US VP Pence to meet with Central American leaders to discuss immigration policy
Today, US Vice President Mike Pence will meet with Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales, Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez and Salvadorian Vice President Oscar Ortiz in Guatemala to discuss US immigration policy along its southern border.
Typically transiting through Mexico into the US, a large percentage of undocumented immigrants in the country are of Salvadorian, Guatemalan or Honduran nationality. More than 40% of migrants apprehended at the southern border report escaping from violence at home; many also cite poverty as their reason for fleeing. For the Trump administration, a key campaign promise has been slowing undocumented immigration to the US.
To achieve this, Washington will likely continue to deepen cooperation with Mexico and bolster funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol to meet the administration’s demands. However, today’s meeting will serve as a reiteration of US policy. Nothing will be proposed by Pence to alleviate the situations that provoke mass migration northward. Until the dangerous realities on the ground in the aforementioned countries are addressed, something the Trump administration is unlikely to do, do not expect undocumented immigration to slow significantly in the medium- to long-term.
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