Historically, the Central American countries comprising the Northern Triangle–Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador–have combined with Mexico to supply the largest number of illegal migrants attempting to enter the United States.
For that reason, the Biden administration has focused its “root cause” strategy on those countries, dispatching Kamala Harris in a lackluster trip down there last month. Following that trip, widely regarded as a failure, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas seems to have seized the root-cause reins and will fly to Guatemala this week.
But are the “root causes” exclusively in the Northern Triangle?
Maybe not as much as you–and the Biden folks–think.
In May, the last month for which data is available, the Border Patrol “encountered” 180,000 illegal migrants attempting to enter the U.S., the highest number in two decades. Of those, a hefty portion, as expected, were from Mexico: 70,630. The Northern Triangle countries contributed their share–68,797–but other countries made up the remainder, adding up to a significant 40,000 plus.
And what countries are they? Venezuela, for one. A record number of Venezuelans showed up at the border in May: 7,484. They were all admitted permanently as refugees. Natives of other South American countries, such as Columbia, Brazil, and Ecuador, are also coming, in response to economic conditions caused by the Chinese coronavirus. Then there are the “extracontinental” migrants, hailing from Haiti, Congo, Bangladesh, Yemen, Nepal, Cameroon, India, and elsewhere in Africa, Asia, and Oceania. Many of those arrive by air into South American visa-lax countries, then hire smugglers to take them north.
It all adds up to, in the words of Breitbart News’ Edwin Mora, a “potential shift in migratory trends.”
The potential shift [writes Mora] makes a mockery of the White House’s plan to tackle the record surge of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, which largely revolves around addressing the supposed “root” causes of migration in the NT countries.
Migrants aren’t just from the NT anymore. They’re from everywhere, and they’re on their way here.
For more, see Breitbart News.