Unless you are a doctrinaire liberal or conservative, the unaccompanied child crisis at the Mexican border is a real quandary. On the one hand, you want to sympathize with a humanitarian crisis involving perhaps a hundred-thousand unaccompanied teens and pre-teens showing up each year at the US border seeking a better life. They are coming primarily from nations with high rates of drug trade and gang activity, and thus high rates of violence (primarily Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador).<\/p>\n
On the other hand, perhaps the conservatives do have a point when they attribute the crisis to President Obama’s non-enforcement amnesty policies towards illegal aliens, especially illegal children. These policies were publicly announced in 2012<\/a> (certainly with political motivation \u2013 i.e., to minimize Republican inroads into the Hispanic voting block by figures such as Suzanna Martinez, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, and thus preserve the large Hispanic electoral margins which Democrats increasingly depend upon). Therefore, most Hispanic populations north of Cape Horn have become aware of them. It certainly seems plausible (but not yet fully proven) that many Central Americans believe that if someone can get across the border, they will likely be allowed to stay, especially a child from one of the nations south of Mexico (who are subject to legal judicial process before being sent back, unlike Mexican children, who can be deported immediately<\/a>; and interestingly, the number of unaccompanied Mexican children crossing the border has actually decreased in recent years).<\/p>\n An alleged USDHS report<\/a> indicates that about half of the new wave of children at the border are males 13 to 17, with the balance a mix of teen females (many pregnant) and toddlers of both sexes down to 2 or less. The liberal \/ progressive press keeps emphasizing the terrible, violent conditions<\/a> in the places where this new wave of unaccompanied children are coming from. They point out that one of the three primary originating nations, Honduras, had six times the murder rate<\/a> per 100,000 population than Chicago, which has been noted as a rather violent place of late (and for mostly the same reasons \u2013 unemployment, drug trade and gangs). <\/p>\n So I took a look myself at the UN statistics<\/a> regarding national homicide rates per 100,000 population. The latest data goes thru 2012, just when the \u201cthree U\u201d (underage\/unaccompanied\/undocumented) crossing numbers started to surge upward. (Once again, 2012 coincides with Obama’s underage amnesty announcement). Basically, in two of the three nations driving the recent surge (El Salvador and Guatemala), the homicide rate is relatively bad, but bounces around year to year. However, rates have not trended upward in these nations. For both, the rate in 2012 was about 40 homicide deaths per 100,000 population, not much different from previous years (and actually a small reduction in Guatemala). <\/p>\n The rate in Honduras shot up in the 2009-2012 period, reaching about 90. A report by InsightCrime<\/a> indicates that this rate may have dropped since then, as the government has taken at least some military action against the drug gangs. Honduran government officials are citing a current rate of 60, but that may be a politically motivated number that is somewhat low, according to Insight Crime. <\/p>\n To put this into context: the homicide rate in Newark, NJ, where I work 5 days a week, was 40 in 2013. Which is the same as two of the three big sources of the 3U immigrant tide. And since I work for a criminal justice organization having jurisdiction in Newark, I feel that I can say that the primary drivers are about the same as in Central America: poverty, unemployment, illegal drug trade and street gangs (some of our gangs have ties to Central America, e.g. MS-13<\/a>). So . . . . to be just a bit ironic . . . let me rhetorically ask . . . should children from Newark be separated from their current households and sent to Brownsville, Texas or Nogales, Arizona? Would they really be better there?<\/p>\n A think-tank called the Migration Policy Institute says that the whole situation is complex and is driven by both \u201cpush\u201d and \u201cpull\u201d factors<\/a>. That makes sense to me. Both the liberals and conservatives are half-right. And the best response (not a GOOD response, as there are no good responses; more like the \u201cbest of the bad\u201d) is going to involve both conservative and liberal measures. I agree that children who get across our borders need to be treated humanely, and in many cases be allowed to stay (with adequate documentation). HOWEVER, I also agree that a nation is entitled to control its borders, and that efforts to further tighten up the southern border against illegal entry (without choking off the necessary legitimate trade and travel to and from Mexico \u2013 that’s the hard part of it) are needed. I know that the task is daunting, but . . . American ingenuity is pretty amazing too, once unleashed. <\/p>\n