One-Third of Guatemala’s Population Would Like to Come to the US

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How much is too much when it comes to illegal immigration, or even legal immigration? At what point do we finally return to the universal principle expressed by Calvin Coolidge in 1925 that “our Government owes its first duty to our own people”? Well, unless the DHS finally slams the door shut, it appears that Central America is a bottomless well waiting to be emptied out into our country, primarily through dangerous smuggling over our land border.

According to a recent survey of Guatemalans conducted by the Association for Research and Social Studies and Barometro de las Americas, 39.2 percent of Guatemalans would like to migrate, 85 percent of them to the United States. Which means that roughly 5.6 million Guatemalans would like to come here, not including the close to one million who already came here in recent years. The survey was reported in a local Guatemala City paper, Prensa Libre, and was picked up by the Daily Caller.

According to the survey, taken of 1,596 Guatemalans and published last Thursday, 58 percent of respondents said they had relatives in the United States. As the Prensa Libre article notes, family reunification and “lack of employment and poverty” are why they desire to come here. It’s self-evident that this has nothing to do with asylum and everything to do with economic reasons. Liberals and many faux conservative supporters of amnesty defend illegal immigration as a natural consequence of a “broken” legal immigration system, where it is impossible to come here legally. The problem with that assertion is that the period of illegal immigration has overlapped with the most protracted period of legal immigration expansion and has originated from the countries that have had a monopoly on our legal immigration. According to Pew, 50 percent of all immigrants since 1965 have come from Latin America, the primary source of illegal immigration. Specific to Central America, before the recent surge, “the number of immigrants from Central America) has grown 28-fold since 1970, from 118,000 to nearly 3.3 million in 2018 — six times faster than the overall immigrant population,” according to the Center for Immigration Studies. In fact, 18 percent of El Salvador’s population is already here, if you add the immigrant population in America to those remaining in their home country.

If anything, it is clear that the liberal premise is contrary to the reality – that the more we hand over the keys to immigration to a particular area, the more people will come through all available channels – both legal and illegal – to join their friends, families, and communities.

Read the rest of the story HERE.

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