Migration Crisis: Opportunity for Redemption

The drama of dozens of miles of Central American children who had flooded the borders of the United States in order to escape violence and poverty in their countries has unleashed a passionate and bitter debate in Washington. However, and unfortunately, the majority of the American leaders insist on disregarding the true lesson of this crisis. Conservatives that oppose President Obama’s request for emergency funds criticize the president for only fighting the symptoms and not the roots of the problem. For them, the root of the problem stems from immigration legislation that is too lax, very weak protection, and punishments that are not severe enough. They fail to understand that there is not a punishment, nor wall, nor an army that can resolve this problem.

I have said many times that poverty does not need a passport to travel. Some of these children receive support from their families. Others make the journey without the support of others. That they are willing to risk their lives on the infamous Bestia train through Mexican lands, that they assume the risk of being violated and abused–like many children who have made the journey – that they agree to give their possessions, their bodies, and their life savings to a coyote without hesitation, all show that there is nothing to deter them. What can the United States do to them that would be worse than what these children are already experiencing? Why is such a large and powerful country even asking this question?

The root of the problem does not lie in the United States immigration laws or in the policies proposed by President Obama, nor in those of any other U.S. president. The root is in the violence and poverty that make the life of these children in their homes insufferable. The root stems from the “lost generation”: the parents and grandparents of these children, who fled Central America during the civil wars that afflicted the isthmus in the 1980s. In those times, two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, made our region a battle field to resolve their disputes. They wanted to convert our students into soldiers. They supplied the weapons; we supplied the dead.

When other Central American leaders and I found ourselves a peaceful way to end the conflict, I thought that our achievement would be rewarded with international help and assistance to accompany us during the transition from war to peace; to help us re-incorporate our youth into the educational system, to retrain our soldiers, and reconstruct devastated family ties. However, the superpowers’ interest extinguished once the bullets stopped.

Today, we all pay the price of this lost opportunity, both the United States and its neighbors to the south. In the Northern Triangle of Central America, delinquents have replaced soldiers, and guerrilla fighters are now gang members. The war in the streets replaced civil war. Mothers do not cry because their sons have left for combat, but rather because their sons are the victims of another type of violence or because they should leave in search of a better life.

This cycle of violence will not stop until there is a commitment from those who have the responsibility to address these problems before they erupt. For Central American countries, this means asking the wealthiest to shoulder their share of the solution. It is unforgivable that countries so poor and so unequal have tax burdens that are among the lowest in the world: We should ask more of those who have more.

The United States also has a role to play. If it continues to use the help it is promising to Central America in order to put out forest fires in its own lands, the hell of poverty and ignorance will continue to consume the hopes on the other side of its borders. The current debate should include a strategy for international cooperation in which Central America is more than a pawn in the war against drugs and narco-traffic, a strategy that looks to reduce poverty and improve education as the only paths to prevent a second lost generation. The programs of conditional transfers, like the program Avancemos, which we implemented during my second term, are one example of a strategy whose impact could exponentially increase with a small contribution from the United States. With only $62 million, it could give a scholarship to each of the 52,000 Central American youths who have been arrested crossing the border so far this year. While President Obama asks Congress for $3.7 billion in emergency funds to address a tiny fraction of the symptoms of this problem, it is irrational to reject much more economical investments that could cure the illness by addressing the causes.

This level of common sense, however, is a challenge for a country where some voices demand the elimination of all international aid given to Central America. Such reasoning is wrong on moral, ethical and pragmatic terms. These children are Central Americans, but they are also Americans, in the geographical sense of the term: Their tragedies belong to all of us, including the nation that is an icon of wealth and opportunity where these children head in the midst of their despair. Above all, we should remember that this has to do with minors. We cannot turn away. We cannot fail them like we failed their parents and their grandparents. If we do, their hell will be increasingly our hell.