Lines distinguishing political entities like countries, states and territories have been changing as long as human beings have been interacting. In January 2017, the border between North and South Carolina was realigned and 19 houses moved across state lines. Texas ceded six islands along the Rio Grande to Mexico while Mexico ceded three islands and two bancos back to Texas in 2009. Until the 1860s, more than half of the U.S. budget was spent on conflicts with native nations and colonial expansion. Even today, the United States is expanding its borders into sovereign native nations such as Pine Ridge, Standing Rock and the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe lands.
These few examples undermine the original question. Countries can, and do, redraw borders. Rights can be, and have been, violated. All of this logical conflict is particularly relevant to the immigration debate and the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program specifically, which the Supreme Court's latest ruling saved but which no doubt remains on President Donald Trump's proverbial chopping block.
As of July 2018, Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, account for just a little less than 89 percent of all DACA recipients. Examining the relationship between the U.S. and Latin America, specifically these four nations, shows that the immigration debate is nestled in a much broader, more complex field of policies than a simple eight-word question could possibly address.
Recent domestic reactionary policies aside, a variety of past American policies have contributed to political, social and economic instability overseas, which drives mass migration: NAFTA, the war on drugs, military interventions and coups. These are all examples of U.S. policy that has exported violence and economic uncertainty that have coalesced into the immigration crisis at the southern border.
Throughout Central and South America the policies, tactics and influence of the U.S. are felt: Americans helped overthrow democratically elected Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz in 1954; also in Guatemala, the U.S. helped install the authoritarian governments of Armas, Arana and Montt. There was support for paramilitary "death squads" in El Salvador like the Atlactal Battalion in the 1980s; in 2009 the U.S. backed the coup to remove Honduran President Manuel Zelaya. That's just the beginning. The violence the U.S.has exported to the region cannot be overlooked in light of the immigration crisis.
The impacts extend beyond political and military policy decisions. Economic policies have greatly exacerbated regional instability.
Beyond the effects on the American Rust Belt, NAFTA and other free trade agreements also impacted Latin America. From 2000 to 2005, 1.5 million Mexican jobs were lost.
At the same time, the Mexican-born population living in the U.S. increased by almost 2 million. In 2006, El Salvador entered the CAFTA-DR trade agreement that allowed American industrial and commercial goods to enter the country duty-free and then crippled domestic industries. Honduras entered CAFTA in 2005 and transformed from a net agricultural exporter to a net importer, which forced farmers out of work.
So it cannot be surprising that the H-2A visa program for temporary agricultural workers saw an increase of more than 200 percent between 2007 and 2017. With this evidence there is a very plain question for the original, "How can one boil the debate about immigration into such a simple query?"
I propose two questions to guide the debate about immigration: "How have the policies of the United States set the conditions under which people must immigrate? And how can we address those policies to engage with immigrants in a more constructive way?"
Crises don't happen overnight or in a vacuum and neither did the one at the southern border of the U.S.
American political, military and economic interventions in Latin America have left deep scars in the region. DACA or not, migrants will still come to the U.S. seeking better economic prospects or a shelter from violence.
They will be seeking the American dream.
Immigrants deserve to live in dignity and stability, and before they arrive at our southern doorstep we have to take it upon ourselves to confront our own pattern of aggression toward their home countries.
If we change our own behaviors, we can rebuild what has been destroyed and give immigrants hope and security to, perhaps, stay in their home countries.
If they want to come to the U.S. to pursue their dreams it must be on their own accord and not out of desperation.
However, if we, as a country, don't examine and change ourselves and we only address immigrants once they arrive at our borders due to — at least in part — our own policies, then we are just callous hypocrites.
Ian Pulz is a student at Albany Law School. He received his master's degree in conflict transformation from Eastern Mennonite University.
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