Number 3, July 2012
Development Works
Bread for the World Institute provides
policy analysis on hunger and strategies
to end it. The Institute educates opinion
leaders, policy makers and the public
about hunger in the United States and
abroad.
Snapshot
Laura Elizabeth Pohl
• Undocumented immigrants
frequently leave their families
behind, go into debt to pay for
difficult journeys, risk being
victimized by organized gangs or
dying of dehydration in the desert
while attempting to cross the U.S.
border, and are confined to lowpaying work because they do not
have the legal right to work here.
Development Assistance: A Key Part
of the Immigration Puzzle
This series, Development Works, focuses on effective international development
assistance and why Americans should support it. At first glance, immigration
may seem like a completely unrelated topic, since people tend to think of it
mainly in terms of its impact inside the United States. For most of us, immigration is less about international policy than about hot-button national, state, and
local political questions. The reality is that it is both a domestic and an international issue. To make the best decisions as a nation on the complex questions of
immigration policy, we need to see both dimensions. The crux of the missing
international half is “Why do immigrants leave their home country and come to
the United States?”
The common description of the United States as a “nation of immigrants” is,
of course, quite accurate. From the time impoverished people in England paid
for a fresh start in the American colonies by working as indentured servants, the
1
• Unauthorized immigrants, arriving
from rural communities in Mexico
and Central America, are primarily
healthy people in their teens,
twenties, or thirties. Yet poverty
combined with lack of economic
opportunity at home lead them to
see migration to the United States
as their best option.
• U.S. immigration has both
domestic and international
dimensions. To make the best
decisions on immigration
policies, we need to consider
how the U.S. assistance
going to immigrants’ home
countries can best contribute to
lasting improvements in rural
economies and living conditions.
Development agencies are
beginning to incorporate into
their Latin American projects the
easing of pressures to migrate.