Hasta La Gadget!

The Central American children fording the Rio Grande by the thousands each week this summer are heading to homes in the United States where parents and other relatives await them. They are not mindlessly fleeing crime and poverty. They are fleeing with a purpose and with a direction in mind.

Like millions from many nations before them, these migrants are being pushed out of their homes by one set of drivers and are being pulled to a destination by others. The frightful conditions in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador provide the push. The pull is family reunification with adult relatives who are already in the United States.

No policy response will stem the crisis let alone resolve the underlying phenomenon without addressing both parts of the equation.

The children’s exodus burst into the news and the policy agenda this summer because of the now-familiar statistics on the surging number of apprehensions. What’s gone largely unnoticed is a steady and substantial increase in the number of adults coming to the U.S. from Central America since the end of the Great Recession.

There are no exact counts on how many immigrants come to live in the U.S., and so we have to piece a picture together from various surveys and estimates. I did some fiddling with several different kinds of numbers and the results all point in the same direction.

The number of Central American immigrants living in the U.S. increased by nearly a quarter of a million between 2009 and 2012, according to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. That is an eight percent bump in three years when overall migration was flat, reflecting the job market. The number of Mexican migrants increased by only one percent during the same three years.

So who were these folks?

Men looking for work so they could send money home to their families.

That’s what the data tells us.

There is a funny population statistic called the “sex ratio” that can be very revealing in these circumstances. It is the number of men per every 100 women in a given population group. A normal sex ratio is about 95 because women live longer than men. The American Community Survey in 2012 (the last year available) tell us that for the whole foreign born population the sex ratio is 96 men for every 100 women, basically normal. Among Asian immigrants who entered the country since 2000, it was 85. That is a migration flow that tilts towards women. For Mexicans it was 118, that is a lot of men traveling alone. For Central Americans it was whopping 136 men for every 100 women. That is off the charts. Human adults simply do not form societies in which there are so many more men than women unless it is for a very specific purpose like waging war or, in this case, making money.

You can follow the money through remittance transfers, dollars sent by immigrants to families back home. Remittance flows from the U.S. to Latin America dropped sharply during the recession, and in the case of Mexico the numbers are still not back to pre-recession levels. But, remittance flows to Central America have not only recovered, they are booming.

The Inter-American Development Bank reports that in 2013 alone remittances to Central America were up by 5.4 percent, marking four years in a row of similar gains, and putting the growth rate for these countries ahead of any other region in Latin American and the Caribbean.

Super-high sex ratios and rapidly increasing remittance flows are sure signs of a classic, male-dominated labor migration. It has happened many times and in many parts of the world. And, not surprisingly, when you see that kind of a migration it is just a matter of time until the women and children follow. Indeed, you can figure that some of that big increase in remittances, a 7.8 percent bump for Honduras alone in 2013, is money that is financing trips north.

Every child living in a slum in a place that can be called the “murder capital” of anything has equal reason to want to leave. But they don’t all leave and not all the ones that leave end up on the Rio Grande. The ones that cross the river have an additional reason for coming to the U.S. Their families are already here.

According to estimates cited by the Migration Policy Institute, 85 percent or more of the children apprehended at the border are being placed with a parent or close relative somewhere in the U.S.

President Obama and Congressional Republicans can out do each other with macho boasts about how the kids are going to get sent back to Central America. But, that talk will get hollow and ugly when they confront the fact that the grown ups are here. No U.S. government is going to take children away from their parents and deporting whole families will make this a much bigger, more difficult and more costly exercise, both financially and politically.

Managing a crisis is a lot harder when all your basic policies are broken, and maybe the only point of unanimous agreement about immigration is that the status quo is very badly broken.

But, since no one is going to fix it, we are just going to keep discovering crazy ways that policy failure comes back to bite us.

I work in the investment business, where risk-taking is an occupational necessity. There isn’t anyone successful at managing a mutual or hedge fund who avoids risk; we just need to face it carefully. Traditionally the industry encourages a solo approach to evaluating risk; at Fidelity Investments, where I worked for over two decades, each fund is assigned to one person who makes all the buying and selling decisions. When results are strong, the manager basks in the glow, prestige, and compensation attached to outperformance. When performance suffers, a situation experienced by anyone who has managed a fund for over ten years, you feel like an impostor and reach for the Pepto Bismal.

