There was a time when north-south migratory flows in the western hemisphere were limited to Mexico and the Caribbean. That changed in the 1980’s, when Central America’s civil wars sent hundreds of thousands of migrants thru Mexico to the US, and then in the 1990’s, when people fleeing violence in Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, and Ecuador also began searching for opportunity.
这一辩论缺乏的是考虑到拉美大环境。先前有段时期，西半球的南北向移民流动局限于墨西哥以及加勒比。二十世纪八十年代，当中美洲的内战将数十万移民通过墨西哥送进美国时，这一情况发生了改变。九十年代，当逃避发生在哥伦比亚、委内瑞拉、秘鲁以及厄瓜多尔暴力的人们同样开始寻找机会时，形势又发生了变化。