How can the US help settle the unrest in Central America?

[jacobmeteorite]

So, I'm Team Elizabeth Warren for 2020, but I would 100% vote for any candidate whose been on the debate stage over Trump.

I know Congress tried to pass comprehensive immigration reform throughout the GWB and Obama years, but fell flat.

And I know that Obama initially tried to play nice with Republicans at the start of his 1st term, deported many undocumented immigrants, and was willing to enforce tough immigration law to prove that he was willing to compromise. Obviously, we know Republicans were squarely focused on obstructing everything, and since Obama placed his focus on healthcare when he was first elected, immigration reform fell flat. Since then, there's been no real immigration reform in the works.

So here's the thing: I know the USA needs comprehensive immigration reform, and needs to deal with:
- Those who are already here
- Those who want to come here

But outside of that, I'm interested in the driving forces that are causing immigrants from Central America to flee upward to the United States, and who are willing to make that perilous journey at all costs.

We know that Latin America has been unstable throughout the 1900s, particularly from the Banana Wars, and the US played a heavy hand in supporting and arming corrupt governments, all in the interest of multinational corporate profits and the ~fight against c0mMunIsM!!11~

In the 80s, violence in Central America caused immigration from Central America to the United States to peak. Those refugees were denied refugee status, had to live in the shadows, eventually committed crimes to have them be incarcerated, and then eventually were deported back to their countries. In El Salvador, for example, we deported 50,000 criminals and sent them back to a place that had next to no law enforcement infrastructure, and drugs and cartels came right on in and seized power in those areas, and are causing massive unrest to this day.

Whether or not you disagree with this assessment, I wanted to pose a scenario, and get your feedback.

Let's say that an Elizabeth Warren takes the White House in 2020, and Democrats gain control of both the Senate and House, enough to eliminate the filibuster and put a stop to Republican obstruction. If a President Warren has enough control over her party to get them to agree to comprehensive immigration reform and push it through, there would still be the issue of the unrest in Central America that is still driving those people to flee to the USA.

What tools does a progressive president like Warren, with control of both houses of Congress, have to help settle the unrest in Central America? Is it trade? Is it just money? I think that most people don't want to hear about money being sent to those countries, only for it to not be transparent, and have those governments not enact any real change. What specific moves can the USA make to settle the unrest but without invading the territory?

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

By not messing with it like we have since the 1800s. See Obama and Hillary's support of the Honduras coup.

[dead0man]

allow them to sell things here with zero barriers and stop the war on drugs...that would solve many problems and make us, well, everyone involved, a lot money

[Lord Halifax]

Offer Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Belize statehood.

[dead0man]

Offer Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Belize statehood.

that too, why not Costa Rica and Panama as well?

[Lord Halifax]

Offer Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Belize statehood.

that too, why not Costa Rica and Panama as well?

Costa Rica has no incentive to give up their independence and Panama is almost in South America. The three dysfunctional and refugee producing states (Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala) are America's problem anyway and Belize is anglophone.

[dead0man]

Offer Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Belize statehood.

that too, why not Costa Rica and Panama as well?

Costa Rica has no incentive to give up their independence and Panama is almost in South America. The three dysfunctional and refugee producing states (Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala) are America's problem anyway and Belize is anglophone.

aye, agreed

[Storr]

Offer Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Belize statehood.

that too, why not Costa Rica and Panama as well?

Costa Rica has no incentive to give up their independence and Panama is almost in South America. The three dysfunctional and refugee producing states (Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala) are America's problem anyway and Belize is anglophone.

aye, agreed

I for one, also agree.

[TML]

We must enact a plan similar to the Marshall Plan in the late 1940s. We have to give aid to these nations in order to help them build livable conditions for its people so that they do not have to leave their homelands. The current administration's decision to cut aid to these nations will only exacerbate people leaving their homelands, and that only increases the number of people heading our way. (BTW, I think we must treat those heading our way much more humanely that what we are currently doing, regardless of how many such people there are. These people deserve a chance to have their stories of hardship in their homelands heard and be given an opportunity to have a better life.)

[Hammy]

Stopping funding for dictators, terrorism, and death squads in those countries would be a good start.

[Mopsus]

Proposals for a 21st century Marshall Plan seem very far-fetched when you consider that the countries affected by the original were already highly educated and (at least before the War) highly industrialized. Talk about the benefits of ending the War on Drugs also seems spurious. What's the thinking there? That hundreds of Mom-and-Pop coke producers are going to spring up overnight to outcompete the cartels?

[jacobmeteorite]

Then I guess the question is that how does the US ensure that it’s assistance funds go directly to improve the region, and doesn’t get lost within the corrupt government systems?

[GlobeSoc]

Use a supranational organization as a backend to annex the region and create a pan-hemispheric centralized socialist economy based on computers and big Data to outcompete the private sector ensure oversight of whatever funds would be disbursed and ensure environmentally sustainable development

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

One thing would be to officially end the Monroe Doctrine, or at least the distorted interpretation of it that allows the US government to arbitrarily declare itself more fit to choose governments than the actual populations of Central America. I think a lot of people seem to be under the apprehension that this was just a Cold War thing, and such misadventures died with Ollie North, but even in 2009 the HRC State Department seemed awfully premature in accepting the coup against Zelaya and resuming military aid, much before any other prominent international force recognized it as legitimate. (Of course Zelaya was a incompetent fool, which goes without saying, but his successors have been far worse and have led the country further toiletwards. Not to mention that grounds of removal - that he was trying to end term limits - was proven to be completely spurious when the Supreme Court that had rubberstamped the coup themselves struck down the term limits in the constitution as unconstitutional)

Other than that? Decriminalising drugs would be a good start at undermining the cartels. Investing in some form of easy Visa for Central American workers would be a more tricky political sell (and I'm also uneasy with it for leftist reasons), but it would help to undermine the other big source of cash for organised crime (human traficking) and provide dependable income in the form remittances. Aid? Possibly, but at the sort of sporadic levels you can realistically expect, it runs the risk of being worse than useless (and you certainly don't want to become some form of dystopian NGO-land like Haiti is).

[Santander]

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