Citizens' Role in Immigration Policies

A large migrant caravan was recently reported to have been traveling from Honduras, passing through several Central American countries (ex. Nicaragua) in order to reach the US border. This has raised a lot of controversy especially in light of the Trump Administration's agenda on immigration. Should the US turn these people around, or open up their borders to them? Why? What does this say about the United State's immigration policy? Is there anything in the system that needs to be changed, or do you think it's working right now? Source: https://www.vox.com/2018/10/24/18010340/caravan-trump-border-honduras-mexico

I was reading this really interesting article today: https://news.un.org/en/story/2018/06/1012312 It's about remittances, or the money that immigrants send back to their families in other countries. I was very surprised at the prevalence of this form of cash transfer. Almost one in seven people in the world are affected by them! What's more is the effect that remittances can have on a society and economy beyond just a "lifeline" (as stated in the article). These cash transfers can spur development and promote sustainability in far off, rural areas. When considering how we can achieve the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals, remittances are an important source of development funds that cannot go overlooked.

Sometimes we hold misguided beliefs about the world around us due to lapses in judgement. Most people aren't to blame for this because they aren't aware of certain neurological lapses known as cognitive biases. Recently, there has been a lot of anti-immigration rhetoric all around the world that cites terrorist threats as a main selling point. It's easy to fall for this rhetoric because of a cognitive bias known as the availability heuristic. Essentially, our brains tend to take the most recent piece of information about a certain topic and believe that it is the most important regarding to the topic at hand. When observing terrorist attacks on the news, our brains tend to over inflate the prevalence of such events around the world. Once politicians or other influential individuals begin linking terrorism to immigration, we are easily influenced to rally against immigration. Now, this is not to say that politicians are always trying to manipulate us, just that it's important to stay grounded in reason, and not let irrational fear override our decision making process.