Scholar: Weather, Crises, Politics Spur Next Border Kids Wave

Political gridlock in the United States, ongoing social crises in countries to the south, and cooler temperatures that make overland treks easier will combine to produce another surge of illegal immigrant children into Texas this fall, an expert on the Americas told Newsmax TV on Wednesday. 

Carl Meacham, director of the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told "MidPoint" host Ed Berliner that nothing except the weather has changed at either end of the illegal-immigration thread connecting the United States and three Central American nations in crisis.

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"It's a result, in part, of inaction in Congress and the White House," Meacham said of the coming influx. "But it also has to do with the fact that there has not been a response to deal with the root causes of why these kids are coming to the United States."

With Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala reeling from poverty, joblessness and an increase in drug-gang warfare, "We have a situation where you have violence, you have abuse of children, and parents feel that that's the only option that they have," said Meacham.

Meacham said the U.S. must help those countries quell crime and social unrest and, at the same time, tackle immigration reform at home — a task that includes revisiting U.S. laws still on the books "that make it easier or make it attractive for folks to come to the United States."

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