Skip to footer

Why Trump can’t ignore Central America

As Europe has discovered with Africa, the US is learning again with its migrant crisis that poor and troubled neighbors cannot be shut off simply by more border security. Being secure requires being neighborly.

|
REUTERS/FILE
Children in Caluco, El Salvador, queue for food at a shelter for people displaced by gang violence.
  • By the Monitor's Editorial Board

When President Trump came into office, a full-scale border wall seemed like such a simple solution to his supporters who wanted to end the flow of migrants from the south. Lately, however, the administration has been forced to address the root causes of the crisis, starting with extreme poverty and turmoil in Central America.

The top concerns for the administration are Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, where an estimated 150,000 people have fled to the United States since the start of 2018. If the US doesn’t resolve issues in those countries, said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last week, “we’re going to have challenges along our southern border for years and years to come.”

In addition, the administration has tried to influence events in Nicaragua, which has seen antigovernment protests for three months. With more than 200 people killed, the US placed sanctions on three senior Nicaraguan officials on Thursday. The US “will not stand by idly in the face of the abuses taking place in Nicaragua,” an administration official said.

The Trump administration also promised $10 million in aid last month to assist countries such as Colombia in absorbing tens of thousands of people fleeing hunger and suppression in Venezuela.

One new worry for the US is a promise by Mexico’s incoming president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, to end a US-supported program that curbs the flow of Central Americans over the southern border of Mexico. He has said Mexico should not do the “dirty work” for the US and instead will focus on the welfare of “our immigrants” in the US.

Such developments led Vice President Mike Pence to travel to Central America in June and make this plea directly to the people in the region:

“Build your lives in your homes, and know that the people of the United States of America will keep working every day for a brighter future our people and people all across this new world. The truth is, we are bound together as friends in this hemisphere of freedom and a hemisphere of faith.”

The heart of the US debate over Central America is the level of foreign aid to the region. Funding has fallen in the past two fiscal years, from $750 million in 2016 to $615 million in 2018, while Congress seems poised to decrease it even further to less than $600 million. Many lawmakers want the administration to ensure that US money is better spent in Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador – the so-called Northern Triangle of Central America.

This decline in US support for the region is in contrast to moves by the European Union to increase aid for African countries that are the main source of migrants flowing into Europe. The problems in both Central America and much of Africa can seem immense. But as both the EU and US have discovered, the problems cannot be ignored. In fact, the costs of aiding such countries could be less than the cost of beefing up border security.

Open hearts toward the southern neighbors of the US might do better than higher and longer walls along the US border.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Why Trump can’t ignore Central America
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/the-monitors-view/2018/0706/Why-Trump-can-t-ignore-Central-America
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe