House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Honduras first lady Ana Garcia de Hernandez are making separate tours of the south Texas border, where most of the 52,000 unaccompanied illegal immigrant children have crossed this year.
But while the political debate has focused on U.S. immigration enforcement, a key economic factor has been lost in the clamor. Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, which are supplying three-quarters of the latest cross-border flood, are bucking a trend in Latin America toward stronger local economies based on sound reforms and security.
Those three Central American countries are dependent on their diaspora to prop up their own woeful economies. Immigrants send back billions of dollars to their families. Remittances have risen to 16.5% of El Salvador's GDP, 15.7% of Honduras' and 10% of Guatemala's, according to World Bank data. Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic and Bolivia rely on remittances for 4.1% to 9.7% of GDP.
But the figure drops precipitously for every other country in Latin America. Mexico, with the largest immigrant population in the U.S. with as many as 13 million people, now relies on remittances for just 2% of GDP.
Migrant remittances to Mexico were $22 billion in 2013, 29% below their 2006 peak.
For Colombia, once a locus of drug-war violence, that has turned itself around, remittances are only 1.1% of GDP. Free-market star Chile's figure is 0%.
Economic Lifeline
It's not surprising to see Central American leaders urging the U.S. to let the newest arrivals stay. Those migrants' remittances offer a lifeline to desperately poor countries. While the money goes to families, it helps the broader economy and ultimately fills government coffers.
A 2008 Pew Research Center survey found that 54% of foreign-born Hispanics send remittances to their home countries, compared to 17% of U.S.-born Hispanics. Undocumented immigrants are believed to send more cash home than either.
Virtually all the cash received by the three remittance outliers is from the U.S. (Guatemala 89%, El Salvador 90%, Honduras 87%).
Meanwhile, Mexico and Colombia, which used to send large numbers of illegal immigrants to the U.S., aren't part of the current surge. Both have installed major — and sometimes painful — economic reforms and embraced globalization via free trade.
Colombia Cleans Up
In 2002, Colombia moved aggressively to modernize its economy during the presidency of Alvaro Uribe. His signature achievement was to make the country safe — a crucial start to economic success. In Bogota, he privatized the trash company to get the capital Singapore-clean. Investment laws were improved, including tax-free zones to woo foreign investors. The state oil company was partially privatized. Uribe signed a U.S. free trade deal, though the Democrat-led Senate let it collect dust for years before ratifying it in late 2011.