What's Happening With the "Caravan"?
by John Lawrence, December 3, 2018
I think the caravan has melted away. Some have gone back home. Some have decided to stay in Tijuana and work. However, thousands have been living in miserable conditions in a sports arena. Mexico is starting to resolve the immediate problem, but is the US at least helping? I don't think so.
My source in Tijuana told me that immigrants from Central and South America were always welcome to come to Tijuana and work. According to him Tijuana is a city of immigrants. Being close to the US, financial opportunities abound. He thought that the "caravan" was a put up job organized by Trump supporters whether of the American or Latin American variety. He said that private buses took them from the southern Mexican border to Tijuana. They didn't walk. The shortest route would have been to Texas, but Tijuana, being close to San Diego, was more of a media hub.
He thought that, since there is no civil war in Guatemala or Honduras, the threat to their safety and security was overdone. Poverty yes. They were trying to escape poverty, but that's no reason to go to the US and apply for asylum. Poverty isn't a reason to grant asylum at least according to present day laws. If it was, half the world would be coming to the US. In short the whole thing was a publicity stunt organized by someone or someones for God knows what purposes. The visuals of small children being tear gassed at the border did not have the hoped for effect of outrage in the same way that the visuals of children being separated from their parents on the US side and put in detention facilities did.
On Sunday, November 25, the US-Mexican border was shut down "for hours" at the San Ysidro Port of Entry. The shopping center on the US side, the Las Americas Premium Outlets, located less than a mile west of the San Ysidro Port of Entry was shut down. Many Mexicans cross the border to shop there. A five-hour shutdown of the U.S.-Mexico border near San Diego last Sunday cost local businesses $5.3 million in lost revenue, but officials say the impact of the border’s closing has reverberated to other industries that depend on the massive flow of people traveling to and from Tijuana. Think of the economic damage if the border was shut down not just for hours but for days as Trump threatened. My contact had a lot of business cancellations. Mexican people who rely on cross border business will be very upset if the border is ever shut down again even if just for hours.
Mexico just has an election and the left leaning government of Lopez Obrador won. He was just inaugurated December 1. The Washington Times reported:
In one of his first acts in office, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has signed an agreement with his counterparts from three Central American countries to establish a development plan to stem the flow of migrants seeking asylum in the U.S.
The Foreign Ministry said Saturday that the plan includes a fund to generate jobs in the region and aims to attack the structural causes of migration from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.
Thousands of migrants, mostly Hondurans, have joined caravans in recent weeks in an effort to speed through Mexico to request refuge at the U.S. border.
Dozens of migrants interviewed by The Associated Press have said they are fleeing poverty and violence in their countries of origin.
So the migrant situation is about to change thanks to the actions taken by Mexico itself, thanks to the first left leaning President in decades. Will the US help with this situation or just sit back and enjoy the results? The solution, of course, is economic development in Central America. This disincentivizes migrants trying to get in to the US, and, hopefully, makes for a better life for them.
Meanwhile, a Democratic controlled US House of Representatives will take effect January 1, just as the new left leaning Mexican government gets started. What this portends for future US-Central American relations can only be described as hopeful. Perhaps some intelligent and principaled people can do something about the immigration situation instead of just exploiting it for political purposes.
