Blaming “poverty, food insecurity, climate shocks and violence” for this year’s exodus from Central America, a new report by the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) left out a very important driver: President Joe Biden.
In fiscal year 2021 (eight months on Biden’s watch), nearly 700,000 foreign nationals arrived from the Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador — the largest share (41 percent) of any region, and a significant increase over previous years.
A coincidence? Hardly.
Biden and every other Democratic presidential contender rolled out the welcome mat to all comers during the 2020 campaign when they pledged to support a path to citizenship for every illegal alien in the U.S.
Upon taking office, Biden suspended Migrant Protection Protocols (also known as Remain in Mexico) and halted deportations, essentially making this country a coast-to-coast sanctuary.
With removal cases in immigration courts at a six-year low (while illegal border crossings were at historic highs), administration officials have floated the bizarre idea of issuing six-figure cash payments to migrant families separated during the Trump era. Upping the ante, congressional Democrats’ budget reconciliation package contains an expanded child tax credit with $10.5 billion for illegal aliens.
The Americans public may be flummoxed by all this – 41 percent of Democrats tell pollsters they don’t know what the president promised on immigration — but people in the Northern Triangle get the message loud and clear.
Regional poverty notwithstanding, Central American migrants (along with other transients passing through) pay large sums of cash every day to cartels and coyotes to get to the U.S., with the reasonable expectation that their chances for success are better than ever under this administration.
MPI researchers and Biden’s team can — and do — go on with their complex, yet blinkered, compendium of “root causes.” This exercise is designed to rationalize mass migration, and set up a framework for ever-escalating numbers to follow.
But, as FAIR has pointed out, the best hope for Central America and other sources of emigration is for citizens of those countries to take action to end the corruption that has impoverished them for generations.
And let’s be honest here: Nothing will change as long as Biden & Co. continue to invite a mass exodus and allow unfettered entry into the United States.
