By Anna Bickley
More than 100,000 asylum-seekers—the highest number in more than a decade—reached the United States’ southern border in March 2019. Many came from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras—known also as the Northern Triangle of Central America—to escape violence and limited economic opportunity.
However, this influx of refugees does not seem to be reflected in American policy. The United States plans to admit a maximum of 18,000 refugees in 2020—the lowest number admitted since 1980—under strict new admissions ceilings set by the current presidential administration. Additionally, the current administration has slashed aid in Central America, much of which was intended for the Northern Triangle, from nearly $700 million to $530 million with plans to decrease further in the coming years.
At the moment, many of the most dire problems facing the citizens of the Northern Triangle— especially gang violence, crime, struggling educational systems, national disasters, and limited economic opportunity—can be traced back to the government’s lack of necessary resources to deal with these issues. In 2013, the attorney general of Honduras stated that his office only had the resources to investigate one-fifth of all homicide cases in the country with the highest murder rate in the world. Honduras and the other nations in the Northern Triangle need funds to deal with the pervasive issues that are driving people to seek asylum in other countries; however, they are severely lacking in the institutional capacity to gather such funds.
Due to frequent tax evasion in the Northern Triangle, only an estimated 70 percent of wage-earners in Guatemala and one-third in El Salvador pay any personal income tax. Tax collection rates in the Northern Triangle are among the lowest in the world with Honduras’ tax revenue at 19 percent of GDP, El Salvador’s at 16 percent, and Guatemala’s at merely 10.3 percent.
Targeted aid has helped to improve tax collection in the past. In 2004, USAID partnered with the Salvadoran government to improve El Salvador’s revenue collection capacity and audit systems at the national tax collection agency. The $10 million investment helped El Salvador to raise an additional $1.5 billion in taxes without increasing tax rates. Similar investments could drastically increase the capacity of Northern Triangle governments to solve many of the social and political issues that push people to flee to the U.S. in the first place.
However, increased revenue would be ineffective against government corruption. Northern Triangle governments continually rank among the world’s most corrupt—in all three nations, former presidents are currently serving prison sentences. Corruption costs Honduras an estimated $367 million a year, or 4.3% of GDP, and El Salvador approximately lost $550 million to corruption in 2015 alone.
Some recent anti-corruption initiatives have had positive outcomes. Guatemala's UN-backed International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) was established in 2006 to prosecute corruption cases. Within three years of its founding, impunity levels for serious crimes dropped from 95 to 72 percent with homicide rates steadily falling ever since. In 2015, CICIG’s investigations led to the arrest of Guatemala’s sitting president Otto Pérez Molina who is currently awaiting trial for corruption. Historically, the U.S. Congress contributed about a third of CICIG’s $18 million annual budget.
Finally, many are driven from their homes in search of greater economic opportunities abroad. In part due to the lack of tax revenue and the abundance of government corruption, the economies of the countries in the Northern Triangle are often stagnant and lacking in opportunity. Aid has proven to be successful in the past, especially in Guatemala wherein 2013 USAID agricultural programming helped increase rural farmers’ sales and created 20,000 new jobs in agriculture.
Though it is unrealistic to expect Congress to funnel infinite aid into the Northern Triangle and see results, it seems counterproductive to slash aid in the region given its historical success and importance. Instead, a strategy to address the root of the crisis in the Northern Triangle is more vital than ever before. A plan which would include domestic initiatives to strengthen porous tax regimes and combat corruption could be a major game-changer for many citizens who desperately wish to stay in their country but cannot due to these issues.
