Dangerous Passage

The United States has a humanitarian crisis on our southern border-now a refugee crisis-which requires an emergency response domestically and the urgent recalibration of our foreign policy. In dealing with this crisis, it is imperative that we understand its root causes and why it is not about America putting out a welcome mat. It is about a desperate effort by desperate parents to do what any parent would do to protect their child from violence and the threat of death. The current crisis in Central America does not come as a complete surprise. At the end of the civil wars that raged across Central America in the 1980s and 1990s, the U.S. did not pay enough attention to the region. We did not remain sufficiently engaged with our Central American neighbors nor work closely enough with them to address the structural problems of social and economic development or the societal violence that is fueling today's crisis.