: Biden’s Plan for Central American Climate Migration https://www.glimpsefromtheglobe.com/regions/americas/caravans-and-catastrophe-bidens-plan-for-central-american-climate-migration/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=caravans-and-catastrophe-bidens-plan-for-central-american-climate-migration Tue, 16 Mar 2021 18:15:35 +0000 https://www.glimpsefromtheglobe.com/?p=7545 Following inauguration ceremonies on January 20, President Joe Biden marked his first week in office by issuing seventeen executive orders. Following through with his campaign promise to address the mounting problems of climate change in the United States and abroad, Biden signed an order for the United States to rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement. Just […]

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Following inauguration ceremonies on January 20, President Joe Biden marked his first week in office by issuing seventeen executive orders. Following through with his campaign promise to address the mounting problems of climate change in the United States and abroad, Biden signed an order for the United States to rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement.

Just a few hours prior to this much anticipated action, Biden pledged to “repair our alliances and engage with the world once again.” Considering almost every other country in the world has pledged onto the Paris Climate Agreement and remained loyal to that pledge, the United States’ reentry into this international accord is a crucial step toward repairing U.S. diplomatic relations and restoring American leadership amid the climate crisis.

Many global leaders joined Biden’s American supporters in applauding his commitment to the Paris Agreement, hoping it signals not only a shift in climate policy but also thawing diplomatic relations with the United States. Surely, this is a step in the right direction, but rejoining the Paris Climate Agreements, despite its hefty symbolism, is not compensation for U.S.’ abysmal approach toward environmental policies over the past four years. Climate change ‒ the very existence of it ‒ has become embroiled in heated partisan debate, and consequently, the United States’ commitment to the Paris Climate Agreement and to the broader fight against climate change drastically fluctuates with each change in administration. While the United States is embroiled in a partisan debate over climate change, Latin America, one of the regions most affected by climate disaster, is already confronting the consequences of U.S.’ inaction.

Three thousand miles south of the Oval Office, thousands of Guatemalans are struggling to keep their head above water. In late 2020, two massive hurricanes, Eta and Iota, struck Central America within a few miles of each other, devastating large swaths of Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala. These cataclysmic storms uprooted an estimated 5.2 million residents, and thousands still remain in shelters while they struggle to piece their lives back together.

Prior to this unprecedentedly volatile storm season, five straight years of drought had plagued Central America, pushing thousands of migrants northward in search of food and work. Coffee-growing economies throughout the region suffered unprecedented crop failures and drought, leading to a declaration of emergency in Honduras in 2019. The limited water supply was often polluted due to exposure to toxic waste, biological agents and oil spills. 

After half a decade of drought and remarkably uneventful storm seasons, hurricanes Eta and Iota pulverized the region. The storms completely ravaged a region that was already uniquely vulnerable to the COVID-19 crisis, exacerbating conditions in nearly every aspect of life from the prospects of economic recovery to their already weak sanitation system. Displaced citizens are even more vulnerable to gender-based violence and the safety consequences of inadequate reproductive healthcare. More than a singularly horrific tropical storm season, the effects of climate change are already manifesting in every facet of life in Latin America.

In the wake of Hurricanes Eta and Iota, the U.S.Agency for International Development (USAID) estimates damages and losses in Nicaragua alone to total $738 million.

Experts compare this devastation to Hurricane Mitch, which struck the same region in 1998 during the Clinton administration. Roughly 7.2 million people were affected by this storm. Former Honduran President Carlos Flores Facussé recognized that his country could not survive without significant international support and anticipated the global repercussions that could follow an unaddressed humanitarian crisis such as Hurricane Mitch.

Facussé warned international leaders, especially former President Bill Clinton, that without foreign aid migrants would go “walking, swimming and running up north.”

Consequently, Clinton allotted roughly $200 million  in today’s dollars toward disaster relief in Honduras. Many countries joined the United States in donating to Honduras to fund reconstruction of infrastructure and restart the economy. Nevertheless, the region never completely restabilized. If residents didn’t flee from their home country due to lack of housing or infrastructure, they later fled from rising crime rates or an economy in shambles, unable to recover from the storm’s destruction.

Echoing the pleas of President Facussé in 1998, current Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei made desperate requests for foreign aid.

