….The closer we come to sealing off the border the more we encourage undocumented foreigners to buy instead of rent. In the old days, many people came without papers from Mexico and Central America to work for a few months and then went home, often repeating the process year after year. Today, those who get here tend to remain because they can’t be sure of making it back should they leave.
That’s one reason for the arrival of so many Central American kids. Princeton sociologist Doug Massey says the surge is a byproduct of our involvement in military conflicts in the region during the 1980s, which wrecked economies, destabilized societies and prompted many people to head here…..
“Some of these people circulated back and forth initially,” he said in an email, “but after the U.S. militarized the border in the 1990s, this became infeasible and they ended up staying north of the border. At this point their children are older and families are desperate for reunification, especially in the context of the economic turmoil and violence that arose from the U.S. intervention and never went away.”
via The Real Failures of Immigration Policy – Reason.com.