The ‘immigrant problem’ goes back more than just a few decades south of the border

Hobbled with our country’s endemic short attention span and insatiable desire for immediate gratification, don’t expect a resolution to our nation’s southern border crisis anytime soon. 

Certainly, it will take more than Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott dreaming up more “border theater” pranks to stick it to the despised Democrats. (We can almost hear them snickering on the playground.)

The roots of what we’re calling the 40-year-old “immigration policy crisis” as it involves Latin America go back in U.S. history more than 100 years.  Currently, the majority of undocumented Central American migrants into the United States come from Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador and also from Cuba, Haiti and Venezuela. (As well as countries outside the Western Hemisphere.)

A common thread among these countries is their colonization by European powers such as Spain, France, Portugal, and England which sought gold, silver, trade routes and production of sugar and tobacco by enslaved people imported from West Africa. Gaining independence in the early decades of the 1800s their economies were then and continue to be agriculture based. The European colonizers took much but left little behind.

While most Americans are unaware, Central Americans know a great deal about U.S. involvement in their countries beginning with the Mexican-American War in 1848,  the Spanish-American war of 1898 and Panama Canal construction in 1903. During the next 20 years, the U.S. government was involved in quelling Central American disputes, insurrections and revolutions, whether supported by neighboring governments or by American-owned companies.

As part of the so-called “Banana Wars” all around the Caribbean, American troops intervened in Honduras in 1903, 1907, 1911, 1912, 1919, 1924 and 1925. The U.S. Marine Corps occupied Nicaragua between 1913 and 1933. The CIA directed a Guatemalan coup in 1954 and again in 2009. And those are just a few of the American interventions.

Now, fast-forward over decades of one-crop economies, subsistence farming, primitive living conditions, geography susceptible to natural disasters, and unceasing political turmoil, especially between 1825 and the 1950s – in part stemming from being colonies one day, independent the next. The 1980s also saw a democratization movement away from military dictatorships  but not without violence and bloodshed in a decade of significant economic crisis.

Paralleling these developments, U.S. foreign policy in the region was confused, contradictory and reactive by any measure.  In decades since, under both Democrat and Republican administrations, it’s been the theatrical, posturing and fearmongering that has grabbed headlines. Some efforts have led to short-term change, but the problem is not solved or even lessened – there has been no “quick fix.” 

Since 2000, there have been a variety of “push” factors causing people to head north: Warfare among drug cartels with disastrous effects on everyday people, political instability, drought and hurricane devastation, food instability, poverty and a growing inability for Central Americans to maintain sustainable livelihoods.

Compounding the situation are “pull” factors in the U.S. such as available jobs and employers willing to hire undocumented workers particularly in the agriculture, construction and manufacturing sectors.  

Let’s face it: As a nation, we’re working the issue around the edges and losing valuable time.  The challenge of immigration will only grow as people become more desperate for a better life.  Demagoguery, theatrics and pranks are not going to solve the challenge.

We need to step back from our national penchant for quick solutions to life’s complications and dig deeper into history for an accurate context for problem-solving in partnership with the peoples of America Latina. It’s desperation that causes people to tear their families apart and travel thousands of miles into the unknown rather than remain their native language, customs and history.

We should know from our own American history that human beings desperate for a better life will take desperate measures when necessary to win it.

Peter D. Fox has been a close observer of Central American affairs since the early 1980s, traveling as a civilian in Mexico, Honduras and Nicaragua and later as a National Guard officer in the 1990s in support of U.S.-Nicaraguan partnership humanitarian efforts.  He lives in Big Timber.