“Hunger, poverty and destruction do not have years to wait,” he said.

Climate disaster has already begun to wreak havoc on international migration patterns. Two more groups of migrants, called the Caravan of the Damned, are fleeing north from Honduras to America, escaping the wreckage wrought by the hurricanes, which has been compounded by COVID-19 and a weak economy. Thousands of refugees are headed toward the U.S. border, electing to face the unsure policies of asylum, detention and deportation rather than stay in their home country, which remains torn apart by a slew of catastrophes.

The similarities between these two cases are numerous: millions of Central Americans ravaged by natural disaster, regional leaders requesting immense international support and a Democratic president staring down the barrel of a split congress and polarized political climate (Hurricane Mitch struck a few weeks before Clinton’s impeachment proceedings).

U.S. immigration policy and foreign aid to natural disasters in Latin America remain inextricably linked. We knew it in 1998 and we know it now: if the U.S.  hopes to limit immigration from its southern neighbors, it must be willing to lend a hand in their recovery.

However, insights from the failure of aid to stabilize the region following Mitch and the current international political landscape demand a different approach from American leadership.

We now have a term for the influx of Honduran migrants after Hurricane Mitch in 1998 and the renewed caravans currently departing from the region: climate change refugees.

Climate change disaster will continue to magnify global disparities in wealth and security, permitting wealthier countries to contribute more to impending devastation, while less developed countries pay a higher price.

“Central America is not the producer of this climate change situation,” the president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, reminded international onlookers. “Instead, we are the most affected.”

Biden has prioritized immigration and climate change ‒ rightfully so. But he must make sure to avoid the mistakes of his predecessors, not just Donald Trump, whose relationship with Latin America could be described as apathetic at best. American presidents have long ignored systemic issues plaguing Latin America, rushing  to slap a Band-Aids on a bullet-hole-riddled states when staring down the barrel of an influx of immigrants.

Biden has made many promises regarding both climate change and immigration, and on his first day issued two executive orders regarding the former and five regarding the latter.

The Paris Climate Agreement is about accountability and solidarity and commitment, fostering cooperation between countries around the world to prevent impending tragedy, but climate catastrophe is already wreaking havoc in some regions of the world.

Experts in Latin and South America fear their issues, with the exception of the U.S.-Mexican border, will remain on the backburner of America’s diplomatic agenda. Without a doubt, Biden’s approach to climate change and immigration are far superior to that of his predecessor, but we cannot let Trump’s climate change denial and blatant xenophobia be the yardstick to measure Biden’s policies moving forward.

Ongoing crises in Nicaragua, Guatemala and Honduras demand that President Biden not only sign on to the Paris Climate Agreement and implement stricter regulations within his own borders, but also address the issues that have already landed on the shores of unstable regions.

Climate disasters such as this require a holistic response as well as preventative action. The thousands of refugees will require aid funding to return to their homes, and then they may need assistance restabilizing their economies and long-term investment into infrastructure built to withstand exacerbated storm conditions. Those that have no choice to emigrate from their home country will require extended Temporary Protection Status (TPS), allowing them to take the first step toward a green card and hopefully, eventually, citizenship.

In an increasingly interconnected global environment with rising sea levels and intensifying natural disasters, climate change and migration go hand in hand. The United States makes disproportionate contributions to the climate change predicament and accepts considerably fewer migrants and refugees. Biden is making strides to correct these grave errors, but we cannot afford to continue to treat climate change and immigration as two separate issues.

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The Charter City: An Undemocratic Cure for Poverty https://www.glimpsefromtheglobe.com/topics/economics/the-charter-city-an-undemocratic-cure-for-poverty-2/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-charter-city-an-undemocratic-cure-for-poverty-2 Wed, 25 May 2016 07:39:47 +0000 http://www.glimpsefromtheglobe.com/?p=4592 Since its conception, the charter city has been condemned for violating the rights of the very people it aims to help. The few attempts to establish one have fallen apart due to fears – not wholly unwarranted – of the troublesome implications of building cities from scratch, with no prior infrastructure, social customs or legal […]

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Since its conception, the charter city has been condemned for violating the rights of the very people it aims to help. The few attempts to establish one have fallen apart due to fears – not wholly unwarranted – of the troublesome implications of building cities from scratch, with no prior infrastructure, social customs or legal and political foundation. Many balk at the idea of handing over governance to wealthy foreign nations, or worse, amoral corporations; for critics, it seemingly contradicts our modern, post-colonial ideals of democracy and national sovereignty.

