So much for "it's a manufactured crisis"..

[Dill]

(04-01-2019, 08:46 PM)SunsetBengal Wrote: Why keep sending aid to shithole Nations, when their government keeps it, and it never reaches the citizens who's lives that it's supposed to improve?  Those Nations don't even provide a safe environment for their citizens to live life peacefully, free from the terror of drug lords.  I understand why those people want to leave their homes.  The onus should be on pressuring their greedy governments to do the right thing, and clean things up in their own Nations.  If cutting off aid that never reaches the intended people is the way to get the ball rolling?  Then so be it.

There are no "shithole nations," Sunset.

Let us for a moment consider ONE of the "Mexican Nations" in question--Guatemala. 

The U.S. bears some responsibility for the unstable government there, having overturned a legitimately elected democratic government in 1954 and replaced it with a military dictatorship that would insure that United Fruit could pay workers there the wages it--not the Guatemalan government--wanted to pay.

Then that military dictatorship set about repressing peasants, especially Mayan. And when it was overthrown by another dictatorship, that one was even harder on the peasants.  Back in those days "aid" meant military training and helicopter gunships.  And the result of that policy was a civil war in which some 200,000 people died, as the U.S. backed government (also backed by Apartheid South Africa) sought to pacify the obviously Communist peasants.

When the war ended in 1995, once again a civilian government was installed.  For some 15 years, the economy was on the upswing and some justice was meeted out to the murderous leaders of government terror during the civil war. But the countryside has remained unstable, as in insecure. In 2006, the UN formed the CICG (International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala) to monitor continued abuse by still out of control provincial security forces. Since 2012, that insecurity has increased as Government corruption has surged, first under Andreas Molina, now under Jimmy Morales.  And it this insecurity and corruption which is now driving Guatemalans out of the country. And now Morales, apparently with the blessing of Trump, has ordered the CICIG out of the country.

If Trump cuts off aid to Guatemala, the fight against corruption will be over. The country will again fall into the hands of its military. I think we can expect, within  6 months, a greater surge of refugees north.  I know some hate long posts so I won't mention why the same thing will be happening in Honduras and El Salvador.  
So we were sending aid to help stabilize these countries and eliminate or at least mitigate the conditions which created refugees. And we were supporting a Un commission which has had some success in checking and rooting out corruption. When we stop aid for all that, expect a concatenation of crises in the Mesoamerican region which will spread northward.