One Chart that Explains the U.S. Border Crisis
One Chart that Explains the U.S. Border Crisis
Americas Quarterly Social Inclusion Index 2014 shows Central America’s Northern Triangle at the bottom of the ranking, which underlines the root causes for the migrant exodus to the United States.
This summer, a considerable amount of attention has fallen on the alarming influx of Central American migrants attempting to cross over into the United States from across the Mexican border, including some 57,000 unaccompanied minors this year alone. The bulk of these migrants come from the impoverished "northern triangle" of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, countries that suffer from some of the hemisphere's worst crime and poverty rates.
The bleak situation there is borne out by the rankings of the 2014 Americas Quarterly Social Inclusion Index (shown above), which was published Tuesday by the New York City and Washington-based Americas Society/Council of the Americas (AS/COA). The index weighs a complicated array of 21 factors, ranging from the country's economic prosperity to the vitality of its civil society to its protection of human rights to access to jobs and decent housing. For two years in a row, Honduras and Guatemala have finished at the bottom of the pile. This is from the organization's press release sent to journalists:
This year’s Index exposes a toxic mix of high poverty rates, lack of opportunities, gender and race disparities, and very low access to formal jobs and education, which is at the root of the growing numbers of unaccompanied youth from Central America entering the United States....