Rooted in emotion and ideology, opposition to charter cities is reactionary and misplaced. People living in the world’s poorest, most politically dysfunctional countries have far less to lose from an unsuccessful implementation of this avant-garde development strategy than they could gain from its success: economic growth that translates into rising living standards and expanded opportunities. And yet, successful charter city projects must take into account potential pitfalls and criticisms to ensure that opponents’ fears aren’t realized.  Economists and government officials who hope to establish charter cities within their borders must brand and implement them in a way that reassures hesitant policymakers and citizens that they mean to promote development and fight poverty, not undermine democracy or invite exploitation.

Renowned economist Paul Romer first developed the idea of a charter city as a way to promote good governance and development to finally eradicate poverty around the world. He christened his vision the “Startup City,” a “city-scale reform zone where a startup city could emerge.” In practice it meant selecting a piece of open land, creating completely new laws and institutions, then allowing citizens to move there at will. Romer’s vision also had foreign, developed governments or even multinational corporations providing funding, expertise and governance. In this way, the charter city hopes to solve entrenched issues with the political institutions of the host country in one sweep, without having to institute painstakingly slow and cumbersome reform that vested interests or corrupt officials will go out of their way to block.

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Romer presents on the future of cities at the XPRIZE Visioneering Conference. 2014. (Steve Jurvetson/Flickr).

A key element of Romer’s proposal is the stipulation that citizens of the country ceding the territory are free to opt in or out of living in the city, which justifies the establishment of new laws without going through traditional democratic channels. No coercion is involved, so “you can propose something new without having to go through a long process of consultation and agreement amongst the people that might be affected by a change.” This crucial detail then allows poor governments to circumvent a huge barrier to reform: in a broken system, all of the parts need fixing at once, making it difficult to decide where to begin.

As it is, many governments find themselves in a tangle of chicken-and-egg dilemmas – situations in which one structural inadequacy must be addressed to solve another, so none are ever resolved. For instance, imagine a country that wants to fix its poor education system, but can’t because its teachers are constantly striking. The government lacks the capacity to collect taxes efficiently, so it cannot adequately pay its teachers, nor its police. Without a legitimate police force, crime is rampant and the tax code can’t be enforced. A poorly educated populace and high crime rate deter foreign investment and economic development; the country remains in poverty. Romer argues that by establishing an independently governed charter city within its borders, this country could resolve all of these issues as once. It’s easier to build new institutions than to fix old broken ones. If all goes well, the new laws and institutions of the charter city will then spill over into the rest of the society, uplifting the entire country.

The spillover effect, one of the main mechanisms through which charter cities are predicted to boost economic growth, is already a well-documented phenomenon in global business. In the charter context the term refers to the way the new city will stimulate economic activity in surrounding areas by demanding labor, food and raw materials and offering an open, business-friendly environment in close geographical proximity.

And yet, this great advantage of the charter city also implies its main criticism: if not the national government, who’s in charge? Activist groups and citizens alike question the legitimacy of a project that arbitrarily sets up new, sometimes unconstitutional laws within a nation’s borders. The issue of sovereignty becomes especially problematic in light of Romer’s suggestion that poor countries invite wealthy, developed nations like the US or EU members to provide the governance structures and law enforcement in charter cities. At this point, it is plain to see why many denounce the charter city as a disingenuous strategy to perpetuate neocolonial north-south exploitation.

Certainly, the concept of Western rule on foreign territory invokes the ghost of colonialism, still a very sensitive and relevant memory in many countries’ national psyche. And yet, for the economic experiment to succeed it is necessary that charter cities be governed by some entity outside of the state to lend credibility to the institutions and ensure reliable enforcement, be it a foreign nation or a private entity. The city will only be successful in attracting the foreign investment necessary to stimulate economic growth if companies have reason to believe that their contracts will be honored and their interests protected; if the country’s own government were able to successfully foster the political and legal climate to create a hospitable investing environment, the charter city would not be necessary to begin with.

