Two Kansas University professors say that stopping the flow into the United States of unaccompanied minors from Central America will require tough policy choices, made more difficult by a highly politicized environment.

“These children are caught in a policy vacuum, but this vacuum has been 25 years in the making,” said Ruben Flores, an associate professor in American Studies whose research focuses on Latin American migration to the United States.

More than 52,000 unaccompanied minors, mostly from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, have surrendered or been apprehended this year by the Border Patrol on the southern border.

Republicans have blamed President Barack Obama, saying the president’s policies, including a program that allows those who came to the U.S. as children before 2007 to apply for deportation deferrals, have encouraged minors to try to enter the U.S. The Obama administration has said escalating drug violence and crime in Central America are causing parents to send their children north.

But Flores said the migration is a symptom of a more long-term problem: the erosion of labor protections in the United States. He added that until policymakers address that, the migration will continue.

“Underneath it all, you have the flow of people into the United States who can work for less money and who are not entitled to citizenship. So you have a class of laborers producing for America but who aren’t demanding the resources back,” he said.

For decades, the necessary policy and diplomacy work between the U.S. and Latin America hasn’t happened, he argued, in part because in recent years, the United States’ attention has been diverted by concerns about terrorism.

“In the absence of that continuing conversation about what we do structurally about migration, it is just no surprise we are going to see these flash points,” he said.

Bartholomew Dean, associate professor of anthropology, said one of the causes behind the influx of undocumented migrants is the drug networks and violence in their native countries.

Dean, who has had considerable experience in the field of immigration law in Mexico and Peru, said the U.S. war on drugs has backfired somewhat because by going after drug kingpins, the U.S. creates power vacuums that lead to more violence.

Dean said another problem is that Obama’s proposal to spend $3.7 billion to deal with the influx of minors includes only $300 million in “getting to the causes of why people are fleeing.”

Obama’s proposal includes $1.8 billion to provide care for the children; $1.5 billion for detention and removal of undocumented migrants; $300 million for repatriation and strengthening the border; and $64 million for additional immigration legal teams.