San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Many cite poverty as main migration trigger
Surveyed Central Americans named economic factors, such as poor wages and unemployment, as the most common triggers of migration to the U.S. and other countries, according to a new report by the Migration Policy Institute.
Natural disasters and violence were also listed as motivations to migrate, according to 2021 survey data from the U.N. World Food Programme in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, though they were less likely to be listed as the most important factors. Nearly 5,000 households participated in the survey.
The report notes how violence, poverty, hunger and climate disasters are often interconnected, creating overall conditions that cause people to migrate to another country.
Among the surveyed Central American household members who said they had migrated within the last five years, 85 percent said they left mainly because of poverty.
“That does not mean that there are not underlying reasons that tie together economics with insecurity and violence,” said Ariel Ruiz Soto, Migration Policy Institute analyst, “When you ask somebody in person about the reason why they want to migrate, they’ll respond usually with the most triggering factor.”
But he said that in follow-up conversations, there was often more to the story.
“When we talked to people in El Salvador, they told us that they didn’t feel like they could open up their own job or their own business, because they didn’t want to pay the rents to the gang members and these quotas for gangs’ protection,” he said.
In the survey, violence and insecurity accounted for 8 percent of respondents’ main reasons to migrate.
Nearly half of all surveyed Central Americans said violence either increased or remained the same when asked.
Honduran migrant Douglas Mendez, 21, cited violence as a main reason he left his home country.
“They (gang members) told me they were going to kill me,” Men
dez said in Spanish. “So, it was time for me to leave.”
Mendez spoke to the Houston Chronicle at a shelter near the Texas-Mexico border in Acuña, Mexico, and said his career choice to work for the police made him vulnerable to gang violence.
“When you’re studying to be a police officer, you’re among the ones they (the gangs) are most looking to kill,” he said.
Mendez said a friend was murdered by gang members that were looking for him. An official document from Honduras showed he’s a protected crime witness.
Mendez fled to the U.S. but said he was returned to Mexico before he could ask for asylum, likely under Title 42, an immigration policy implemented during the pandemic that denies many migrants access to request asylum under the justification that the government is protecting public health.
The report also shows that 37 percent of Hondurans responding to the survey said they had a pessimistic view of their standard of living, which was worse than Guatemalans and Salvadorans. Only 9 percent of Hondurans had a positive outlook — though other Central Americans didn’t respond with much optimism either.
The report also found the average Central American household in the survey spent $300 each month on needs such as food, housing, education and transportation.
Though poverty was listed as a reason to leave Central America, it was also cited as a barrier to immigrate because the journey to the U.S. can be costly.
Another recent report, from the Hope Border Institute, interviewed Central American migrants at three shelters in the border city of Ciudad Juárez, Mexico.
In the interviews, Central Americans noted gang and gender-based violence were major triggers that caused them to leave their home countries, while poverty — exacerbated by natural disasters and the pandemic — was another critical factor.
The report highlighted the experience of a middle-class Honduran migrant whose salary at her job at a bank back home was cut by 65 percent after the start of the pandemic, prompting her to take out a loan.
After paying off the loan amount, the lenders extorted her and threatened to kill her. When the police told her to keep paying, she decided to leave home and immigrate to the U.S.
“Luz’s story is an example of the blow the pandemic dealt to
the middle class throughout Latin America and the way that criminal groups seized the opportunity to take advantage of vulnerable and desperate people,” the report said.
In the Migration Policy Institute report, the authors also listed regional investments that would create more livable conditions to help Central American stay in their home countries, especially in light of COVID-19 and climaterelated emergencies.
Creating and growing work training programs to improve unemployment
was one recommendation, as well as creating tailored municipal-level investments — such as an agricultural program in rural areas affected by climate change. Because of the powerful effect of remittances on Central American economies, the report noted that diaspora could also invest in public infrastructure where they have ties.
The report also recommended that the U.S. create temporary employment visas, to create legal channels to “decrease the estimated $1.7 billion that Central
Americans spend annually on irregular migration with a smuggler and instead increase state revenues — for instance, through reasonable application fees.”
“If you focus on those legal pathways for labor migration not as a substitute to migration, but as an alternative to irregular migration, that would not only be to the benefit of migrants to have better and more safe mechanisms, but also to the benefit of countries,” said Ruiz Soto.