El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele declared Monday that soaring migration levels at the southern border are bad for the U.S. and even worse for Latin America because it extracts the people vital to building the solid financial conditions that would keep them in their home country.
In an interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson that aired Tuesday night, Bukele attributed the surge at the U.S.-Mexico border to three reasons: a lack of economic opportunities, the absence of security in Latin America, as well as incentives provided in the United States.
The Salvadoran president took responsibility for his country’s contribution to two of the main drivers of the emigration of his compatriots to the U.S. — a lack of economic opportunities and security.
President Bukele told Fox News:
If you don’t provide for your people — economic opportunities — if your economy is doing bad, if your security is doing bad, people are going leave, and you’re going to go and try to find a rich country, right? They’re not going to leave for Guatemala. They want to go to the United States. So, that makes this country dependent on immigration because you become a net exporter of people. You’re not exporting products or services; you’re exporting people.”
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