The future of South-North migration -- on our current trajectory

The next-country-over answer is facing systematic failure

Great story with lots of photos in Vanity Fair:

Photojournalist Go Nakamura witnessed desperation and determination in the border deserts of California and Arizona during reporting trips in November, December, and April, and captured how the US-Mexico border has become one site of an ongoing global crisis. The UN’s refugee agency estimates that nearly 40 million refugees and asylum seekers were displaced from their home countries as of April, which would break records set since the organization’s founding in 1950. While most of these people are living in refugee camps or on the margins of society in countries that are often struggling themselves, an increasing number are seeking a new life in America.

The story is an old one:

• Forced off the land by circumstances beyond their control — now largely climactic in nature as droughts, heat, flood, and fire overwhelm …

• They seek better land, only to find the same problems spreading elsewhere …

• So then they seek relief in the city, which is already overwhelmed and can offer them nothing better than informal earnings in the informal economy —subject to predation by criminal organizations —

• A scary situation that incentivizes them to try the next country over to see if it’s any better there …

• Only to find that the same circumstances exist there …

• Which leaves only the northward trek — for the entire family.

Two decades ago, the numbers at our SW border were overwhelmingly Mexican (usually just single males looking for work).

A decade or so ago it shifted from Mexicans to Central Americans increasingly fleeing the Dry Corridor that is the Northern Triangle (El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras), where a significant portion of the rural population face food insecurity (8 or so million). The cities to which they can flee feature high levels of crime, gang activity, and political corruption, so if we’re expecting current governments to make this migration pressure go away as climate change worsens EVERYTHING, then we’re dreaming.

Already, remittances from ex-pats living in the US account for a quarter of the national GDP in El Salvador and Honduras and 15 percent in Guatemala. In effect, without that individual access to the US economy, these countries would face economic collapse soon enough.

From Vanity Fair:

The US government’s approach toward border crossings under both parties has been deterrence: trying to prevent people from coming. This strategy has included physical barriers, like fencing or a border wall, in places where it’s easier to cross on foot or by car, leaving the remote desert as the best remaining option. Those who aren’t deterred are simply endangered. According to US statistics, nearly 900 bodies were discovered along the border in fiscal year 2022; when a cause of death could be determined, exposure was the most common factor.

Such is the state of the world today where we’re applying theories of deterrence to fleeing, desperate families.

But here’s the real trick: our asylum system is based on our experience with the Holocaust and the desire to not repeat those mistakes of sending back parties certain to suffer at the hands of their malevolent governments.