The "root causes" of emigration from Central America.

OldWiseGuy said:

Democrat activists discuss the "root causes" of the immigration problem. However the real root cause, drug use by Americans,

Thoughts?

Click to expand...

Yes, obviously those people trying to cross the border are not mostly drug mules. Your "real root cause" is absurd.

OldWiseGuy said:

Democrat activists discuss the "root causes" of the immigration problem. However the real root cause, drug use by Americans, is mentioned only as a hurried passing thought at the end of the meeting.

Democrats hold press conference on root causes of influx of immigrants, including many minors, to US - YouTube

This video is lengthy but revealing, and a recipe for failure. Thoughts?

Click to expand...

I did a study and learned the nations with the highest fertility rates were some of the poorest on earth. I noticed most of them are in Africa with fertility rates of over 5 children per woman. These nations are some of the poorest on earth. In Central America nations with fertility rates of 2.4 - 2.89 are Guatemala, Panama, Honduras and Nicaragua. These people are more likely to try to enter the U.S. illegally than Brazilians.

The fertility rate is 1.73 in Brazil. Brazil’s economy is growing. Children are better educated. Women may work jobs. The government subsidized birth control pills to make them available to poor people. Lust destroyed nations. People had more children without more land to support them.

OldWiseGuy said:

The first domino to fall is drug use here, the last is immigrants on the border. Lots of domino's in between. Drug money has corrupted every facet of life in those countries, money that comes directly from users in the U.S.

Click to expand...

Not just drugs, but also the legacy of the Cold War.

I would also add that none of those societies have ever had strong civic institutions outside the Catholic Church, which has mostly served the interests of the wealthy in those countries. So you end up with a society with less social trust and less building of stable institutions.

OldWiseGuy said:

Democrat activists discuss the "root causes" of the immigration problem. However the real root cause, drug use by Americans, is mentioned only as a hurried passing thought at the end of the meeting.

Democrats hold press conference on root causes of influx of immigrants, including many minors, to US - YouTube

This video is lengthy but revealing, and a recipe for failure. Thoughts?

Click to expand...

American drug consumption is certainly one of the main root causes undermining security in Central America and Mexico.

What do you suggest? The "war on drugs" obviously didn't work.

OldWiseGuy said:

Drug cartels depend on two specific groups; hard core addicts as primary consumers, and street gangs that effectively distribute large amounts of drugs. Casual and weekend users won't 'feed the bulldog'.

Pick the low hanging fruit. Hard core addicts are easy to identify and detain. Street gangs that distribute the majority of the cartels drugs can be arrested en mass for racketeering. This would effectively cripple the drug trade by seriously interrupting the money flow. Resources for this effort can be taken from less effective areas of the drug war.

There's a saying in business: "Nothing happens until something is sold." Interrupt the sales of drugs to the user and the whole drug enterprise collapses, along with the attendant crime, suffering, corruption, etc.

Click to expand...

They've tried that for decades. To say it's had "mixed results" would be an understatement. It certainly hasn't gotten rid of the problem.

OldWiseGuy said:

I don't believe this has been seriously considered at all.

Click to expand...

the entire war drugs was basically your approach. it didn't work. street gangs can be replaced as long as the money is good. and simply locking up addicts and throwing them in jail just breeds long-term criminals. your solutions are about as effective as body armor made of wet toilet paper.

OldWiseGuy said:

Democrat activists discuss the "root causes" of the immigration problem. However the real root cause, drug use by Americans, is mentioned only as a hurried passing thought at the end of the meeting.

Democrats hold press conference on root causes of influx of immigrants, including many minors, to US - YouTube

This video is lengthy but revealing, and a recipe for failure. Thoughts?

Click to expand...

These are failed states....for a variety of reasons. There's no amount of money that can easily fix them. Fixing would require decades of real infrastructure development, a vastly improved educational system, and a much more diverse economy, and governments that are far less corrupt.

The few billion we spend in aid achieves nothing.

How do these failed states avoid total collapse?

They shed millions of poor uneducated people into the US.

OldWiseGuy said:

Those poor, uneducated folks are a perfect fit for their country's culture and economy. They are being driven out by the corruption and violence of the drug business, which is dependent upon users and addicts here. Lock up the addicts and the beneficial domino effect will reach clear to their homelands.

Click to expand...