One of the few attempts to build a startup city came in 2011 when Octavio Sanchez Barrientos, Chief of Staff to the Honduran President, discovered Romer’s idea and set out to implement it in his country. The project came far enough that the Honduran legislature passed a constitutional amendment allowing for the establishment of “special development regions” that would have an autonomous political and legal framework, though intertwined with the Honduran government. Judges were to be nominated by city authorities but approved by a two-thirds vote in the Honduran legislature, and likewise Honduran lawmakers had to ratify all city laws.

Instead of following Romer’s vision of inviting foreign governments to provide governance, Honduras attempted to establish a “transparency committee” made up of disinterested specialists who could oversee the appointment of governors, supervise their rule and guard against corruption (Romer served as chair; members included economists, investors, think tank owners and Nobel laureates). In the words of Sanchez, “It is easier to create a board of trustees than to give control of part of your territory to a foreign nation.”

But even without explicit foreign governance, after Honduras first voted to approve the initiative an outcry ensued from a broad range of groups, from Honduran citizens to Latin American solidarity and California Bay Area groups to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Opponents denounced the initiative as “anti-democratic land grabbing and repression” instituted “under the guise of poverty reduction,” and “devoid of democratic structures.” It is true that democracy was meant to enter only gradually into Honduran charter cities. The transparency commission planned to oversee governance until it deemed the citizens ready to elect representatives.

Though valid, such criticisms weigh the vague ideal of democracy higher than tangible human welfare. The reasoning behind the initial suspension of democracy seeks to rectify governance issues that plague Honduras and similar countries – for the charter city to be successful, the best laws and practices must be laid down from the outset, and it is easier and safer to let a highly educated and experienced committee of economic experts to discern and implement these than to leave governance to the whims of the public. Though today it is taboo to doubt the unfaltering wisdom of majority rule, history provides ample cases of charismatic leaders who take advantage of popular support to govern corruptly and unjustly. To enable prosperity and development, pure democracy may not be the safest route, at least initially.

Romer sidesteps the issue of democracy by pointing to the complete freedom of each individual to choose whether to move to the charter city. Even if they lack representation in government, citizens implicitly agree to the laws of the city – its charter – when they elect to move there. In this way, Romer distinguishes his vision from colonially ruled cities of the past: “At every stage, there’s an absolute commitment to freedom of choice on the part of the societies and the individuals who are involved.”

But getting the general public to accept such a view is challenging to say the least, and constitutes the greatest roadblock to the Honduran charter cities though they were never, as an Al Jazeera opinion piece put it, “blatantly colonial”: Honduras deliberately chose to eschew Romer’s suggestion of inviting foreign, rich countries to govern.

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The second poorest country in Latin America, Honduras was working on a project to implement the world’s first charter city until massive opposition and citizen discontent undermined the initiative. 2015. (Nan Palmero/Flickr).

Instead of foreign governments or Honduras’ failed board of trustees structure, future projects may look to international organizations like the World Bank or the United Nations to provide personnel for public services like schools, police forces and courts, and to preside over legal matters.

Alternatively, private corporations can take an active role in city governance. Songdo, a new South Korean planned city is also the world’s largest private real estate project. Real estate firm Gale International and domestic conglomerate POSCO Construction and Engineering have majority ownership and control over the city, with the South Korean government only providing public goods like schools and hospitals. To attract investment, the government copied Asian free trade zones like Pusan and Shenzhen in implementing very lax land and labor regulations and generous tax laws. Economically prosperous and sustainably designed, Songdo provides a model for a successful startup city, even if it is not technically independent from the South Korean government.

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View of Songdo Park, located in the center of the city and modeled after New York’s Central Park. 2013 (Sharon Hahn Darlin/Flickr).

Even if the world were to embrace the idea of the charter city, there is of course no guarantee that this initiative would be an unqualified success. Even the charter city’s ideological founder and greatest advocate concedes that the idea has its limitations. “Just as many startup firms will fail, we should assume that many startup cities will fail too,” Romer admitted in an interview. But he continued to put into perspective the possible risks of the endeavor: “This is still worth doing because the cost of many failures is very small compared to the benefits offered by even one success.” After decades of largely fruitless attempts by well-meaning organizations like the World Bank to discover the panacea for poverty, development needs a radical new approach.

