When there were no job training programs. No parks in which to play. Many of the young today have little hope for the future. They are caught in downward spirals of poverty from which they see no escape. Further frustrated by marketing policies that lead us to believe that name brand shoes make a person, the young human capital of our countries is fleeing through immigration to the streets of our cities or, in the case of Central America, to the United States.
People are desperate.
And no matter how high a wall they build between Mexico and the United States, people will try to cross. And they will try to cross because they are desperate, not because they want to be gringos. That is desperation. It would make so much more sense to invest in job creation in a country like Honduras rather than spend millions of dollars on repressive immigration policies. And with those jobs, access to markets.