Stark inequalities driving desperate migrants towards USA

The surge of migrants at the United States’ southern border is a challenge for the Biden administration in its first few months in office.

Stark inequalities driving desperate migrants towards USA

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• Surge of migrants: The surge of migrants at the United States’ southern border is a challenge for the Biden administration in its first few months in office. Vice President Kamala Harris’s went to Central America (first official mission abroad) showing how important the issue of migration is.
• Panama and others: However, Panama was left off the itinerary of her two-day trip, which included stops in Guatemala and Mexico. This despite the unprecedented number of migrants attempting to cross our border through a treacherous area of jungle known as the Darién Gap. The problem of uncontrolled migration is not isolated to Texas, California, New Mexico, or Arizona. Farther south, on the Panamanian border, a parallel crisis is unfolding as unprecedented numbers of migrants from Haiti, Cuba, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East attempt to cross the Darién Gap en route to Canada and the United States.
• A global crisis: The situation is an international humanitarian crisis that knows no borders and requires immediate collaboration. The Darién jungle is one of the last untapped tropical forests in the Americas, stretching more than 60 miles from eastern Panama to northern Colombia. It is so dense that it interrupts the Pan-American Highway—a road that otherwise connects the Americas from Tierra del Fuego, Argentina, to Alaska—and is considered one of the most dangerous stretches of jungle in the world. Migrants often make the journey through the area without food, water, or protection from wild animals and human and drug traffickers. An average of 20,000 people enter Panama by foot through the Darién Gap annually.
• What's driving the desperate migrants: The devastation of the COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with severe weather caused by climate change and escalating violence, is driving migrants to leave their countries of origin, some of which are as far-flung as India, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uzbekistan, and Senegal—to pursue a better life elsewhere.
• Right solution: To control all this, first the strengthening of visa requirements and background checks throughout Latin America is a must. Members of terrorist organizations and sanctioned parties find their way into Panama, where they are not permitted to enter in the first place. Second, the nations of the Americas have to collaborate to control the flow of migration. Since 2016, the governments of Panama and Costa Rica have worked together to put in place a joint policy to secure safe passage of migrants through their territories based on each country’s ability to ensure migrants’ care and safety. The countries of the Americas need to address this issue through regional cooperation, rather than disjointed bilateral actions and blame games.
• Summary: The stories of these migrants, and the drastic measures to which they go to pursue a better future, are a sobering reminder of the stark inequalities and hardships that many face around the world. Migrants undertake grueling journeys to meet their most fundamental human needs of prosperity, security, and dignity.

 

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