While coming up with $5 billion out of a $3 trillion budget to put toward a border wall and secure our own county is apparently too much to ask, the federal government did just manage to scrounge up a whopping $10.6 billion – most of it via American taxpayer dollars – to fork over to Central America and Mexico in foreign aid and “investment" to try and keep people from coming here.
The AP reported Tuesday that the U.S. government has pledged “$5.8 billion in aid and investment Tuesday for strengthening government and economic development in Central America, and another $4.8 billion in development aid for southern Mexico.”
The ongoing plan, though it’s never worked before, is to strengthen job opportunities and economic circumstances in Latin American countries like Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador so their people won’t have to migrate illegally to the United States. In other words, American taxpayers are now on the financial hook to pay people to not immigrate illegally.
Of course, the recently elected president of Mexico was all too happy about the plan.
“I have a dream that I want to see become a reality ... that nobody will want to go work in the United States anymore,” President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said, praising the incoming funds.
Funds available largely thanks to American taxpayers’ wallets, of course.
Oh, and it gets better! The U.S. has also apparently expressed interest in Obrador’s proposal to invest in Mexican agriculture, forestry and tourism projects, likely signaling even more tax dollar-backed checks to be written in the future.
But when it comes to Mexico’s part, the AP reports, “It was unclear if Mexico would give anything in return.”
That’s not stopping them from asking for the funds from us, though.
“[Mexican Foreign Relations Secretary Marcelo] Ebrard had previously suggested that about $25 billion in U.S. investment would be an appropriate figure for what Mexicans and Central Americans have dubbed ‘The Alliance for Prosperity’ in the region,” the report added.
The same week that the State Department announced the billions in funding going to Central America, Democrats again shut down Trump’s proposed $5 billion toward a border wall to help stop illegal immigration into the United States, complaining it was a “waste of taxpayer money.”
According to USAID, between 2001 and 2017 the United States sent over $127 million in public and private funds to Honduras, nearly $75 million to El Salvador, about $297 million to Guatemala, and nearly $88 million to Mexico.