Josh wrote: ↑Thu Apr 08, 2021 5:12 pm
Ken wrote: ↑Thu Apr 08, 2021 1:34 pm1. The assertion that we or anyone here thinks that "America is so superior." I don't recall anyone making that assertion. That America is wealthier and more stable. Sure. But not superior. Central Americans do some things better than us. On average they value family more. On average they tend to be more religious. On average they do a lot better job teaching their kids the value of work and how to contribute to the household. They do a lot of things better.
Then why is it important to make sure Central Americans can migrate to America? Bootstrap asserts it's a matter of life and death, and that all of us have Christians have a duty to make sure as many Central Americans can migrate into America as want to.
That seems to indicate he somehow thinks it's much better to be in America than Central America. I am questioning this worldview.
3. The assertion that we want "as many people to migrate from Central America as possible. No one here has ever asserted that. To the contrary, most of us who have thought about this problem would rather see investments in the economy and governing structures of Central America (anti-corruption, etc.) to make it less necessary for migrants to leave out of desperation.
So, you think America needs to basically take over Central America's economy and governments to make them "less corrupt"?
Should Central Americas govern themselves or should America basically just take over because American government is "better"?
If Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador were all as stable and prosperous as Costa Rica there would be very little migration from Central America. So it isn't a ridiculously unachievable goal. South Korea was once so dirt poor they couldn't even take care of their own orphans. Now it is an economic power. And that happened in many of our lifetimes.
Yes, but the impetus to do that lies on Central America and the people there themselves. And it won't happen by encouraging as much economic migration to America as possible, and I challenge the idea that Christians somehow have some moral duty to promote endless population churn.
If you want my opinions on immigration I'm happy to share them. As anyone who hangs out here knows, I'm never shy about giving opinions. In short they are:
1. I expect probably 95-99 percent of Central American migrants are economic migrants not political refugees. Do some have legitimate political asylum claims? Probably. But the vast majority don't. We have gun and drug violence in Chicago and all manner of social dysfunction, family violence, drug violence, and such in corners of Appalachia yet there is not a stream of urban Chicagoans and rural folk from western Kentucky streaming to Canada to request asylum. That said, under international law they do have the legal right to present their asylum claims and have them adjudicated. The problem is that under Trump and previous presidents we greatly increased immigration enforcement both within the US and on the border, which greatly increased the caseload of immigration courts by orders of magnitude. But we made little investment in increasing the capacity of those courts. So the long long delays are entirely predictable.
2. Relatedly, the lack of enforcement of labor laws within the economy has made the problem so much worse. The TX and CA manufacturing, construction, and agricultural economies would collapse without undocumented labor. Corporate America and employers prefer it this way because it gives them a cheaper labor pool with less rights.
3. Yes, the US government as well as other international institutions around the world from the Catholic Church and evangelical churches to European and Asian multinationals are all utterly complicit in creating the situation that exists in Central America. From US governments that have propped up military dictatorships or the military within democratic regimes during the cold war and later the drug war. To banks in Miami that are complicit in allowing Central American autocrats and aristocracy to abscond with the the public treasuries of those countries. To foreign multinationals that subvert labor laws and funnel money to the worst political actors. To the Catholic and evangelical churches that have allied themselves with right wing autocrats and have squelched sensible things like family planning programs. When I worked in Guatemala in the late 1980s the population was about 9 million and it was still overpopulated relative to what the agricultural sector could produce. Now the population has more than doubled to over 19 million. Which was the entirely predictable consequence of the Catholic church in a Catholic country opposing every public and private effort to promote family planning. I'll give you one guess as to where those extra 9 million people are going.
So what do I expect to actually happen? Not much. At best the Biden Administration may make some incremental changes to at least stop making things worse in Central America and perhaps improve immigrant processing and streamline immigration courts. But they will get distracted by the next crisis with Russia or China or North Korea or the middle east. And when the next president takes office in 2025 or 2029 I don't expect much will have changed.
In the mean time, we can at least do what we can to treat our neighbors humanely, as is our Christian duty. Both within the US, at the border, and inside these countries in question.
If you asked most educated and intelligent Central Americans who have a grasp of the issues and policies within their countries and ours, most will tell you that the US should first just stop making things worse before we can even talk about how to make things better. And they would be right.
As for what any of this has to do with the "collapse of America" Nothing actually. Immigrants, even undocumented ones actually produce far more wealth in this country than they extract. They are a net economic benefit. And honestly they are a net social benefit too, as most bring a work ethic and vibrancy that is lacking in parts of this country.
