Why the Sudden Influx of Child Immigrants to the United States?

In recent months, America’s southern border areas have seen a massive new surge of unaccompanied minors illegally entering into the country, to the unprecedented tune of tens of thousands.

 

But why these children are braving such obviously harsh conditions and trials to reach American soil is a question few in the mainstream media will highlight. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson recently testified before the Senate that the conditions in these children’s home countries, particularly the Central American nations of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, are driving this new and quite sharp spike in unaccompanied child migrants to the border. This is both a true and disingenuous (or at least, overly simplistic) answer.

 

Yes, it is true that violence and poverty are significant drivers of these children’s perilous migration from Latin America. Insofar as that goes, all emigration is motivated by a perception that quality of life at the destination will be better than in the source country. But simple praxeological analysis clearly illustrates that the president’s illegal bypassing of Congress is the newest motivator for this mass migration that we see today, particularly as the sharp numbers increase involves minors specifically eligible for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) Program protections. After all, it is not exactly as though Latin America has ever not been broadly characterized by violence and poverty in the last half-century. The significant factor that changed from then until now was the DACA and ignoring it as causation is simply absurd.

 

The ratified Constitution grants lawmaking authority to a single body of the United States federal government: the Congress. And the Constitution does not mince words: “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States.” This Congress chose not to enact the so-called Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act yet the president unilaterally, and quite illegally, implemented its effective provisions as DHS policy via executive order. But then, the president has never really shied from breaking the law of the land in pursuit of political goals.

 

This is a “humanitarian crisis” in this administration’s own illegal making.