The Patriot Post® · Harris Touts 'Action' Against 'Root Causes'

As the largest caravan of migrants to date journey across Mexico headed for Joe Biden’s wide open border, his border czar, Kamala Harris, once again made an appearance in that role after months of apparently avoiding it. On the second day of the Summit of the Americas, Harris announced the latest advancement in the administration’s plan to address so-called “root causes” of illegal immigration. She noted that several U.S. companies had pledged to “invest” nearly $2 billion in the Northern Triangle nations of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador.

Pointing to the Biden administration’s theory of “root causes” of immigration, Harris stated, “When we provide economic opportunity for people in Central America, we address an important driver of migration.” Harris further touted the administration’s focus on “empowering women” via its “In Her Hands” strategy, declaring, “When you lift up the economic status of women, you lift up the economic status of families, of her community, and of our entire hemisphere.”

While joining these nations in developing international trade agreements has been a well-established practice that benefits both countries involved, what obligation does the U.S. have to “provide economic opportunity” to the people of Central America beyond existing trade agreements?

Furthermore, these nations tend to have much greater problems with corrupt governments, which explains much of the reason their people are in poverty in the first place. How does giving corrupt governments more funding do anything other than help maintain that corruption?

The notion that investing even a few billion dollars into these Central American countries will produce a big enough incentive to eliminate the massive economic appeal of the U.S. is simply not a realistic solution. “The pay differential at the lowest end of the scale in the United States and those countries is about 10 to one,” observed former federal immigration judge Andrew Arthur. “If you’re not going to pay people comparable wages in that country, you will actually increase their GDP, but you’re not going to do much.”

Back to Harris’s touted plan for empowering women, while there’s nothing wrong with seeking to help women better themselves, the irony is that her “solution” actually undercuts the greater economic need in those countries. Men are and need to be the primary breadwinners for any healthy and economically stable society. There’s a reason that the vast majority of Central Americans migrating to the U.S. are young working-age men — they are seeking jobs that provide better wages than they can earn in their own countries. Empowering only women to earn a better living undercuts both the nuclear family as well as greater opportunities for men to stay and gain better employment in their home countries.

It’s as if the Biden administration is intent on breaking up the nuclear families of not just America but of other countries as well.

Meanwhile, regarding the U.S. southern border, the House GOP responded with this message: “President Biden’s open-border agenda incentivizes lawlessness. A country without secure borders is not a country.” Barack Obama’s former U.S. Border Patrol chief concurs. He recently argued, “A true border czar must be a leader who acknowledges that border security is national security, provides CBP with the resources they have been deprived of, takes action to protect American communities from lethal narcotics, and doesn’t allow border security policy decisions to be guided by open borders activists.”

Texas Democrat Representative Henry Cuellar clearly has not been impressed with Harris’s response to rampant illegal immigration. Back in December, he observed, “She was tasked with that job, [but] it doesn’t look like she’s very interested in this, so we are going to move on to other folks that work on this issue.”

What Harris is interested in doing is a bunch of virtue signaling while avoiding anything that would hamper the flow of illegal aliens into the U.S. One more point of clarity for Harris: Over 40% of illegals flowing across the border don’t come from Central America. How will sending billions to the Northern Triangle countries do anything to address their “root causes”?