THEY WANT JOBS AND FREEDOM …
We have been thinking about the seemingly never-ending caravans of Central American migrants from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador who make the long (~ 1,500 miles) and treacherous trek to the United States’ southern border.
We thought it would be worthwhile investigating why these migrants don’t seek work or asylum in Caribbean and Central and South American countries much closer to their current homes.
Obviously, the United States’ economy is a migrant attracting magnet, as our GDP is growing at 3%+, unemployment for black and hispanic minorities are at all time lows, there are 800,000 more jobs than unemployed people looking for work, wages are rising, etc. Additionally, our social assistance programs are generous and we take in one million immigrants every year. So it is understandable why migrants are coming here in droves.
But still, there are numerous pitfalls to making the trek to America, such as criminals, drug cartels, human traffickers, untrustworthy coyotes, cultural and language barriers, and a variety of unknowns when navigating the U.S. immigration and asylum process.
Let’s take a closer look at the economic, immigration and government aspects of alternative migrant destination countries like Cuba, Columbia, Nicaragua, Mexico, Venezuela and Costa Rica.
For starters, we will review their economic attractiveness, including GDP per capita, unemployment rate and inflation rate.
U.S. economic growth far outpaces that of alternative destination countries.
Unemployment rates are low in the U.S., Mexico, Nicaragua and Cuba, but relatively high in Costa Rica, Venezuela and Columbia.
Despite having the highest growth per capita, the U.S. also has the lowest inflation rate … a “Goldilocks” scenario. Costa Rica is a close second, but without the growth. Other countries have relatively low unemployment rates, but their workers’ wages must overcome more rapidly rising costs of living. (You may have noticed that Venezuela was not in this graph, as they have experienced a 1,698,488% inflation rate, which would have rendered the chart unreadable.)
U.S. economic growth and low inflation are obviously the main attractions, but the jobs situation in other countries isn’t that bad. So what else is at play here?
Let’s review the second migrant destination country variable — immigration.
As a baseline, the United Nations International Migration Report states there was a worldwide total of 257,715,000 international migrants in 2017. The more developed and high-income countries, like the U.S., averaged 11.6% and 14.1% international migrants as a percentage of their population, respectively. By contrast, less developed and low-to-middle-income countries, like most found in Central America, averaged 1.8% and 1.5% international migrants as a percentage of their population, respectively.
The U.S. percentage of international migrants is above average. Costa Rica is well above average, considering they are not a high-income country. Venezuela is below average, considering their substantial oil wealth. The percentages for Mexico and Nicaragua are embarrassingly low, no matter what category of country one puts them in. And Cuba’s percentage is horrible but not surprising, for reasons to be explained soon.
A true sign of a country’s attractiveness to immigrants, asylum seekers and their own citizens is net migration. A positive net migration rate indicates an inflow of migrants per 1,000 of population. A negative net migration rate indicates an outflow. The only two migrant destination countries in our study having a net inflow of migrants are the U.S. and Costa Rica.
Why? It can’t be just economic growth or immigration policies, right?
It’s time to review the third migrant destination country variable — government.
We will characterize our study country governments by three variables — type of government, level of freedom, and political rights and civil liberties.
Type of Government:
- United States of America – Democracy
- Costa Rica / Venezuela / Mexico / Nicaragua / Columbia – Presidential Republic
- Cuba – Communist
Level of Freedom: In Freedom House’s report, Freedom in the World 2018, every country is classified by their level of freedom (e.g., free, partially free, not free).
Political Rights and Civil Liberties: Freedom House also assigns a score from 0 (worst) to 100 (best) for the country’s political rights and civil liberties.
Here are the results for our study countries.
Now it’s becoming clearer. America’s high achievement in all three variables — economic, immigration and government — is what sets it apart from the others. It’s why everyone wants to live and work here. But what is really interesting is that all presidential republics are not the same. Costa Rica, despite being a less developed, lower income, low growth, high unemployment rate country, still attracts immigrants and retains the majority of its citizens because it affords them rights and liberties that all freedom loving people crave. Likewise, it’s not at all surprising that Cuba, an oppressive communist country, and Venezuela, a country backed by communist allies Russia and China, do not attract migrants and have trouble stemming emigration for the lack of a thriving economy and, especially, basic freedoms.
As we noted up front, migrants are coming to America for work and asylum. To put an even finer point on the disproportionate weight that immigrants and asylum seekers place on freedom as well as economic opportunity, we want to share with you the following facts …
In 2018, over 72,000 applications for asylum seekers were submitted to only 39 out of 210 countries worldwide. As you can see in the table below, Freedom House rated all but one of those 39 countries as “free” and scored their political rights and civil liberties an average 90.67 out of 100. (Turkey, the lone “not free” country has been inundated by refugees from the Syrian civil war who no doubt rationalized that a freedom deficient member of NATO would be a better alternative than Assad’s chemical weapons, ISIS’s bloodthirsty terrorists or Russia’s indiscriminately dropped barrel bombs.)
We should be proud that America is a beacon to immigrants and asylum seekers coming here to work hard, obey our laws, value our constitutional rights and love our country. But America should not and cannot be the only success story in the region. A stable and prospering Central America is in the best interest of all neighboring countries. The demonstrated formula for success must include equal parts sustainable economic growth and government by the people for the people, with liberty and justice for all.