Kennedy: The reasons why the caravans keep coming
FBN’s Kennedy on the migrant caravan heading to the U.S. and the drug problem in Honduras.
This caravan through Mexico has turned into ridiculous political theater for both sides as passion-fanning optics take precedence over safety and systems.
We know that another large caravan of mostly undocumented Latin Americans is making its way from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala through Mexico, but why are they on the march?
Some are coming to participate in our booming economy and tight labor market, because fewer jobs mean higher wages. Others suffer from migratory fomo and are literally jumping on the band wagon because it's getting a lot of traction and attention, while others are fleeing absolute hellholes overrun with murder and corruption. Honduras is such a place, and it seems no one wants to make Honduras great again.
Honduras has become this hemisphere's clearing house for cocaine and some synthetic opioids, and with all that product and money spilling through such a small place it's only natural the magnet of the black market draws in and taints those with money, power and badges.
One Honduran drug lord, Devis Leonel Rivera Maradiaga, helped put away seven national police officers, the former president's son and most of a hoity-toity banking family. That's all part and parcel of the drug war, squeezing well connected informants to address the supply end of our nations longest and deadliest money-suck, and while it's good for murderous bad guys and corrupt thugs to rot in dingy jail cells, it never addresses the *demand* in this country.
Let's pretend the demand will always be here - and though we all know drugs are bad, m'kay? - if we only address one side of the equation algebra shows us we'll end up with the wrong answer.
Legal marijuana is cutting into the profits of Latin and South American drug cartels, and with a vast majority of Americans supporting legal cannabis the next logical step of legalizing the supply for other substances is not too far in the distant future.
If we want different outcomes in murder rates, illegal immigration and hemispheric health we are going to have to adjust the means by which we come to different results. The first step is ending the drug war and legally refocusing the supply chain so people can make consensual transactions without collaterally damaging entire societies that seek constant refuge in ours.