Or, people can just stop buying and taking illicit drugs. The irony is that the very location and culture that fuels the drug cartels also draws people fleeing the drug cartels because of the omnipresence of seemingly unending sources of money, money that can often be acquired in vast amounts with much less effort than what’s required in a poorer country.
While you’re correct that drug cartels and their violence are a major factor in hundreds of thousands of people leaving Central American countries for the trek north to the United States over the past few decades, it’s only one factor in many that lead to their decisions. There are more magnets that attract people to circumvent legal methods for entering the US than there are reasons for them to remain in their region of the world. An entire century of poverty, lack of opportunities, class-based divisions between people wherein the poor continually get poorer and the rich continually get richer, rampant unemployment and underemployment, poor medical care, civil wars, etc all contribute to the exodus. People see few positive changes in those countries, yet a higher probability of affluence in the US. Even living at a poverty level in the US can often be better than living at middle class in some of those countries. Every incentive to go north is repeatedly waved in front of their faces, yet there are few incentives not to go north.
For at least thirty to forty years, revolving administrations of the US government have committed their own long-known cardinal sin of throwing money at a problem and assuming it‘s a quick fix or a final fix. Billions of US taxpayer dollars have been showered upon the governments of several poor countries in some fairytale plan that corruption will magically not rear its ugly head and that the population will receive goods, services and other benefits to attract them to stay home. It has not been effective since its inception, yet it gets regurgitated. The money stays at the top or is immediately swallowed up by the very criminals who are already enriched by illegal activities. The people at the bottom don’t trust their governments, so exiting the country is often seen as the only solution to their strife. Even when they arrive in the US, they are showered with more largess than they ever saw at home, and it makes sense to them that if the US government has billions of dollars to dump into foreign dictators‘ pockets, there must be tens of billions more dollars in the US. Why remain poor and struggling in a lawless country when you may as well go to the source of the almighty dollar and live in slightly more comfort and security?
Lastly, no US presidential administration, and no US Congress for the past fifty years has ever been serious about addressing, stopping or even slowing down illegal immigration into the US. It’s not in their interest to do so. Big Industry fuels Big Politics, and since the former needs as cheap a labor force as possible, the latter is the lapdog that does its bidding. Lip-service is paid to a veneer of curbing illegal immigration, yet in reality, if either the presidency, the legislature, the corporate structure were truly serious, then the filthy rich, white, male, Ivy League-educated business owners and politicians would be getting arrested and tried for creating the magnets that bring their own employee base from poor countries in violations of US laws that are already on the books about the other (unseen) side of why people cross borders illegally. Arresting the poor, Spanish-speaking, possibly illiterate tomato farmer from Oaxaca or Tegucigalpa or San Salvador is the easy way out, because he’s not only invisible, he’s also a dime-a-dozen; their there are plenty of others to fill his spot if he’s deported. While millions of people have been detained and sent back to their countries, not one business owner or recruiter has faced sanctions for breaking the laws that prohibit their actions. Big Industry would implode if it only had to hire employees legally authorized to work in the US, because it’s much more difficult to extort them out of pay and benefits when there’s no threat of deportation to use as a bullwhip. Big Government turns its blind eye also, because no one who’s poor either gets elected to office or stays in office. One corrupt hand scratches another’s corrupt back, while each one gives a wink and a nod as to how morally upstanding the other is.
Thank you, ExCon.
I‘m not only saying what didn’t work in the distant past and why it didn’t work in the distant past, because just two weeks ago, Pres. Biden‘s brand new administration announced yet another multimillion-dollar or multibillion-dollar payment package to Central American countries that he assumes will A) go to the poor people who are already in caravans headed north, B) go to the poor people who have not yet left their countries, C) not be gobbled up in the funnel of corruption, D) which is either the very governments in those countries, the criminal elements in those countries (which is often more rich and powerful than the governments), or even a combination of the two. Like I stated in my original response, administration after administration keeps dumping US greenbacks on those countries, yet myopia prevents anyone from seeing or apathy prevents anyone from acknowledging it doesn’t work.
The hypocrisy with Biden’s “approach” is even more laughable as a shut-the-barn-door-after-the-horse-has-already-been-stolen theatrical stunt because he spent an entire presidential campaign fluffing up the welcome mat. When the borders became overrun with more numbers than any administration could humanely handle, or safely handle, or accurately handle, Biden and his lot back-pedaled and threw money at the countries of origin. Can Biden explain how a caravan of thousands is supposed to miraculously learn of the millions of dollars and all of a sudden reverse course, return to their homes and patiently wait to see if this once the cartels and dictatorships will trickle down a few centavos for them? If you’ve already made it to the US/Mexico border, no force on earth will get you to go back! They’re wearing Biden t-shirts and he’s their savior! A savior without a plan, a savior with detention centers and space blankets and overcrowding, but a savior all the same.
As for your suggestion about the free cocaine, I love the idea. Of course, the production and distribution infrastructures already in place in Iran, Afghanistan, Perú, Colombia, etc. have decades of experience over anything the bumbling US could ever perfect in the next 20 years (lol, let Big Pharma run it), so for the first 10 to 15 years, US government/Big Business will have to buy the white powder from them anyway. Either way, the cartels still win, still become even richer. I say move forward with your suggestion; nothing better has come out of Washington DC yet.
Look at the great rollout of legalized marijuana in various US states. Ten years along and cartel profits are still high, drug-related problems in communities and families still exist, promised revenues have not materialized, etc.
No one is truly interested in changing the status quo.
Ending the demand for the illegal drugs that the cartels supply is what can work. No demand, no supply.
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Element 99 