-
By October 2018,
-
Juan Carlos Rivera could no longer afford
-
to live in his home in Copan, Honduras.
-
As the Dallas Morning News reported,
-
a gang was taking 10 percent
of his earnings from his barber shop.
-
His wife was assaulted
going to her pre-K teaching job.
-
And they were concerned
about the safety of their young daughter.
-
What could they do?
-
Run away?
-
Seek asylum in another country?
-
They didn't want to do that.
-
They just wanted to live
in their country safely.
-
But their options were limited.
-
So that month,
-
Juan Carlos moved his family
to a safer location
-
while he joined a group of migrants
on the long and perilous journey
-
from Central America
-
to a job a family member said
was open for him in the United States.
-
Bu now we're all familiar
with what awaited them
-
at the US-Mexico border.
-
The harsher and harsher penalties
doled out to those crossing there.
-
The criminal prosecutions
for crossing illegally.
-
The inhumane detention.
-
And most terribly,
the separation of families.
-
I'm here to tell you
that not only is this treatment wrong,
-
it's unnecessary.
-
This belief that the only way
to maintain order
-
is with inhumane means
-
is inaccurate.
-
And in fact, the opposite is true.
-
Only a humane system
will create order at the border.
-
When safe, orderly, legal travel
to the United States is available,
-
very few people choose
travel that is unsafe,
-
disorderly or illegal.
-
Now, I appreciate the idea
-
that legal immigration could just
resolve the border crisis
-
might sound a bit fanciful.
-
But here is the good news:
-
We have done this before.
-
I've been working
on immigration for years
-
at the Cato Institute,
-
and other think tanks in Washington DC,
-
and as the senior policy adviser
for a republican member of Congress,
-
negotiating bipartisan immigration reform.
-
And I've seen firsthand
-
how America has implemented
a system of humane order at the border
-
for Mexico.
-
It's called a guest worker program.
-
And here's the even better news.
-
We can replicate this success
for Central America.
-
Of course, some people
-
will still need to seek
asylum at the border.
-
But to understand how successful
-
this could be for immigrants
like Juan Carlos,
-
understand that until recently,
-
nearly every immigrant arrested
by Border Patrol was Mexican.
-
In 1986,
-
each Border Patrol agent
arrested 510 Mexicans.
-
Well over one per day.
-
By 2019, this number was just eight.
-
That's one every 43 days.
-
It is a 98 percent reduction.
-
So where have all the Mexicans gone?
-
The most significant change
-
is that the US began issuing
-
hundreds of thousands
of guest worker visas to Mexicans,
-
so that they can come legally.
-
José Vásquez Cabrera was among
the first Mexican guest workers
-
to take advantage of this visa expansion.
-
He told The New York Times
that before his visa
-
he'd made terrifying
illegal border crossings,
-
braving near deadly heat
and the treachery of the landscape.
-
One time, a snake killed
a member of his group.
-
Thousands of other Mexicans
also didn't make it,
-
dying of dehydration in the deserts
or drowning in the Rio Grande.
-
Millions more were
chased down and arrested.
-
Guest-worker visas have nearly ended
this inhumane chaos.
-
As Vásquez Cabrera put it,
-
"I no longer have to risk my life
-
to support my family.
-
And when I'm here,
I don't have to live in hiding."
-
Guest-worker visas actually reduced
the number of illegal crossings
-
more than the number of visas issued.
-
Jose Bacilio, another
Mexican guest worker, explained why
-
to the Washington Post in April.
-
He said, even though
he hadn't received a visa this year,
-
he wouldn't risk all of his future chances
-
by crossing illegally.
-
This likely helps explain why
-
from 1996 to 2019
-
for every guest worker
admitted legally from Mexico,
-
there was a decline in two arrests
of Mexicans crossing illegally.
-
Now, it's true,
-
Mexican guest workers
do some really tough jobs.
-
Picking fruit, cleaning crabs,
-
landscaping in a 100-degree heat.
-
And some critics maintain
that guest-worker visas
-
are not actually humane,
-
and that the workers
are just abused slaves.
-
But Vásquez Cabrera thought
a guest worker visa was liberating.
-
Not enslavement.
-
And he, like nearly
all other guest workers,
-
chose the legal path
over the illegal one, repeatedly.
-
The expansion of guest-worker
visas to Mexicans
-
has been among the most
significant humane changes
-
in US immigration policy ever.
-
And that humane change
-
imposed order on chaos.
-
So where does this leave
Central Americans,
-
like Juan Carlos?
-
Well, Central Americans received
-
just three percent of the guest-worker
visas issued in 2019,
-
even as their share of border arrests
has risen to 74 percent.
-
The US issued just one guest-worker visa
to a Central American
-
for every 78 who crossed
the border illegally in 2019.
-
So if they can't get their papers at home,
-
many take their chances,
-
coming up through Mexico
to claim asylum at the border
-
or cross illegally,
-
even if, like Juan Carlos,
they prefer to come to work.
-
The US can do better.
-
It needs to create new guest-worker visas
-
specifically for Central Americans.
-
This would create an incentive
for US businesses
-
to seek out and hire Central Americans,
-
paying for their flights
to the United States,
-
and diverting them from the illegal,
dangerous trek north.
-
Central Americans could build
flourishing lives at home,
-
without the need to seek
asylum at the border
-
or cross illegally,
-
freeing up an overwhelmed system.
-
Some people might say
-
that letting the workers go back and forth
-
will never work in Central America
-
where violence is so high.
-
But again, it worked in Mexico,
-
even as Mexico's murder rate
more than tripled over the last decade,
-
to a level higher
than much of Central America.
-
And it would work for Juan Carlos,
-
who said, despite the threats
-
he only wants to live
in the United States temporarily,
-
to make enough money
-
to sustain his family in their new home.
-
He even suggested
that a guest-worker program
-
would be one of the best things
to help Hondurans like him.
-
Santia, a 29-year-old
single mother of three from Honduras,
-
seems to agree.
-
She told the Wall Street Journal
that she came for a job
-
to support her kids and her mom.
-
Surveys of Central Americans
traveling through Mexico,
-
by the College of the Northern
Border in Mexico,
-
confirm that Juan and Santia are the norm.
-
Most, not all, but most do come for jobs
-
even if, like the Riveras,
-
they may also face
some real threats at home.
-
How much would a low-wage job help
-
a Honduran, like Juan or Santia?
-
Hondurans like them make as much
-
in one month in the United States
-
as they do in an entire year
working in Honduras.
-
A few years' work in the United States
-
can propel a Central American
into its upper middle class
-
where safety is easier to come by.
-
What Central Americans lack
is not the desire to work.
-
Not the desire to contribute
to the US economy,
-
to contribute to the lives of Americans.
-
What Central Americans lack
is a legal alternative to asylum.
-
To be able to do so legally.
-
Of course, a new guest-worker program
-
will not resolve 100 percent
of this complex phenomenon.
-
Many asylum seekers
will still need to seek safety
-
at the US border.
-
But with the flows reduced,
-
we can more easily work out ways
to deal with them humanely.
-
But ultimately,
-
no single policy has proven to do more
-
to create an immigration system
that is both humane
-
and orderly
-
than to let the workers come legally.
-
Thank you.
-
(Applause)