Countries and economists should set aside their ideological attachment to Western-style governance and colonial memory to take a chance on the charter city – at best, the world could find itself one step closer to eradicating poverty.

The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of the Glimpse from the Globe staff, editors or governors.

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The Limits of US Border Security https://www.glimpsefromtheglobe.com/topics/human-security/the-limits-of-us-border-security-2/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-limits-of-us-border-security-2 Fri, 08 May 2015 23:16:31 +0000 http://www.glimpsefromtheglobe.com/?p=3567 This article is part one of a two-part feature on US immigration policy. Guest Contributor: Anna-Catherine Brigida Along the Rio Grande Valley, migrants from the south can see the United States just feet away. Some have traveled more than 2,000 miles from Central America to make it this far. Under the cover of night, they […]

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This article is part one of a two-part feature on US immigration policy.

Guest Contributor: Anna-Catherine Brigida

Central American migrants find quarter in southern Mexico.
Central American migrants cling to a train in southern Mexico in July 2008. (Peter Haden/Flickr Creative Commons)

Along the Rio Grande Valley, migrants from the south can see the United States just feet away. Some have traveled more than 2,000 miles from Central America to make it this far. Under the cover of night, they sneak across the border. Some manage to cross successfully. Others are not so lucky and are caught by border patrol.

While migrants from Mexico and Central America have been making this journey for decades, a recent surge of unaccompanied minors, women and children from Central America has brought more attention to illegal border crossings. The New York Times reported in October that the number of unaccompanied minors from Central America who crossed the border last summer doubled from summer 2013. With heightened media attention, the Obama Administration has been forced to take a stance.

The 2016 federal fiscal budget announced a shift in the way the US will respond to illegal immigration. Instead of focusing primarily on border security, the US will allocate $1 billion to address issues of security and economic development in Central America, with the goal of reducing illegal immigration to the US.

This new federal policy is drastically different from the immediate response to the surge in migrants last summer. To curb the flow of migrants, the US began to pressure the Mexican government to arrest and deport these Central American migrants before they could reach the US-Mexico border. While this approach may have stopped many migrants from making it to the US, it didn’t stop them from attempting the arduous journey north. Although the fiscal budget also calls for increased border security, this billion-dollar aid package is a more sophisticated approach to immigration reform. Given the strong push factors driving these migrants undoubtedly, a shift towards addressing the root causes in Northern Triangle countries – El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras – is a step in the right direction.

The fiscal budget defines the primary causes of migration from Central America as the lack of economic opportunities, ineffective public institutions and insufficient public safety. Another cause that The Los Angeles Times reported in July – that a rumor about favorable immigration policy under the Obama Administration was fueled by coyotes, friends and relatives in Central America to drive migrants north – was not listed in the budget as a cause for migration. This information was likely left out because it is not true. A recent report on a detention center in Artesia, New Mexico shows deportations have not stopped. In fact, the sole purpose of the detention center was deporting women and children. Still, even before this detention center opened in June 2014, immigrants from Northern Triangle countries were granted asylum on a statistically small basics. In 2012, 600 Guatemalan asylum seekers won their cases out of the thousands that applied, an underwhelming number and the highest out of the three Northern Triangle countries. And, while economic strife is a factor for those who emigrate, it cannot be the only reason, since other parts of Central America have not seen migration in similar numbers. So, why have so many more young immigrants from Northern Triangle countries made the long and grueling journey north?

In Central America’s Northern Triangle, the biggest push factor is violence, usually related to gangs or drug trafficking. These three countries each rank in the top five internationally for murder rate per capita, with Honduras ranking first, El Salvador fourth and Guatemala fifth. Researcher Elizabeth Kennedy, who recently completed a Fulbright research grant in El Salvador, found that 59% of Salvadoran boys and 61% of Salvadoran girls cited crime, gang threats or violence as a reason for their emigration. In Honduras, drug-related crime has also contributed to heightened violence in the region. It is estimated that 80% of cocaine smuggled from South America to the US passes through Honduras, causing gangs to fight over distribution rights. San Pedro Sula, Honduras, which has been called the most dangerous city in the world, has become a hub for the cocaine trade in recent years. Last year, 2,000 unaccompanied minors came from this city alone. If this migration were only about economic opportunity, we would see immigrants from all over Central America pouring into the US. Yet, from October 1, 2013 to June 30, 2014, less than 200 children from Nicaragua, the poorest country in Central America, were apprehended at the border. More than 16,000 children from Honduras were apprehended during that same time frame.

