The Quote Below—More Misinformation from the Media
“Blood on the Wall is not the most compelling film about Central American immigration you’ll see, but it is thoughtfully designed to inform American skeptics and equivocators. . . .
“The CIA funded and the Reagan government openly supported the Contras, a counterrevolutionary group formed to take out the communist Sandinistas in Nicaragua. This anti-communist activity reverberates into present-day Nicaragua, where economic degradation and community destruction has made drug trafficking one of the few realistic paths out of poverty for many while leading to turf wars that result in constant violence for locals. . . .
“Hondurans, Guatemalans, and Nicaraguans who travel north to the U.S. are also met by corruption in their interim country where neoliberalism has won the day, and they are especially vulnerable to gang violence (hence the caravan—there’s increased safety in numbers). Just like the U.S., in Mexico, wealth is concentrated among the ultra-rich and oftentimes, government officials are getting a cut of the looted income. . . .
“American presidents have been crafty in making sure that the consequences of their political wargames don’t disrupt the lives of its citizens; but in order to preserve this illusion, they have made sure to demonize the very people’s lives they’ve endangered—detaining asylum-seekers, separating families, and making the path to citizenship long, convoluted, and unlikely. The migrants [in the film] . . . never expressed concern about ICE detention or family separation because, according to the filmmakers, they had not yet understood the degree of the threat; America was still a refuge to them.” – Exposing Trump’s Ugly Fear Mongering over the Migrant Caravan, Cassie Da Costa, The Daily Beast, 10/30/20 [Link]
Fact Check of the Quote Above: This article refers to a film which gives a sympathetic slant to the migration of Central Americans to the U.S. Its author shares this view, one which she presents with emotion more than thoughtful analysis.
She cites Nicaragua as example of a country sending migrants and strongly suggests that we owe entry to them because our assistance to anti-Communist guerrillas (the Contras) ruined the country and left migration as the only option for many Nicaraguans. This analysis fails on a number of grounds.
One can make a case that the Contra resistance kept Nicaragua from becoming completely Communist, and thereby suffering the economic ruin that Communism always brings. A perfect example is Venezuela, once one of the richest countries in South America, and now an economic basket case. U.S. Aid to the Contras is not something that should not indebt us to migrants.
Furthermore, the Contra war ended more than thirty years ago, a lot of time for a country to recover. The U.S. bombed both Germany and Japan to rubble during World War II, but both rebounded as economic powerhouses within twenty years. Nicaragua’s continuing economic problems are probably due to factors other than a long-ago war.
Still another point to consider is that Nicaragua is not among the top countries in Central America sending migrants to the U.S. Almost 90 percent come from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. The latter two did not have conflicts like Nicaragua’s with significant U.S. involvement.
This is not to deny that Central American countries are poor, but their poverty predates American power and influence in this area. Despite the claim that violence is the main reason migrants are fleeing, the likely explanation is economic betterment, as a study in Honduras revealed. There is no clear correlation between levels of violence in Central America and migration.
Economic need is not legal justification for asylum, which many of the migrants and their enablers are trying to claim. Our country simply doesn’t have the resources to uplift every poor person on planet earth. We have to be selective.
The writer of this article doesn’t seem to like America much, and seems to think that mass migration is the comeuppance that we deserve. Such an attitude hardly speaks of compassion.