Hondurans are fleeing, not invading

Last year, we saw endless lines of thousands of Rohinga refugees filing out of Myanmar into Bangladesh. This year, it’s similarly endless columns of 7,000 refugees marching ten abreast down a highway towards the U.S.

Donald Trump, without so much as a shred of evidence, denounced the Honduran exodus as a “National Emergy” — apparently he can’t be bothered to spell “emergency” correctly — filled with criminals and agitators from the Middle East.

I wonder how he would have described the biblical Exodus. Certainly there were fugitives from justice in that migration. Moses himself was considered a criminal. So was any person fleeing from slavery. And they were all — all — Middle Eastern malcontents.

Reporters walking with the Honduran refugees uniformly report that these are simply ordinary people, hoping for a better life.

“We’re not migrating, we are fleeing,” a man called Timothy from the city of El Progreso told a reporter.

News reports described frequent acts of kindness. One group turned down a ride on a flat-bed truck headed north, rather than leave other walkers behind. Others gave up their place on a raft crossing the Suchiate River into Mexico, to a young mother whose two-year-old daughter had recently had a heart operation.

As the mile-long procession moved through southern Mexico, local villages turned out to cheer, and to hand out food and water.

News reports have offered some statistics behind the exodus. The current minimum wage in Honduras is less than $400 (U.S.) a month. But essentials such as water, food, and electricity for a household will exceed $500 a month. And few of the maquiladores, the large export companies that benefit from free-trade agreements, bother paying even the minimum wage, because they know they can get away with breaking the rules.

In a country of nine million people, six million live in poverty.

In a Canadian equivalent, some 22 million citizens would be living below the poverty line. In the U.S., more than 200 million. Little wonder there’s explosive anger, and despair.

It’s a cruel irony that these refugees are hoping to seek refuge in the country that caused their misery — the U.S.-backed coup in 2009 that brought the far-right Partido Nacional into power. It led directly to the spiral of violence and corruption that afflicts the country.

Honduras currently has the world’s highest murder rate. And a high level of sexual violence. Over 600 women are killed a year. Called feminicides, these murders are rarely prosecuted. Of some 200 LGBTI murders, only two have made it into court.

Trump’s angry threats to cut aid to Central American countries will, if implemented, make poverty worse, thus increasing the flow of refugees rather than reducing it.

Trump blames the media for what he calls “fake news.”

But in this case, it’s not the news media at fault, but the so-called “family” entertainment programs.

Are there any TV programs that show American families living in poverty? I’ve pretty much given up watching American network television.

But my impression, from occasionally sampling what’s available on the 500 channels on cable, that everyone lives in a fivebedroom multi-bathroom house with big couches in their living rooms, thick carpets and immaculate kitchens.

Even a three-bedroom 1950s bungalow would look like ultimate luxury to poor Hondurans.

I have yet to see a TV series about a family coping with having a bank foreclose on their mortgage.

Or a cook dealing with a stove so old and cantankerous that he can’t scrape grease out of the oven any more.

A breadwinner laid off by corporate downsizing. A female officer in the Marines dealing with constant sexual harassment. A parent dying in misery because his children can’t afford the astronomical costs of the U.S. medical system. Nope. Never. If you were to go entirely by television — which is the only way that people in Honduras can know about life in America — you’d probably conclude that every American has a good job, ample money, lots of friends, and good health. Now that’s the real fake news! The notion that mass migrations can be stopped with enough guards, fences, walls, and immigration laws is wishful thinking. Between rising ocean levels, droughts, floods, fires, landslides, hurricanes, and typhoons — all influenced by global warming — there are going to be millions of people, not just thousands, looking for new homes.

Some will simply inundate neighbouring nations. Some will aim higher. At what they imagine as our standard of living.

We’d better get used to it. Because this is the new normal.

Jim Taylor is an Okanagan Centre author and freelance journalist. He can be reached at rewrite@shaw.ca