Biden's 'Root Causes' Approach Likely to Reward Corruption and Encourage More Illegal Immigration
By Ronald W. Mortensen on April 9, 2021
During his March 25 press conference, President Biden announced that he had asked Vice-President Harris to focus on "the fundamental reasons why people leave Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador in the first place." He then listed the reasons as earthquakes, floods, lack of food, and gang violence. In addition, my colleague David North has offered a good-faith outline for what such an aid effort might look like. But my 40 years of living and working abroad for the U.S. government leads me to conclude that, if those issues and aid efforts are what Harris focuses on, then nothing will change.
In fact, before any additional U.S. taxpayer resources are expended in these three countries, the rampant corruption that infects the Northern Triangle elites must be directly and firmly dealt with by both the Biden administration and by the people of those countries.
According to the 2020 Corruptions Perception Index (CPI) which attempts to define the level of corruption in the public sector, two of these three countries—Guatemala with 25 points and Honduras with 24 points out of a possible 100—rank among the most corrupt countries in the world. (The lower the score, the higher the corruption.) El Salvador is the least corrupt of the three countries with 36 points, which isn't saying much when compared to the 88 points of the least corrupt counties—New Zealand and Denmark. Just for reference, the U.S. score, which is on a downward slope, is 67, which ties it with Chile for the 25th least corrupt country in the world.
https://cis.org/Mortensen/Bidens-Root-Causes-Approach-Likely-Reward-Corruption-and-Encourage-More-Illegal
