Andrew Wainer
Conclusion
The United States has multiple development programs
in the Northern Triangle:
Honduras and El Salvador received Millennium Challenge
Compacts—both expected to
be renewed in 2012—while
Guatemala and Honduras
are two of the 20 Feed the
Future focus countries, the
U.S. government’s primary
global food security program
(see Table 11 on next page).
In November 2011, it was also
announced that El Salvador
would be one of only four nations worldwide to participate
in the State Department’s
Partnership for Growth, intended to “accelerate and sustain broad-based economic
growth.”67 No major U.S. deThis small farmer in the high-migration department of Morazán in El Salvador is working with the Millennium
velopment program explicitly
Challenge Corporation to increase his agricultural production through improved irrigation and other techniques.
includes migration measures
in these high-intensity unauthorized migration nations.
an official part of the compact, the MCC’s work with small
and medium farmers has effectively provided opportunity to This is a missed opportunity that incurs costs to migrants,
deportees who return to the regions where the MCC is work- their families left behind, and the effectiveness of U.S. iming. Oscar Armando González lived in the United States for migration policy.
The economic causes of migration could be explicitly ad10 years before he was deported back to El Salvador in 2010.
“The first months you feel sad because there you earned dressed by host governments, development agencies, and
more and you could help your family [with remittances],” multilateral institutions. Migration variables could be explicitly measured and integrated into development programGonzález said. But through a farmers’ association working
ming in the region. Migration from Central America to
with the MCC in the northeastern department of Morazán,
the United States will continue, but ideally it will become
González is settling back into a life growing tomatoes, cua choice conducted through legal means that are more efficumbers, and chiles.
cient, humane, and beneficial to migrants, the host country,
Although he misses the wages he was making in the Unit- and the countries of origin. As Enrique Merlos of FUNDE
ed States and his ability to send money back home, González said, “We want people who go abroad to do so because they
has found that there are advantages he didn’t possess as an want to, not because they have to.”
unauthorized immigrant in the United States: proximity to
his children and parents, and the ease with which he can
live and work in El Salvador. “You have fun working here,” Recommendations
González said. “There when you don’t have papers at any Remittances
moment they can knock on your door looking for you.” His Measurement and Evaluation: In nations with migration
siblings in the United States are still sending money, and levels as intensive as the Northern Triangle, U.S. development
González said he is using some of it to make his plot of land programs should include migration propensity as a specific
more productive using the irrigation techniques he learned variable they measure. The Inter-American Foundation
through the MCC. González said that he now doesn’t want is a leader among U.S. development agencies in making
to go back to the United States. “I’ve adapted to working the connections between migration and development in
countries of origin. The MCC and USAID could incorporate
here,” he said. “We are going to try to start a new life.”
14 Briefing Paper, June 2012