What is causing the increase in immigrants at the border?

This is a very poorly-reasoned article.

It suggests that either a perception of lenient treatment of immigrants at the border is encouraging them to travel there in larger numbers (CBP's explanation), OR that "the increasing number of migrants is being largely driven by corruption, economic chaos and violence in the Northern Triangle countries — Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras" (the Biden administration's explanation) is encouraging it.

But of course those aren't mutually exclusive, are they? In fact, they can easily be a matter of cause and effect.

If I'm standing on a bridge on fire but the water it crosses over is 150 feet below me, both the fire and my belief that I will survive the fall are encouraging me to jump.

This seems obvious when put in these terms, doesn't it? So why do we insist that it must be one or the other for immigrants at the border?

And more importantly, why are we-- sometimes literally-- pushing them back into the fire?