Editor’s letter

Some 188,000 would-be migrants were turned back at the U.S. border last month, the highest monthly total in two decades.

That the number is not even higher is an accident of geography. Central Americans must cross Mexico to get to the U.S. border (see Main Stories, p.5), a daunting trek in itself that suggests the power of the forces pushing them north. Meanwhile, Venezuelans are simply too far away, saving the U.S. from having to confront by far the biggest migration crisis in the Western Hemisphere, the 2 million Venezuelans who have crossed into Colombia. In each case, the causes of migration—gang violence in Honduras, climate change in Guatemala, the complete failure of the state in Venezuela—differ, but the principle is the same: One country’s internal problems ripple out to create waves of regional destabilization. We have seen this process play out in devastating ways across the Mideast, Africa, and Central Asia, with millions of refugees trying to make their way to Europe.

In the Western Hemisphere, Haiti (see Briefing, p.12) and Venezuela are at or close to the “failed state” threshold. The lesson we’ve learned in the rest of the world is that mobility and instability can make crises spiral out of control. By failing for years to create a workable and fair immigration policy, we have created a disordered pileup at the border. But if we don’t address the problems of our hemisphere—drought, corruption, crime, poverty—at the source, our neighbors will become increasingly fragile and the problems at the border will get worse. Preventing that demands an engagement and investment in the institutions of civil society in our own part of the world that’s at least comparable to what the West did with Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall. That is obviously not cheap or politically easy. But we have learned the hard way that the costs of allowing instability to metastasize are higher still. Mark Gimein

Managing editor