Given the large number of asylum seekers, securing the nearly 2,000-mile border between the US and Mexico is not a viable solution. Besides the fact that guarding this large amount of area is incredibly difficult, this will not improve the security and economic situation in Northern Triangle countries. In fact, in a July 2014 meeting between President Obama and the presidents of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, they encouraged the US to allocate less money towards border security and more towards development aid. The 2016 fiscal report reflects an adherence to this advice, but not without stipulations. The plan stresses collaboration with the governments of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala for “more democratic, accountable, transparent, and effective public institutions,” which will be key to ensuring the funds are properly allocated for effective programming. With this statement, Obama has sent a subtle message: the US is willing to do their part—as long as the leaders in Central America are willing to do the same.

Anna-Catherine Brigida is a senior journalism student at the University of Southern California from Boston, MA.

The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of the Glimpse from the Globe staff, editors, or governors.

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Same Effects, New Causes: Why Today’s Immigration Problem is Different, and Our Solutions Should Be Too https://www.glimpsefromtheglobe.com/topics/human-security/effects-new-causes-todays-immigration-problem-different-solutions/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=effects-new-causes-todays-immigration-problem-different-solutions Mon, 11 Aug 2014 15:53:46 +0000 http://www.glimpsefromtheglobe.com/?p=2344 Jesus is 2,000 miles from home, and he and his mother are another 34 hours from Mississippi, where he will finally meet his father. Jesus is 14, and he hasn’t seen his father in 13 years. He and his mother are two of the thousands who have made the perilous journey north in what has […]

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The US-Mexico border at Tijuana and California. (Thomas Castelazo/ Wikimedia Commons)
The US-Mexico border at Tijuana and California. (Thomas Castelazo/ Wikimedia Commons)

Jesus is 2,000 miles from home, and he and his mother are another 34 hours from Mississippi, where he will finally meet his father. Jesus is 14, and he hasn’t seen his father in 13 years. He and his mother are two of the thousands who have made the perilous journey north in what has become a wave of refugees crossing America’s southern border.

In the context of recent years, the refugee flow is enormous. A brief written by the Center for American Progress (CAP) pegged the number of children who have arrived illegally in this fiscal year at 57,000 – which is twice the number that crossed the border last year. The total is expected to increase to 90,000 by the end of the 2014 fiscal year (which has three months to go). The same report cited Department of Homeland Security statistics that revealed they have detained five times as many families in this fiscal year than all of last year.

This is in stark contrast to data gathered earlier this year by the Economist in February. “Barack Obama has presided over one of the largest peacetime outflows of people in America’s history,” they wrote. They cited statistics that documented the removal of 369,000 migrants in 2013 by “America’s deportation machine,” which is nine times the amount removed 20 years ago.

These children and their families (mostly single mothers) aren’t being deported, either. Instead, they are being housed in various facilities around the United States as they wait to be seen in court. As space in these facilities run out, families with documentation showing they have relatives in the United States are given a court date and released on parole.

The Obama administration has asked Congress for $3.7 billion to address the crisis in the form of more detention facilities, immigration judges and stricter enforcement, which has been reduced by $1 billion by Senate Democrats on the Appropriations Committee in an attempt to garner support from Republicans. Congress failed to approve the funding in any capacity before adjourning for a five week recess, and Republicans – who had just voted in the House to sue Obama for using too much unilateral action – found themselves asking the President to do just that to solve the immigration crisis. “There are numerous steps the president can and should be taking right now, without the need for congressional action, to secure our borders and ensure these children are returned swiftly and safely to their countries,” House Republicans said in a statement.

The majority of the children are, like Jesus, arriving from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador – the so-called “Northern Triangle” of Central America. Unlike undocumented migrants (using the term “illegal alien” is disgusting and demeaning) from Mexico and Canada, who are quickly deported, a 2008 Human trafficking law signed by President Bush allows the cases of undocumented migrants from countries that aren’t Mexico and Canada to be reviewed by an immigration judge.