Nine years ago, when I co-founded an investment firm, we chose a different approach to decision-making, characterized by group risk taking. Two to four of us, working on each type of investment involved – stocks, alternative asset classes, venture or private holdings — must all agree on the merits of the transaction.

Why did we decide on this, rather than the traditional “czar” structure?

As a fund manager, I was very aware that the pain of losing money was markedly worse than the satisfaction of gaining an equal amount. I didn’t realize that noted academics Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman were studying this exact phenomenon, which they officially named “loss aversion.”

I felt that I would be perfectly happy, in our new enterprise, to forego the personal credit for good decisions if I could also share blame for the mistakes. I anticipated, but without any evidence, that shared pain would be less severe than solitary suffering. My partners agreed that the group approach made sense.

While I acknowledged that, perhaps selfishly, I wanted to avoid the disproportionate emotional response to loss, this was not the only reason we preferred a group risk-taking approach. We had decided to create a concentrated portfolio of 30-35 names, wide-ranging enough to capture at least 90% of the diversification of the S&P 500 but of a manageable size so that three of us could carefully analyze and follow all of our holdings, an impossibility with a large number of stock positions. Each of us would need to convince others of the merits of her or his selections, backing up conviction with strong research. We would only buy or sell a position if everyone agreed. Our combined effort offers “less opportunity to be sloppy” (as one of my partners puts it) and forces an extremely thorough analysis and close monitoring of our holdings. The bar to convince your colleagues is higher than for just yourself.

Studies have now shown that loss aversion leads individuals to make irrational decisions, but that groups often make better ones. One study found that, in various lottery scenarios, groups of three or more were significantly more risk averse than individuals, particularly when the probability of winning was 40% or less. Once people joined a group and discussed their options, they consistently moved toward a risk-neutral position. Groups did accept slightly more risk in the highest probability bets.

How is group risk taking working for us? Because our performance has been good (knock on wood) since our inception, I have to like the process. Through the financial meltdown in 2008, I still felt sick staring at my screens, but I appreciated that we bonded over how to manage through the market implosion rather than point fingers at each other (although I confess, that still happened occasionally – we’re only human).

What are the potential downsides?

Groups may play it safe, with each individual choosing to pitch ideas most likely to win broad approval. While we all insist otherwise, there may be a subconscious bias against spending the time building a case for a concept that could be rejected as too risky.

Group efforts could also result in horse trading, where I might support one partner’s idea in the hope that he’ll back me the next time I pitch a name. In over 9 years, I have not been part of any side dealing with any of my colleagues, and I suspect that this has not happened at all.

Another concern is that group decision-making may simply take longer. I don’t sense any lengthening of the days taken between first hearing the idea and pulling the trigger, but I know we devote more time collectively to the analysis. (Research has also found that groups don’t necessarily take longer to make decisions.)

Of course, no system of group risk taking could succeed without positive group dynamics, mutual respect for each other’s abilities, and a collaborative spirit – but that’s true of all teamwork, not just investing.

This post first appeared on the Harvard Business Review blog.

I enter through the side door wearing a pair of old, white shorts and a T-shirt. In the kitchen, scents of curry and chai waft through the air.

There are at least a dozen pairs of shoes lined against a wall.

One of my neighbors is stooped over the counter wearing a cotton sari. Its pallu runs the length of her long, loose hair. When she turns around, she has a wide smile, but her lips are pursed, as if keeping a secret.

“Where is everyone?” I ask.

Her hands fly up and sweep my face. A powdery substance cascades down my cheeks then spills onto my shirt. The blue and green grains resemble the color of the ocean on a clear, cloudless day.

“Happy Holi!” she shouts, squeezing my shoulders.

It is a baptism of colors. At 38 years old, I’m celebrating my very first Holi.

