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Date: April 30, 2024 Tue
Time: 3:55 am
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Results for northern triangle
1 results foundAuthor: Blanchard, Daphne N. Title: .Immigration and National Security: An Empirical Assessment of Central American Immigration and Violent Crime in the United States Summary: Executive Summary - The arrival of the October 2018 Central American caravan became a flashpoint in the immigration debate between human rights and national security. Thousands of migrants traveled in a caravan from Central America's Northern Triangle to the United States in October of 2018. President Trump called on Mexico to stop the influx, sent troops to the U.S.-Mexican border, and threatened to cut aid to the Central American country. While several hundred returned on Honduran-sponsored busses and roughly 2,000 people applied for asylum in southern Mexico, the group totaled 6,500 migrants when they arrived at the wall lining the San Ysidro-Tijuana border. Conflicts between the migrants, Mexican police, citizens of Tijuana and U.S. protesters made national headlines. Meanwhile, international aid groups offered makeshift housing, basic necessities, and legal representation for the asylum seekers. Immigration was central to the November mid-term election debates. - Central American immigration has risen significantly over the last few decades. Presently 3.4 million people born in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras are living in the United States, more than double the estimated 1.5 million people in 2000, with half of them undocumented. In the time period between 2011 and 2017, the number of Northern Triangle immigrants rose approximately 400,000 which indicated a growth of 0.1 percent of the foreign-born population. The number of Northern Triangle migrant arrivals nearly quadrupled in 2014, with the arrival of approximately 131,000 migrants. El Salvador is the largest sending country from the region, with 1.4 million immigrants in the United States, a 112- fold increase since 1970. Guatemala is second with 815,000, followed by Honduras with 623,000. - The number of unaccompanied minors (also known as UACs) crossing the U.S.- Mexico border has dramatically increased since 2008. Between 2008 and the first eight months of 2014, the number of unaccompanied minors that crossed the U.S. southern border each year jumped from about 8,000 to 52,000, prompting the U.S. Congress to request further research and a hearing before the Committee on Foreign Relations. The year 2014 was dubbed the Central America migration crisis due to the 90 percent increase in UACs between 2013 and 2014. The composition of the recent caravans that arrived in April and October of 2018 suggest that child and family migration from the Northern Triangle is an enduring phenomenon. - The root causes of the flows are pervasive violence and systematic persecution in the Northern Triangle region. El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras are consistently ranked among the world's most violent countries not at war due to their exceptionally high rates of homicide, extortion, gang proliferation, narcotics trafficking, weak rule of law, and official corruption. Many migrants reported fleeing systematic persecution from authorities, pervasive violence from organized criminal organizations, and forced gang recruitment. - Northern Triangle migrants make up less than one percent of the U.S. population. To put the increases in immigrant population in perspective and understand the scope of Central American migration, it is important to note that in 2017 the Northern Triangle subset of immigrants constitute 0.9% of the share of overall population, of which by far the largest percentage is attributed to those with El Salvadoran origins. Asian foreign-born are the most prevalent with 4.3 percent of the share, which consists of Eastern, South Central, and South Eastern Asian immigrants. Those born in Mexico are second with 3.4 percent; while European and African foreign-born make up 1.2 and 0.7 percent respectively. - Public anxiety over Central American migrants stalls immigration reform. The tension at the U.S.-Mexico border due to Central American asylum seekers has reached a fever pitch, polarizing views on how to deal with ever increasing immigration. Although seven percent of Northern Triangle refugees were granted asylum the year after the 2014 surge in migration, compared to 24 percent of refugees from China, the continual flow of Central American migrants to the United States' southern border elicits anxiety, protests, and much public debate. As rhetoric from high-level politicians and news media make connections between violent crime and immigration, political parties' stances on immigration become more divergent -- leading to the inability to agree on comprehensive immigration reform. The difference in opinion between Democrats and Republicans has grown over time with 42 percent of Republicans, compared to 84 percent of Democrats, saying that immigrants strengthen the country, the largest partisan gap on openness to immigrants since 1994. Democrats triple the share of Republicans with the opinion that the nation has a responsibility to care for refugees. - The internet and social media have heightened the risk of mass manipulation and emotional decision-making in immigration policy. Although the Trump administration and news outlets of today are not the first to make a public connection between crime and immigration - the debate has been ongoing for decades - changes in media technology have exacerbated the issue. The internet and social media platforms have significantly increased the scope and reach of consumers at hyper speed without third-party filtering, fact-checking, or editorial judgement to add context to complex issues. This is evident in a Republican-sponsored political commercial that