As the United States condemns violence upon civilians from Ukraine to Israel, it’s time to show the rest of the world that we can walk the walk. Violence upon civilians has forced thousands of refuges to our southern border, and turning them away will show our international partners that we are merely willing to talk the talk. For a country that spent just over a billion dollars per week on the Afghanistan war, this request and a broader push to resolve the roots of the refugee crisis is a no brainer that boils down to a single observation: the failure of conventional wisdom to explain the wave of migrants coming across the southern border.

The immigration narrative has undergone a subtle change in recent years as undocumented Mexican migrants are deported in record numbers while record numbers of immigrants from south of Mexico are given shelter. 2012 marked the first year that the majority of undocumented children arrived from south of Mexico. On the whole, blistering depictions of migrants as job stealers who come to America and benefit from taxpayer dollars have declined, but calls to deport those migrants have remained constant.

The motivation to cross the southern border has changed, and our policy should change with it. Undocumented migrants aren’t showing up here because of some warped welfare state vision. In other words, they aren’t coming here because our place looks so good, but rather because their place looks so bad.

We also aren’t alone in the crisis. Between 2008 and 2013, the number of migrants from the Northern Triangle who sought asylum in neighboring Central American countries increased by 712%. It is for this reason that calls to deport undocumented migrants and reform the 2008 law to make that deportation easier should get in line behind resolving a crisis that has serious implications for stability in Latin America.

In the ultimate example of short sightedness, Texas Governor Rick Perry has ordered 1,000 National Guardsman to the southern border – but unlike past deployments, the troops will bolster the ranks of the Texas Department of Public Safety to confront what Perry has outlined as a national security crisis. However, since the federal government didn’t call them in, they will not be able to enforce federal immigration law.

The thousands of family units streaming across the border don’t pose a threat to America, which makes Perry’s move look more political and less practical. In 2013, The United Nations released the rankings of their “most dangerous countries in the world” – and Honduras (with the highest per-capita homicide rate on the globe), El Salvador and Guatemala were three of the top five. Rampant organized crime combined with a rotting economy gives youth in the Northern Triangle a stark choice: a life of crime, or a dangerous journey north. (A hint that the talking heads, and certain governors of southern states who think the undocumented migrants are criminals might take: the children who choose a life of crime don’t usually end up fleeing the country.)

There’s a lesson in all of this. Most folks on the home front are confident to see rising numbers of undocumented migrants show up on the news, and attribute it to the same worn out narrative that has been spoon fed by the media for the last decade. But as times change, the world has to be careful not to associate old causes with new effects, and the crisis at the southern border is a prime example.

The previously mentioned Center for American Progress report described the failure of public security institutions in the Northern Triangle to combat rising organized crime. In the Triangle, CAP argues, the “public, private, and civic sectors” have failed to come together to fund government backed security and judicial institutions. Adding credence to such a solution is the case study of Colombia, whose elites agreed to pay more taxes in exchange for robust public security, and brought the country from one of the world’s most dangerous to one of the Latin America’s most advanced economies.

The United States can, through continued engagement and investment via the Inter-American Development Bank and the US Agency for International Development, support these efforts and encourage a long-term solution to the crime crisis that plagues the Northern Triangle. However, CAP cautioned against reliance on assistance alone: “International actors, including the United States, can and should assist in the creation of these institutions, but all the assistance in the world will not succeed absent a whole-society commitment to building and sustaining those institutions.”

While waiting for this “whole-society commitment” to pan out, Congress should take a long hard look at approving the necessary funds to care for the refugees already in the United States. Calls by politicians to keep deporting the refugees without any substantive discussion to stem the tide of refugee flows resemble trying to fill a bucket with holes in it without plugging the holes. We can certainly take a more balanced approach. It isn’t a question of one or the other: the United States has a humanitarian and ethical duty to resolve the refugee crisis at the source and simultaneously ensure the wellbeing of refugees fleeing a blood soaked Central America.

The views expressed by these authors do not necessarily reflect those of the Glimpse from the Globe staff, editors, or governors.

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