What Do You Think Of El Salvador’s Plan To Reduce Illegal Immigration To The Us From Their Country?

El Salvador’s president, Mauricio Funes, is urging the United States to form a new alliance with Central American countries to reduce illegal immigration through an economic development program.
Funes is in Los Angeles this week discussing immigration issues with Salvadorans who live in the United States.
His visit was timed to coincide with the last day of registration Tuesday for the U.S. government’s renewed “temporary protected status” (TPS) program.
The Bush administration started the program after an earthquake devastated El Salvador in 2001. TPS has allowed about 217,000 Salvadorans to work in the United States.
It originally was scheduled to end this month but is being extended for another 18 months.
Funes said illegal immigration will stop only when poverty in El Salvador and other Central American countries ends.
“Immigration does not occur by chance,” Funes said during a press conference at the Salvadoran Consulate in Los Angeles. “They come to seek what is not found in El Salvador.”
Funes gave few details for his proposal and only hinted at what he believes the United States should contribute.
“We need to build an alliance with the U.S. government so that we can push a regional social policy,” Funes said.
The United States should work with Central American countries to “build a solid partnership to reduce levels of inequality,” he said.
Funes’ plan for reducing the poverty that leads to illegal immigration from El Salvador is similar to President Obama’s economic stimulus program.
The El Salvadoran government is spending on projects to increase housing, tourism and public health that Funes said would create jobs and attract private investment.
Part of it is focused on rural areas that are the source of many illegal immigrants to the United States.
An estimated 2.8 million Salvadorans live in the United States, many of them illegally. They sent home nearly $3.5 billion in remittances last year, which is an important source of income for the Salvadoran economy.
El Salvador is second only to Mexico as the country of origin for most of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States.
Funes’ renewed concern about illegal immigration was prompted partly by a massacre two weeks ago in northern Mexico of 73 illegal immigrants by drug cartel assassins.
The immigrants were trying to cross the border into the United States to look for work. They included 13 Salvadorans.
Members of the Zetas drug cartel first tried to recruit the immigrants to help them with assassinations and other criminal activity. When they refused, they were lined up inside an abandoned building at a ranch south of Laredo, Texas, and shot.
One Ecuadoran man who had been shot in the neck escaped and notified police. The Mexican military sent in troops who killed three of the drug cartel members in a shootout at the ranch at Tamaulipas, Mexico. Several others escaped.
Funes said the international social policy he sought with the United States and Mexico should include measures to ensure the human rights of immigrants are respected.
He held his press conference only days after the bodies of the Salvadorans killed in the Tamaulipas massacre were returned home. The Salvadoran government is helping to pay their funeral expenses.
“These are poor families who need support from the Salvadoran state to not be forced to send their children to get the money they can not get in El Salvador,” Funes said.
Funes plans to meet with Mexican President Felipe Calderon on Friday to discuss how El Salvador could join in the fight against drug cartels.
He said during his televised press conference that a regional strategy against drug cartels would be more effective than “isolated efforts.”
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