“They’ve had persistent droughts in these areas for six years,” Gass said. ‘They have no food, no means of subsistence or subsistence, and they eat the seeds they would normally save for planting. And when the seeds are gone, they have not much left to go on. ”
In addition, the Covid-19 pandemic devastated both urban and rural communities in the region and made it doubly dangerous to undertake a long journey.
Biden said he was trying to address the situation by setting up immigration triage facilities and shelters in these countries so that migrants in the United States could begin seeking asylum, rather than arriving unannounced at the southern border. But he has not yet issued a comprehensive immigration plan, and he has led close observers to speculate on what his overall strategy will be.
Last month, at his first news conference as president, Biden said he had asked Vice President Kamala Harris to “investigate the fundamental reasons why people leave Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador in the first place”, with some important factors: ‘It’s because of earthquakes, floods. This is due to a lack of food. This is due to gang violence. This is due to a whole series of things. ”
But while implementing this plan, Biden is working to combat endemic corruption in many national and local governments that could make it difficult to provide direct assistance, as he acknowledged.
He recalls the work he began as vice president under Barack Obama, whose government faced a surge of migrants on the southern border in 2014 and 2015, spurred on by a confluence of gang violence and natural disasters in the region. . “What I could do is not give money to the head of state, because so many are corrupt, but I could say, ‘OK, you need lighting in the streets to change things?’ I put in the lighting, ” he said.
Experts have pointed out that while the Obama administration has taken steps to work directly with local governments and establish accountable mechanisms, this approach was still inappropriate when Trump became president and most of the new initiatives aimed at reform directed, turned back.