Addressing the Central American Migrant Crisis (Aspen Idea Blog)

The Aspen Idea Blog published a new piece that has a take from four fellows on how to address the Central American Migrant Crisis in both the short and long term. I wrote from the US perspective on how the Obama Administration has already addressed aspects of the crisis and how we can do more morving forward. 

4 Perspectives Addressing the Central American Child Migrant Crisis in the US

The causes of the Central American migrant crisis are not simple, nor will be our nation’s response if it is to be successful. 

A lot has contributed to the crisis: expanding regional influence of the Mexican cartels and transnational organized crime, weak regional civil society and legal authority, lack of economic opportunity for people in the region, and holes in the American immigration system, which have been relentlessly exploited by human traffickers and other criminal actors. So far the Obama Administration’s whole of government response has been smart: providing support to the three countries producing the migrants, unprecedented cooperation with Mexico in addressing the crisis, adherence to existing American laws for the processing of the children and families apprehended, and rapid deportation of those not qualified to remain in the US. The flow of child migrants is slowing, regional cooperation is on the rise, and a degree of order is being restored. 

But over the long haul the US will have to develop and then implement a much more robust regional strategy to create regional economic opportunity, strengthen civil society and citizen security, and modernize and improve our own immigration laws. Perhaps drawing from other successful initiatives like the Marshall Plan or Plan Colombia, the US needs a new and far better sustained strategy to improve the lives of our neighbors to the South. This effort will also have to include discussions about our own lax gun laws, which have helped arm criminal elements in the region, and our own insatiable desire for illegal drugs, which is helping create the breeding ground from which the increasingly powerful transnational organized crime syndicates have spawned.

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To read the full feature, and the insights of three other Aspen fellows, visit here. In order to read some of our other work this summer on the Central American Migrant Crisis, see here.