* * *

My father immigrated to El Paso, Texas, from Hyderabad, India in 1971. He married my mother, a half-Puerto Rican, half-Austrian in 1972, and I was born in Michigan, in 1973.

I spent much of my formative years in a small southern city in Tennessee where, with my Southern twang and big ’80s hair, I identified far more with Madonna and McDonald’s than mehndi and Carnatic music.

On trips to India, I’d beg my parents to let me wear T-shirts and jeans instead of salwar suits. I found the dishes too spicy, the streets too dusty, and the un-air-conditioned flats too stifling. While I loved visiting the Taj Mahal, building elaborate mosquito net tents with my cousins and playing carrom on the floor of my grandmother’s living room, at the end of every vacation, I was relieved to return to my wholly American life.

* * *

Sunlight floods the back deck. An uncurled hose snakes along a patch of dormant grass, struggling to display the first signs of spring. Toddlers to teens huddle around a bucket, dipping their painted hands in water up to their elbows.

“Mama,” calls my youngest, flashing me her orange palms. “Look at me.” Her hair sticks up at odd angles. Cheetah-like spots dot her limbs. I’m grateful she’s wearing a bathing suit.

Before I can return the greeting, I am deluged from behind with a bucket of dyed, ice-cold water. It stuns me like an electric shock and runs down my body in rivulets.

“Happy Holi!” my neighbor shouts.

Children squeal and surround me. My drenched shirt serves as their personal canvas.

Eventually, I get the hang of Holi. I cup copious amounts of colors, pour them onto my daughters’ scalps then work them into the fabric of their clothes. When I manage to steal away the bucket, I douse a group of preteens.

I can’t believe I waited this long, to know this kind of fun.

* * *

In the eighth grade, I had to create a pie chart utilizing any type of data I wished. I traced the circumference of a dinner plate and bisected it like the equator. I labeled one half “50 percent Indian” and divided the other into two equal pie slices — “25 percent Puerto Rican” and “25 percent Austrian.”

Embellishing the graph with brown scrambled lines for hair and adding a stick figure body, I completed a self-portrait representing my total ethnic make-up.

I wonder now, whether my teacher understood what the pie chart really represented– a young girl grateful for her mixed heritage, but clueless how to integrate it.

* * *

There are theories, none too optimistic, about culturally blended families. When combined, the ethnicities, the religions, and the nuances of heritage fade away. Family rituals are abandoned. Younger generations don’t learn enough of their languages of origin to pass them down to their progeny.

By my early 30s, what little I’d known about Indian culture from my childhood–the names of the Hindu gods and goddesses, the holidays, the South Indian cuisine– I had all but forgotten.

But during the summer of 2007, I became reacquainted with my heritage. We moved from suburban Philadelphia to a predominantly Indian area in North Atlanta, replete with Indian restaurants, cultural programs, grocery stores and temples. All of the customs, traditions and dishes I had long forgotten, reappeared in my life at an age and time when I was open to embracing them.

Thankfully, culture isn’t genetic or biological. It is a choice, an aspiration, a deep-seeded appreciation for what makes a person whole. It does not expire, nor is it conscious of ethnic percentages. I am fully Austrian, Puerto Rican and Indian, no matter how much or how little I express those cultures in my day-to-day life. The countries of my ancestors, no matter where I live, will always reside in the home of my soul.

* * *

The following spring, we lather sunscreen on cheeks, noses, and shoulders as the first butterflies of the season stretch open their wings. Verdant grasses carpet our bare feet and soaring temperatures mean getting wet will offer much-needed relief.

I am no longer new to Holi. Within minutes, I have stamped my handprints on dozens of bare arms and legs, and emulated Monet in graffiti on the concrete patio. The pigments cling to my hair, stain my fingernails and coat my clothes. Their various hues coalesce into a vibrant palate, much like the way cumin, coriander and cardamom unite to create savory garam masala.

When we are finished, when empty tubes scatter on the pavement and upturned buckets congregate near the swing-set, I find I’m in no rush to change out of my clothes. Instead, I settle on a step, face the bright blue sky, inhale the spirit of the celebration, and let the colors seep in.

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