Investment in stabilizing neighbor nations serves us better than a wall

Monday, Dec. 28, 2020 | 2 a.m.

Reports of a surge in deaths of migrants at the Arizona-Mexico border this year scream out for the United States to take action on immigration policy and strategy.

This week, Arizona authorities said they had recovered 214 bodies of confirmed or suspected migrants in border areas, close to a 10-year record in fatalities. Even more concerning, the increase came at a time when border crossings are down overall, indicating that a higher-than-average percentage of migrants died in their journey this year.

Two things contributed to this heartbreaking situation. First, the nation’s cruel immigration policies are prompting migrants to take greater risks to cross the border. Desperate to escape violence and poverty in their own nations, yet blocked at crossing points that have been hardened under the Trump administration, migrants are increasingly taking pathways through rugged remote areas that offer little access to water and food.

Then came the second factor: climate change, which made those areas even hotter, drier and less forgiving. This summer was the hottest ever recorded by the National Weather Service office in Phoenix, with an average high temperature of 110 degrees in July and 111 in August. It was bone-dry during those months, too. And as reported by the Associated Press, the weather conditions in Phoenix are roughly the same as those near the border in the Sonoran Desert.

For far too many migrants, the situation was unsurvivable.

“The wall has sent a lot of people to rough terrain in our area. It’s like driving livestock into a canyon where they ultimately die,” Santa Cruz County Sheriff Tony Estrada told the AP. Estrada’s jurisdiction includes Nogales, Ariz.

Again, the increase in deaths this year wasn’t because there was a higher volume of migration. Apprehensions at the border are way down, a key indicator that crossings have also decreased. Immigration experts say that’s primarily due to President Donald Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policies, which include an agreement with Mexico to staunch the flow of migrants from Central America.

Another thing to keep in mind on this issue is that a number of studies suggest the border death toll is actually far higher than what’s reported.

This is disgraceful for the U.S., and it needs to stop.

Our nation must rethink our hemispheric immigration and foreign aid policies from the ground up, with an emphasis on making Mexico, Central America and South America safer and more livable places.

The current wave of immigrants includes a great many who are more like refugees than migrants simply seeking more economic prosperity for their families. The violence and chaos those refugee-like migrants are experiencing are very real, and it serves America’s national interest to help countries south of us to stamp out drug cartels and narcotics warlords.

Having instability and abject poverty in our neighbors to the south isn’t sustainable in the long term, and helping those countries stabilize themselves is essential going forward. Not only would it help the border situation to have a thriving Mexico and Latin America, it would benefit our economy by creating a lucrative new market for our goods.

President-elect Joe Biden, to his credit, has pledged to improve the situation at the border, and has experience on the issue. His plan calls for $4 billion in foreign aid to those areas over four years, and will be modeled on work he did as vice president with officials in those nations. That included developing a bipartisan plan that provided $750 million to Guatemala and El Salvador.

“It had started to work,” Biden said during a visit to the Sun last spring. “We set out specific requirements of what they had to do internally to get any of the help and the money they wanted. For example, we would not give the money directly to the central government for street lighting in a major city, but having that lighting significantly reduced violence in the streets. We would not let it go directly to the mayor.

“We know how to deal with gang violence, and we put together programs where we’d go into those countries and vet their police like we did in Colombia as to whether or not they were on the level before we’d give them the money.”

Biden said he would also assign a State Department representative to handle day-to-day relations with Mexico, and place special emphasis on stabilizing Venezuela.

“This is all about being able to deal in the foreign policy space,” he said. “It’s about gaining the confidence of the people in the region that we know what we’re doing.”

That’s the right approach. Smart, performance-based aid in the hemisphere will reduce the human suffering that is driving much of the immigration wave from the south. Put it this way: There’s a reason that Canadians aren’t sneaking over the border and risking their lives doing it.

A stronger Western Hemisphere also helps blunt economic incursions by China, and by others who will do so over time. The U.S. has been penny-wise on foreign aid for too long. The reality is that it’s cheaper to help strengthen our southern neighbors than to build walls that won’t work and fight wars down the road to keep our enemies away from our doorsteps.

Once inaugurated, Biden should waste no time in taking action. As the death toll shows, an increasing number of lives are at stake due to the current policies.