connected an undocumented Mexican cop-killer with the tagline: "Stop the caravan. Vote Republican." Although widely rejected by major television and news outlets on both sides of the aisle for being misleading, the ad was seen approximately 6.5 million times while featured atop Trump's Twitter page. Studies have shown how elite discourse shapes mass opinion and action on immigration policy without necessarily tying the rhetoric to empirical data of the actual threat posed by the group. - Studies show that as immigration levels have risen in the United States, overall violent crime rates have reduced. The relationship between immigration and crime in the United States has been studied at length by scholars whose findings convey a similar conclusion: that immigration does not increase crime and violence, in fact, in the first generation it seems to reduce it. Since 1970 to today, the share and number of immigrants in the United States have increased rapidly while violent crime has been trending in the opposite direction to a level below what it was in 1980. Even as the U.S. undocumented population doubled to 12 million between 1994 and 2005, the violent crime rate in the United States declined 34.2 percent. In addition, cities with large immigrant populations such as Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and Miami also experienced declining crime rates during that period. - Evidence does not support the notion that increases in Central American immigrant populations lead to increases in violent crime rates. Although Northern Triangle immigration has surged over the past several years, the evidence does not support the claim that they are posing a U.S. national security threat. Not only did overall U.S. violent crime rates descend as Central American migration share rose; but the influx of these foreigners in 27 metro areas showed no correlation when compared to the violent crime rate changes of each one during 2012 to 2017. When compared to homicide rate changes, there is no correlation between the changes in the immigrant population from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras; in fact, the vast majority of cases demonstrate a reduction in crime. Not one of the 27 metros with high concentration of immigrants from that region is within the top ten of the most violent metros in the United States. The violence that Northern Triangle migrants are fleeing is not translating into more violence in American communities, as the public discourse seems to suggest. The Central American migration threat has been hyper-inflated in scope and potential for insecurity. - The scope of the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) gang is narrow by comparison. According to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), approximately ten thousand MS-13 members inhabit the United States, amounting to 0.3 percent of the overall U.S. population. By comparison, there are approximately 1.4 million gang members living in the United States that make up more than 33,000 gangs. Of the 45,400 UACs apprehended at the border in the five-year period of 2012 and 2017, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) apprehended 159 UACs with confirmed or suspected gang affiliations, 56 of which were suspected or confirmed to be affiliated with MS-13. The Cato Institute reports that 0.1 percent of U.S. Customs and Border Patrol arrests were MS-13 gang members at the border midyear in 2018, similar to the statistics from prior years. - The brutality of MS-13 has the potential to disrupt neighborhoods, but not the United States as a whole. The threat of the MS-13 gang is far smaller in scope and reach than high-profile dialogue suggests, and it is given disproportionate attention in the public discourse considering the levels of crime. Of the 1.2 million violent crime offenses committed in the United States between 2012 and 2017, 345 were committed by members of the MS-13 gang. Although spread throughout cities in the United States and a legitimate concern for the communities which they inhabit, the members of this murderous gang do not demonstrate an ability to disrupt the stability and security of the entire nation and show no sign of expansion. Containing the threat of this violent criminal organization is best left to local authorities with local solutions. This research does not advocate ceasing to address the root causes of MS-13 criminal activity, only to keep the risk in perspective to reduce the negative consequences of fear-based decision-making. - The conflating of MS-13 with all immigrants in public discourse is unfounded and problematic. Connecting all immigrants with the violent acts of the few stalls progress on immigration reform, influences public opinion and immigration policy decisions without data to support the level of threat, creates an atmosphere of conflict surrounding those requesting asylum and settling in American neighborhoods, and is counterproductive to keeping Americans safe. Anxiety-inducing messaging from elite levels slows productive, compromise-driven dialogue that is necessary for immigration reform and effective allocation of finite resources. Details: San Diego: Justice in Mexico, Department of Political Science & International Relations, University of San Diego, 2019. 40p. Source: Internet Resource:JUSTICE IN MEXICO WORKING PAPER SERIES Volume 16, Number 1: Accessed May 9, 2019 at: https://justiceinmexico.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/BLANCHARD_Immigration-and-National-Security.pdf Year: 2019 Country: United States URL: https://justiceinmexico.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/BLANCHARD_Immigration-and-National-Security.pdf Shelf Number: 155705 Keywords: Asylum SeekersGang ViolenceImmigrants and CrimeImmigration and CrimeImmigration PolicyMS-13 - Mara SalvatruchaNational SecurityNorthern TriangleSocial MediaUnaccompanied MinorsUndocumented MigrantsViolent Crime |