Recovering Childhood Report: An Update...
In December 2023, the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) published its report, Recovering Childhood: Access to Education &...
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Driven from their homes by a myriad of factors, including gang violence, persecution, poverty, corruption, and climate change, many of our neighbors in northern Central America flee for the United States. At our southwest border, an array of inhumane and ever-changing immigration policies corrodes their right to seek asylum.
To mitigate this humanitarian crisis whilst balancing domestic demands to secure the border, the Administration rolled out the ‘Root Causes Strategy’ in the Northern Triangle in 2021. By investing in efforts to improve the political, economic, and security atmospheres in Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala, the Administration hopes to remedy the causes of migration—including poverty, crime, and corruption—that push people to migrate north. It’s a long-game strategy, one designed to prevent people from needing sanctuary in the United States in the first place.
The Strategy addresses multiple causes of displacement, including flight from persecution and survival migration.
Refugees, people with a well-founded fear of persecution on account of their race, nationality, political opinion, membership in a particular social group, or religion, are protected by the 1951 Refugee Convention. Survival migration, which describes people who leave their home countries due to deep economic insecurity, famine, war, and generalized violence, are not as protected by international and domestic law.
The Strategy has five pillars, each aimed at alleviating different ‘push’ factors that drive people to leave the Northern Triangle.
‘Push’ factors are conditions in someone’s home country, such as war or famine, that motivate them to leave. ‘Pull’ factors are conditions in a foreign country, such as work opportunities or low crime rates, that prompt people to immigrate.
Who funds the Root Causes Strategy? The majority of the funding for the Root Causes Strategy comes from private corporate partners. While the Administration is on track to commit a total $4 billion in U.S. aid funding, the private sector has pledged at least $5.2 billion. Companies like Nespresso, Pepsi, and Mastercard are investors on the project.
Utilizing private corporations as key partners on the Strategy has drawn criticism from human rights advocates. They highlight that the energy industry and agribusiness have participated in the displacement of Indigenous, Afro-Latino, and rural farming communities from their ancestral lands, raising concerns that the Root Causes Strategy may drive displacement more than cauterize it. Private corporations are responsible to their shareholders and can drive policy implementation to prioritize the national ‘investment climate’ over the protection of human rights.
Is the Root Causes Strategy successful? Safe and healthy democracies are not born overnight. The Root Causes Strategy is not a policy conducive to instant gratification—any true successes will take years to come to fruition.
While all border apprehensions have dropped dramatically in the past six months, the need for refuge has not. In 2021, just over 700,000 people from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala were intercepted by U.S. Border Patrol. In 2023, that number dropped to just over 500,000. Although policy shifts within the Northern Triangle are likely a contributing factor, the decrease in people crossing the border without inspection is more likely a result of increasingly restrictive U.S. immigration policies, including bars on entry for asylum seekers.
While the Root Causes approach has merit as a mechanism to prevent forced displacement, it is not a substitute for the right to seek asylum. Even in well-functioning, stable democracies, there are failures of state protection, instances in which people find themselves persecuted by their government. We remain obligated to allow them to seek safe harbor.
USCRI, founded in 1911, is a non-governmental, not-for-profit international organization committed to working on behalf of refugees and immigrants and their transition to a dignified life.
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