As the Biden administration looks for something—anything—to blame for the recent surge of mostly Central American migrants crossing the U.S. border, it has decided on one of the least believable causes: The United States isn’t handing out enough taxpayer dollars.
As White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on March 22:
That is an issue he [the president] has worked on in the past, for many years, including with Republicans, of course, to try to provide funding to a number of—not directly to the governments, because we want to avoid corruption in some cases, but to organizations that can help address the root causes in these countries.
How much new funding does President Biden want to provide?
Wall Street Journal columnist Mary Anastasia O’Grady says about $4 billion, presumably over several years. But you gotta believe the left will demand a lot more because of its central belief that government, not private industry, is the real job creator.
Of course, it’s not like the U.S. hasn’t been giving Central American countries—particularly Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, referred to as the Northern Triangle—money for decades.
According to the government’s USAID website:
From 2010 to 2015, Guatemala received on average about $150 million a year, though U.S. aid spiked to nearly $300 million in 2016, President Obama’s last year in office. It declined to $157 million by 2019, the last year that is fully accounted for. So while aid declined under the Trump administration, it was still higher than nearly every year from 2015 and earlier.
The numbers for El Salvador and Honduras are smaller, with El Salvador averaging about $85 million a year with a spike to $332 million in 2015. Honduras climbed from $40 million in 2010, peaking at $185 million in 2017, during the Trump administration. It received $71 million in 2019.
But the federal government isn’t their only source of dollars. Millions of Northern Triangle immigrants, both legal and undocumented, send dollars to their home countries, estimated to be about 12 percent of GDP for Guatemala and 20 percent for El Salvador and Honduras.
However, those remittances appear to have declined in 2020 due to the state economic lockdowns, thus creating an even greater economic incentive to journey north once migrants perceived the Biden administration was opening the border door.
Throwing taxpayer money at the Northern Triangle, as we have done for decades, won’t solve the underlying problems of corruption and leftist policies. It will only exacerbate those problems. Even Psaki seems to concede that point.
Migrants travel to America seeking freedom and good-paying jobs, which we all want. But the United States needs a functioning immigration system that accommodates migrant workers who supply the labor U.S. companies need.
The other critical factor is private sector investment that creates good-paying jobs in their home countries, which the Journal’s O’Grady says is beginning to happen—and it can’t happen soon enough.
March 23, 2021