If you're interested in breaking the cartels....you really only have a few options.

1. Invade Mexico....wipe them out.

I think you'll find that a temporary solution.

2. Force them into competition. Offer the biggest and best organized cartel an agreement to end or severely limit illegal immigration...and pay on results. The resulting violence will end the immigrants rather quickly...but regrettably not without any deaths. The result of this is a competition between cartels to either take credit for succeeding....or reopen the trafficking business. They end up fighting against each other.

They are making hundreds of millions in trafficking people alone. Eliminating drug users won't change that.

I don't think American drug use is responsible (in any significant capacity) for mass migration from Central American countries.

There are certain aspects of South American economics that are impacted by drug demand from our country, but this isn't one of them.

Central Americans are in a unique position, in that large percentages of their people experienced the worst that both the Capitalistic and Socialistic systems have had to offer, and had their local/regional economies destroyed as a result of that.

Very few people (outside of Central America) can say that they've experienced the worst case scenarios of both Socialistic and Capitalistic systems all within a single lifetime.

It makes sense that their mindset would be "well, our country has tried both capitalistic approaches (which resulted in foreign interests exploiting us), and socialistic approaches (which resulted in a poorly centrally planned economy that left us starving and with no meaningful work and lacking basic necessities)...maybe the problem is our country, itself, and the people in charge of it...we need to go somewhere else!"

ThatRobGuy said:

I don't think American drug use is responsible (in any significant capacity) for mass migration from Central American countries.

There are certain aspects of South American economics that are impacted by drug demand from our country, but this isn't one of them.

Central Americans are in a unique position, in that large percentages of their people experienced the worst that both the Capitalistic and Socialistic systems have had to offer, and had their local/regional economies destroyed as a result of that.

Very few people (outside of Central America) can say that they've experienced the worst case scenarios of both Socialistic and Capitalistic systems all within a single lifetime.

It makes sense that their mindset would be "well, our country has tried both capitalistic approaches (which resulted in foreign interests exploiting us), and socialistic approaches (which resulted in a poorly centrally planned economy that left us starving and with no meaningful work and lacking basic necessities)...maybe the problem is our country, itself, and the people in charge of it...we need to go somewhere else!"

Click to expand...

If you think that level of analysis is happening....you're mistaken.

Many cannot read or write, depending upon where they are from....maybe have as little as what you would consider a 2nd grade education.

Ana the Ist said:

If you're interested in breaking the cartels....you really only have a few options.

1. Invade Mexico....wipe them out.

I think you'll find that a temporary solution.

Click to expand...

I don't think the US invading Mexico and occupying it would find that to be a practicable venture to curtail the supply of illegal drugs, judging by the US's recent history of invasions and occupations, and by the history of Mexico itself. The average rural Mexican has more fondness for narcos than for gringos. At least narcos build roads and schools.

Ana the Ist said:

If you think that level of analysis is happening....you're mistaken.

Many cannot read or write, depending upon where they are from....maybe have as little as what you would consider a 2nd grade education.

Click to expand...

...but it doesn't take a in-depth understanding of something (like economics) to have one's viewpoint shaped by bad experiences.

Even if someone only has that 2nd grade education, one doesn't have to be a Milton Friedman or John Keynes to look at their own surroundings and and quickly lose faith in what their own leaders are telling them and want to get out of there.

And as I noted before Latin America is one of the few regions that's experienced the worst of both forms of economics, which has left some of their countries corruption-prone, and in economic ruin.

Typically, if a nation has a particularly bad experience with one particular system of economics, they rally behind a candidate that voices the opposing viewpoint. (For instance, in Chile, after their experience with Pinochet, they took a hard left-turn and embraced a more socialistic model...or in the case of India, they tried a socialistic model post-WW2, it failed, and they switched to a capitalistic model)

If the attempt at the other form fails, then the next phase of the pattern is typically to see people rallying behind some sort of populist "man of the people" type of leader, who tends to run on a "both established factions are corrupt and have been lying to you, but I'm going to fix it!" type of message... EX: Nayib Bukele in El Salvador.

However, when a nation has tried the individualist, collectivist, populist models (or at least been told that's what the country is embracing by those running the show)...and all three have failed them, and people aren't seeing any improvements to their lives (or see the problems getting worse), that's when you start to see sentiments of unrest, or people simply saying "time to pack up and find somewhere else".