Editorial: We can't ignore immigrant caravan - or what is causing it

It's not entirely clear whether or how the United States will follow through on President Donald Trump's tweeted promise to punish three Central American countries for failing to control out-migration that has produced a caravan 7,000 strong and growing headed for Mexico's border with the United States. What is clear is that this approach is precisely the wrong way to address the problem, both in terms of the way the United States allots foreign aid and in the way we discuss immigration.

It is also clear, of course, that the thousands of Central American immigrants cannot be allowed simply to storm across the border and that their appearance will put additional burden on already strained resources dealing with the complex circumstances of security along our southern border. Those are immediate problems that will require a mixture of both steadfast resolve and responsible compassion.

But for a longer term solution, the immigrant caravan has to be recognized not as a campaign strategy for the midterm elections but as an object lesson for a larger question that none of the debate over immigration - neither from the Trump camp nor from its critics - has seriously considered: How do we keep these huddled masses from Central and South America from surging toward the hope they see in the United States?

We start toward an answer by accurately characterizing the problem. Although statistics do not support the notion that illegal immigrants pose a greater danger to Americans than citizens, it is not irrational to surmise that some lawbreakers or miscreants may be seeking to blend into the masses as a means of entering our country. It is also, however, not constructive. For, the immigrant masses are lawbreakers only in the sense that they perceive no other hope for themselves and their families than to try in any way they can to get to a society where they can have some chance for a secure and manageable future. Overwhelmingly, they are poverty-stricken mothers, fathers and children marching hundreds of miles on foot to flee violence, oppression and desperation.

It does not take a foreign policy genius to see that withholding aid from their countries of origin can only add to the conditions that drive them to leave in the first place. What we need is not to withdraw our assistance to El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras or any other country from which fear-oppressed peoples are stirred to flee, but to review how the assistance we are providing is being managed and to work more closely with the leadership in those countries to address the conditions so many people are trying to escape.

We will not get to that point by making these unfortunate hordes into a political rallying cry, nor by pretending that they present no problem for us. Political leaders who want to solve this epidemic will recognize that while its symptoms must be contained, its cure will not be achieved until we address it at its source.