A near zero chance for Central Americans to enter US legally

I thought that Vice President Trump was rather disingenuous when he delivered his message of "If you can’t come legally, don’t come at all" to the people of Central America last month. His message was clearly directed at the thousands of Central Americans who are risking their lives and those of their children to make it to the United States. 

As I wrote on Twitter earlier today, it would be nearly impossible for any of those crossing the US border with Mexico to get permission to come to the United States legally and that was before President Trump took office.

I usually say that there's a near zero chance any Central American who is trying to cross the US/Mexico border would be able to enter legally. Looks pretty accurate. What Are the Legal Pathways for Central Americans to Enter the U.S.? https://t.co/WJEzuUb6lv

— Mike Allison (@CentAmPolMike) July 19, 2018

Since Trump took office and Attorney General Sessions got to work, the challenge of coming to the US legally has gotten worse. They canceled the nascent refugee program that had the potential to allow a small number of Central Americans to apply for refugee status from their country of origin. They then made it more difficult for people not just to win asylum but to apply at all.  

Anyway, if you want to know in greater detail why it is so difficult for people from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras to come legally to the United States, I encourage you to check out this brief post from Stephanie Leutert and Caitlyn Yates at the Lawfare blog. 

For most Central Americans, there are few options to bridge the gap between the factors driving migrants’ decisions to leave and the available visa options to the United States. While in more extreme cases, particularly for migrants fleeing violence, there are currently no immediate in-country options. This means that most Central Americans arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border are likely not skipping a U.S. immigration line, but rather finding that an applicable line may not even exist. 

Four years ago, I argued in Al Jazeera that "More than four million people of Salvadoran, Guatemalan, and Honduran descent live in the US and an estimated 30 million in the Northern Triangle. We need to think long-term about policies that will make it safer and cheaper for Central Americans to move between their countries and the US, not more difficult." We clearly live in a different time today.