Tucker Carlson recently interviewed El Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele. The pair discussed topics ranging from Bukele’s policy successes to the ‘death of the West’ and Donald Trump’s potential reelection to President of the United States. As the interview drew to a close President Bukele mentioned something that immediately caught our attention: The Salvadoran President claimed that 62% of Salvadorans in the United States wanted to return to El Salvador and that 18% of Salvadorans in the United States were already actively engaged in planning their move.

An official government page of the El Salvadoran state further reinforces this claim with promotional material about the successes of El Salvadorans in their homeland from abroad and a section titled Incentives and Exclusive Benefits for Salvadorans abroad.

This page lays out a series of benefits designed to attract El Salvadorans back to their homeland and makes mention of a special law that the nation’s congress has already passed. The Special Transitory Law of Incentives and Preferential Treatment for the Repatriation of Salvadorans lays out a series of benefits such as making it easier to import vehicles from abroad, the ability to transfer goods (including furniture and other movable goods) without any taxes, and access to local banking with minimum requirements.

This is a fantastic suite of policies and, if the 62% figure is accurate, it would mean that more than 1.5 million of the 2.5 million El Salvadorans in the United States are looking at returning to their home country now that Bukele has made it the safest nation in the Western Hemisphere.

Bukele is now turning his attention to economic growth, infrastructure development, and increasing the standard of living for Salvadorans. His administration evidently thinks that bringing in the resources, money, and better education of Salvadorans abroad will strengthen the country immensely.

One problem, that Bukele addresses in his interview with Carlson, is that the country is entering a real estate crisis. This crisis is not related to a booming population, but instead related to the increased safety in the nation. Before Bukele resolved the gang-related problems properties were undervalued in so-called “red zones” where gangs were in control. These zones covered much of the country but today no longer exist. Because of this property values are readjusting, and prices are jumping rapidly.

Bukele, rather than implement price fixing or rent controls, has said he wants the construction sector to grow to meet demand and bring prices down through the addition of new housing units. This is an admirable goal but will hinder the immigration of the hundreds of thousands of Salvadorans that Bukele’s administration wants to bring home.

Where America comes into play:

This is where a self-interested United States should step in.

There are currently 1.3 million Salvadoran immigrants in the United States, according to the Pew Research Center. Each of these immigrants will cost American taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars each, and billions of dollars in total. The Center for Immigration Studies estimates that each immigrant costs the American taxpayer $68,000 over the course of their lifetime, which means that the 1.3 million Salvadorans will cost the American taxpayer some $88.4 billion. A figure which is more than twice the size of El Salvador’s $37 billion GDP.

Other estimates originally produced by Alternative Hypothesis and updated by this publication show that each native-born Hispanic costs the US taxpayer roughly $746,000 over the course of their lifetime when taking into consideration encounters with courts, the police, local government, and a range of public services and costs beyond simply welfare. Utilizing this figure indicates that the total population of 1.2 million Salvadorans in the US would cost the American taxpayer some $11.7 billion per annum over the course of a 76-year average lifespan.

Regardless of which cost figure one prefers to focus on, it is clear that Salvadorans are a significant drag on the American nation.

Instead, a proper and self-interested government in the United States would work with the Salvadoran state to build the housing and infrastructure needed not only to meet demand but to enable the immigration of the 1.5 million Salvadorans who want to relocate to their homeland.

According to the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, the average cost of a modest three-room house (with electricity and plumbing) costs about $7,000 to build in El Salvador. Another organization, the Fuller Center, which builds entire neighborhoods fitted with homes, infrastructure, and playground equipment, puts the cost of construction at $12,000 per unit in the country.

The United States could fund the construction of one million homes in El Salvador for $15 billion, at roughly $15,000 per unit. This would save the American taxpayer more than $73 billion back home, eliminate El Salvador’s construction backlog, and put more than 500,000 surplus units on their market.

A key condition of this funding would be the rapidly facilitated remigration of the El Salvadorans who want to leave the United States, as well as illegal Salvadoran immigrants and Salvadoran criminals in US prisons.

The United States could issue regulations complimenting those of El Salvador, such as rescinding the complicated paperwork process to export a vehicle, and not taxing personal goods which Salvadorans purchase to take back to their homeland prior to their permanent relocation.

The United States could also implement a “breadwinner last” policy, allowing one working Salvadoran family member to remain in the United States for a short period of time while their family sets up shop in their homeland. This would ensure that the $5.65 billion in remittances that flow to El Salvador each year are not cut off all at once and instead are phased out as families permanently relocate and find work in their home country.

Results:

If the United States were to cancel the visas of the 36% of Salvadorans in the United States who are not citizens (or reside here illegally) then some 460,000 people could be deported with relative ease.

After which 62% of the remaining 2.1 million El Salvadorans could be expected to relocate to their homeland if the Bukele administration’s numbers are correct. This would represent a further 1.767 million departures.

Both of these measures, facilitated by the policies outlined above, would see the population of Salvadorans in the United States drop by 70.6%.

This would likely have knock-on effects as well, bringing other nations into a similar program of “cash for repatriation”. Honduras is already copying the security policies that Bukele used to free El Salvador of its gangs, while Ecuadorans have just backed similar measures in their own country. Costa Rica and Guatemala are also eager to follow the model.

Nearly 6 million people from these nations reside in the United States, either as immigrants or the descendants of recent immigrants, and a self-confident American state could offer these countries the same incentives were it to follow El Salvador’s path.

Conclusion:

There is every reason to believe that El Salvador would welcome such a scheme. They want their diaspora to return, they want investment to grow their economy, they want higher living standards, and Bukele seems genuinely interested in helping the American people. Bukele has already placed a $1,130 entrance fee on anyone entering from much of Africa and the Middle East and he did this to stop El Salvador from being an international migration route into the United States.

If Americans were aware that other countries were just as willing to take migrants back as Americans are eager to reverse the trends of mass migration it would reshape the face of American politics. Repatriation, deportation, remigration, and other themes would become commonplace and Americans would likely be eager to fund the relocation of these populations so that the American people can reclaim their towns, cities, states, and ultimately their nation.