American companies this month pledged to invest nearly $1 billion to expand manufacturing operations and other investments in Central America as a way of boosting economies, creating an estimated 1 million jobs and reducing the incentive for people to migrate northward. The pledges, on top of previous ones worked out by the Biden administration, now exceed $4 billion and are exactly the kind of action needed to address the immigration problem at its source.
Such investments are unlikely to stem the erroneous heckling by Republicans that President Joe Biden’s inattention to the border is why the nation faces an opioid epidemic and a surge in illegal crossings, but addressing the causes of mass migration within the home countries is the wisest long-term strategy. Republicans demand that Biden seal up the U.S. border, use force if necessary and circumvent existing asylum laws (passed by Congress) in order to stop migrants from coming.
Those get-tough tactics might serve as a temporary deterrent, but history has proven that such efforts collapse over the long term. Even then-President Donald Trump’s harsh tactics, including mass detentions and forcible separation of migrant children from their parents, did nothing to stop migrant caravans. And the GOP strategy would have minimal effects on the smuggling of fentanyl and other opioids that are coming into the country hidden in cargo trucks and shipping containers.
Nor would such tactics do anything to reduce the dire conditions in the migrants’ home countries that are causing them to flee in desperation. Their willingness to trek through some of the world’s most inhospitable jungle terrain and walk thousands of miles — often with children on their backs — to reach the U.S. border means something is horrifically askew in their own countries to motivate such desperate measures. That something consists of rampant gang violence, kidnappings, police corruption, a lack of jobs and employers who pay sub-survival wages.
There was a time long ago when Asian countries like Vietnam were basket cases of desperation and mass migration. Today, communist-rule Vietnam is an important U.S. strategic ally against Chinese expansionism. An employment boom there is the result of heavy investment by U.S. manufacturers.
So corporate investment can and does make a difference in turning countries around and stemming the migratory tide. But it’s not the sole solution. Corporations must make clear to host governments that they will not tolerate shakedowns from corrupt officials, nor will they tolerate harassment of employees or worksites by criminal gangs.
Corporations also don’t make investments just to be nice. Their bottom-line decisions will always be based on a cold analysis of profitability and stability. The bottom line for Central American governments should be creating the conditions for those investors to thrive, ensuring the kinds of long-term economic development that convinces would-be migrants that they can stay at home to attain the better life they seek.
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