MIGRATION AND HONDURAS

An issue that has come up several times over the last few days is immigration to the US. Twice I talked about it with two young men, neither of whom seems tempted to try to reach the country. They were well aware of the dangers of the travel in trains through Mexico. When the issue of migration is broached, I recall the book I read last year, Enrique’s Journey by Sonia Nazario, which tells of the hazardous trip of a young Honduras from Tegucigalpa, to try to reach his mother in the US. (I highly recommend this book.)

But as I experience a little more of Honduras, witness the poverty and the poor infrastructure, and hear about the real crisis in education, I cannot help but recall the debate in the US which so often ignores the context and the causes of migration. Five years ago in 2002, the US and Mexican bishops issued a joint pastoral letter – Strangers No Longer: Together on the Journey of Hope. A Pastoral Letter Concerning Migration from the Catholic Bishops of Mexico and the United States. They identified as the first principle in an ethical consideration of migration: “Persons have the right to find opportunities in their homeland.”

As they wrote in paragraph 59, “persons should have the opportunity to remain in their homeland to support and to find full lives for themselves and their families. This is the ideal situation for which the world and both countries must strive: one in which migration flows are driven by choice, not necessity. Paramount to achieving this goal is the need to develop the economies of sending nations….”

Honduras needs that development. Earlier this week I read in a Honduran newspaper these facts: 60% of the households in the country do not have enough income to meet basic needs of food, shelter, education, health, and transportation; 1.5 million persons live on less than 20 lempira – about $1.04 – per day; 79.4% of those who entered first grade get to sixth grade. The last figure is actually an improvement, but education is only obligatory until the sixth grade!

This is the poverty that makes the dangerous route to the US attractive to so many.

But why is there such poverty here? Ah! That’s another question that I will leave to another day – at least until I’ve finished Paul Farmer’s Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor. I started it yesterday and find it intriguing.