Less Hysteria, More Solutions on the Border, Migration Please

In a new op-ed I make the case that Brazil’s failure to contain its new COVID variant has become a threat to the entire region, one which the US should respond to by standing up a comprehensive campaign to defeat COVID throughout the Americas.

Standing up such a regional defeat COVID/build back better effort will also help the US create a clearer predicate for launching a long term strategy to bring peace, stability and prosperity to our Southern neighbors in Central America and perhaps Mexico too — a long overdue priority which will, among many other benefits, help stem current and future flows to the border. The rising rates of Mexicans apprehended at the border this year suggests that the weakening of the US and regional economies due to COVID has started creating migratory pressures in countries beyond the Northern Triangle (El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras) — something which could get far worse if the kind of COVID outbreak we are seeing in Brazil spreads across the region. Part of our strategy to stop the current rising flow to the border should be to stand up a broad based regional campaign to defeat COVID and help the countries of the Americas stand their economies back up.

As for what’s happening at the border today, let’s look at some of the new data available to us now. First, the current flow is within recent and historic norms. This thread of various Pew Research reports shows that if we see 1m-1.2m border apprehensions this year we will be very much in line with the…