Central Americans flee crime for better life in US

MESILLA ( United States):

Ovidio Lopez Tum sold tortillas in his hometown of Chicaman in Guatemala to support his wife and eight children.

But after being wounded in machete and grenade attacks by extortionists, the 53-year-old Lopez said he decided to flee to the United States.

To bolster his request for asylum, he brought along documentation of his injuries.

He also brought along his 12-yearold daughter, Ingrid Maribel, hoping to provide her with an education she could not receive at home.

Lopez and his daughter are among the thousands of migrants from Central America turning up at the US southern border with Mexico.

President Donald Trump has described the situation as a humanitarian and security crisis and is engaged in a standoff with Congress over his demand for US$5bil (RM20bil) to build a border wall.

Lopez and his daughter said they left Chicaman, where they lived in a crude home with dirt floors, on Dec 20. They arrived at the US border 10 days later, after walking and taking buses through Mexico.

They were released after two nights in detention during which they said they were well treated by the US immigration authorities.

Upon their release, they were housed in the Basilica of San Albino, a church in the New Mexico town of Mesilla, before leaving by bus the next day for Alabama, where Lopez has family.

Lopez said he hopes to eventually bring his wife and other children to the United States – or at least to provide them with enough money to move to somewhere safer in Guatemala.

Most of the refugees arriving at the US-Mexico border are from three violence- and poverty-wracked nations in Central America – El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

Gerbin Asmar Hernandez, 26, is from Santa Barbara, a town in Honduras near the border with Guatemala.

Fed up with high crime back home, Hernandez made the journey to the United States through Mexico with his 10-year-old daughter, Annarut, leaving his wife and a son behind.

Hernandez said that a few years ago, he was robbed of the US$300 (RM1,228) he had made while working for a month on a coffee plantation.

“I was just one hour away from my town and I got robbed,” he said.

“You can’t carry around money because you will get robbed.” — AFP

The scandal dates back to 2004 and a total of 53 billion yen (RM2bil) will be repaid to 20 million workers, according to the ministry.

“I have received a report from the labour and welfare ministry that they need to provide employment insurance and other payments retroactively,” top government spokesman Yoshihide Suga told reporters.

“We will make adjustments to make a necessary budget allocation in the fiscal 2019 budget for the year starting in April,” he said.

He added that the government was now probing dozens of other major data sets.

The labour minister has admitted he received a report about the problem as early as Dec 20.

The ministry nevertheless went ahead and published data on Dec 21 and Jan 9 that it knew had sampling problems, raising questions about the reliability of official statistics in the world’s third-biggest economy.

Suga said it was “extremely regrettable” that confidence in the survey was shaken. — AFP