On January 24, 2014, Honduran President-elect Juan Orlando Hernández is set to take the oath of office. This inauguration comes at a time when the Central American nation is in the midst of the worst security and financial crisis of its existence. Drug trafficking organizations and related violence have elevated murder rates in Honduras to the highest in the world.[1] Along with the violence is the growing problem of gangs and cartels that spill over its borders and hinder economic development throughout the region.
The U.S. immigration and border security system is often called broken and failed, prompting calls for comprehensive, complex legislation that provides amnesty to millions of unlawful immigrants and would supposedly fix the problem. Exhibit one is the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act (S. 744). The act ignores most of the major effective immigration laws on the books, substitutes amnesty as a cure-all, and provides so-called solutions to non-existent problems, making the real problems even worse.