Biden’s Order on Central America: Offers Aid, Takes People

President Joe Biden speaks as he meets with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Vice Presi
AP Photo/Evan Vucci
Neil Munro

One of President Joe Biden’s three Executive Orders issued Tuesday offers aid to help modernize Central American countries — but also promises to extract many of their productive young people for other uses in the United States.

“We cannot solve the humanitarian crisis at our border without addressing the violence, instability, and lack of opportunity that compel so many people to flee their homes,” said Biden’s order, which continued:

We will work closely with civil society, international organizations, and the governments in the region to:  establish a comprehensive strategy for addressing the causes of migration in the region … [but] At the same time, the United States will enhance lawful pathways for [em]migration to this country.

The memo talks about dealing with “root causes,” responded Jessica Vaughan, policy director at the Center for Immigration Studies. But, she added,

He has the root cause wrong — he’s wrong in assuming the root cause for illegal migration is systemic oppression in Central America. The root cause of this migration is the U.S. government’s policy that encourages people to pay a criminal organization to bring them to the U.S. illegally, on the realistic belief they will be allowed to stay in the United States. That’s the root cause — our own policy.

Our policy entices this illegal migration, which is hollowing out communities in Central America. They are sending their energetic young people. We are breaking up families. We are extending the economic and social dysfunction there… [because we] give their governments an excuse to do nothing to resolve their own civic and economic problems.

The Democratic Party encourages this damaging migration, she continued, because the Democrats expect the migrants will reward them with votes once they can be converted into citizens. “The Democrats want to entice the migrants in the hope they will become voters for them in the future, for generations, because the [party members] reward their constituents.

“Their strategy is to take care of the groups that put them in power,” she said, comparing it to “Tammany Hall colonialism.”

Tammany Hall was the Democrats’ New York-based votes-for-jobs political-patronage operation that operated from 1786 to the 1960s. For example, in the mid-1800s, Tammany Hall recruited the new immigrant Irish by helping them get jobs and welfare in exchange for votes.

The current Central American migrants will also serve as workers and consumers for American CEOs and investors. That means they will often denying jobs, wages, and investments to Americans who are older, slower, alienated, disabled, do not speak Spanish or are burdened with other tasks, such as child-rearing.

Biden’s Executive Order offers little aid to encourage Central Americans to stay home and rebuild their economy and society, Vaughan said.

Biden’s order says:

(b)  The Root Causes Strategy shall identify and prioritize actions to address the underlying factors leading to migration in the region and ensure coherence of United States Government positions.  The Root Causes Strategy shall take into account, as appropriate, the views of bilateral, multilateral, and private sector partners, as well as civil society, and it shall include proposals to:
(i)  coordinate place-based efforts in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras (the “Northern Triangle”) to address the root causes of migration, including by:
(A)  combating corruption, strengthening democratic governance, and advancing the rule of law;
(B)  promoting respect for human rights, labor rights, and a free press;
(C)  countering and preventing violence, extortion, and other crimes perpetrated by criminal gangs, trafficking networks, and other organized criminal organizations;
(D)  combating sexual, gender-based, and domestic violence; and
(E)  addressing economic insecurity and inequality;

The order is titled “Executive Order on Creating a Comprehensive Regional Framework to Address the Causes of Migration, to Manage Migration Throughout North and Central America, and to Provide Safe and Orderly Processing of Asylum Seekers at the United States Border.”

The order does not call for the spending outlined in Biden’s campaign platform, which promised economic development in Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala:

As president, Joe Biden will renew a robust commitment to U.S. leadership in the region and pursue a comprehensive strategy for Central America by: Developing a comprehensive four-year, $4 billion regional strategy to address factors driving migration from Central America; Mobilizing private investment in the region; Improving security and rule of law; Addressing endemic corruption; Prioritizing poverty reduction and economic development.

Biden’s pre-election promise of $4 billion over four years adds up to $30 per year for each of the 24 million people in the four countries.

That sum is trivial compared to the remittance sent home by the estimated 3.5 million Central Americans living in the United States. “Remittances sent to Guatemala represented 11 percent of GDP and 46 percent of household income in 2017 … [El Salvador] Remittances reached $5.47 billion in 2018, amounting to roughly 20 percent of the country’s GDP,” said a 2020 report by the Texas Public Policy Foundation.

“Simply pouring Americans’ tax dollars into these countries in the form of foreign aid will not do anything” unless the locals stay to revive their home countries, said Vaughan.  The program offers no help in building manufacturing centers, farming, or even cultural attractions, she said, adding “a lot of [any aid]  will line the pocket of corrupt politicians, and the U.S.-based NGOs that are involved in the foreign aid racket,” she said. ‘T hat’s about it.”

While offering minimal aid to the countries, Biden is helping the region’s productive workers and consumers enter the U.S. labor and consumer markets. His order says:

The Secretary of State and the Secretary of Homeland Security shall promptly review mechanisms for better identifying and processing individuals from the Northern Triangle who are eligible for refugee resettlement to the United States.  Consideration shall be given to increasing access and processing efficiency.  As part of this review, the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Homeland Security shall also identify and implement all legally available and appropriate forms of relief to complement the protection afforded through the United States Refugee Admissions Program.

The many people who are not selected for a life in America will remain stuck in perpetual humiliation as their luckier former neighbors display their new wealth via the ubiquitous videophones — unless they take the highway north.

With migrant-friendly offers at the Democrat-run border, that illegal migration route will remain a de facto obstacle-course migration system for blue-collar migrants — if they survive chaotic Hunger Games trail of loans, coyotes, cartels, rape, deserts, weather, border laws, barriers, rescuers, transport, judges, and cheap-labor employers.

The danger of this obstacle course was spotlighted on January 30 by the Los Angeles Times.

The newspaper reported the death of several teenagers who entered the Hunger Games obstacle course, including 15-year-old Robelson Isidro, from Guatemala. Under a 2008 law protected by progressives and immigration lawyers, if they reached the border, the teenagers would be defined as ‘Unaccompanied Alien Children” and be allowed to join the growing population of child laborers in U.S. jobs. B

But 19 people, including 13 migrant teens, were reportedly killed by gunmen, and the bodies were left in a burned-out pickup truck:

The community has a long history of sending migrants to the United States, and he had uncles who lived there. They had indoor kitchens. They didn’t have to cook outside under a tarp.

“He was ashamed,” his mother said in a phone interview. She said he told her: “I’m going to fight to make my dreams come true. I have to get my siblings ahead in life. I’m going to get them out of poverty.”

His uncles [in the United States had] wired him money to make the journey north.

“The Biden administration is ignoring, or exacerbating, the ‘pull factors’ over which it has full control,” said Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Reform (FAIR).

“Mr. Biden is saying that he has no intention of ever securing America’s borders or preventing mass incursions of migrants, and that American taxpayers will continue to subsidize failing foreign economies and substandard living conditions through magnetic U.S. immigration policies.”

For the moment, Biden’s deputies are pleading with foreigners to not yet reach for the golden, life-changing opportunities being offered by Biden. “This is not the time,” said Jen Psaki, Bide’s spokeswoman, adding:

We want to put in place an immigration process here that is humane, that is moral, that considers applications for refugees, applications for people to come into this country at the border in a way that treats people as human beings. That’s going to take some time. It’s not going to happen overnight.

 

 

 

 

 

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