The Biden-Harris ‘Root Causes’ Strategy, Decoded
Part One: The vice president’s efforts and the elements of the plan
By Andrew R. Arthur on August 15, 2024
Harris podium
While critics — and more than a few media outlets — have described Vice President Kamala Harris as the administration’s “border czar”, her allies maintain she’s only responsible for addressing the “root causes” of illegal migration, and even then, only migration from the “Northern Triangle” nations of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. There’s both less and a whole lot more to the Harris root-causes strategy than meets the eye. Let me decode it for you, first by laying out the vice president’s efforts in support of the strategy and the elements of the plan.
“Push” and “Pull” Factors and “Root Causes”, in Brief. Immigration experts generally agree that there are two separate reasons why individuals migrate from one place to another: “push factors” — issues like poverty, corruption, and violence — that encourage would-be emigrants to leave their homes, and “pull factors”, policies and opportunities that offer the promise of a better life and improved economic circumstances elsewhere.
“Root causes” is just a different way of referring to push factors, specifically as it relates to illegal migration.
In her cover letter to a July 2021 National Security Council (NSC) white paper captioned “U.S. Strategy for Addressing the Root Causes of Migration in Central America”, the vice president explained:
The COVID-19 pandemic and extreme weather conditions have indeed exacerbated the root causes of migration — which include corruption, violence, trafficking, and poverty. While our Administration is proud that we have sent millions of vaccine doses and hurricane relief, we know that it is not enough to alleviate suffering in the long term.
The root causes must be addressed both in addition to relief efforts — and apart from these efforts. In everything we do, we must target our efforts in those areas of highest out-migration — and ensure that these programs meet the highest standards of accountability and effectiveness. [Emphasis added.]
I will return to those highlighted portions of the excerpt in Part Two.
https://cis.org/Arthur/BidenHarris-Root-Causes-Strategy-Decoded
