Marching against emigration

At Masses in our parish there is often a list of Mass intentions. They include concerns about health of family members and about the death of members of the community. Recently I have noticed a good number of intentions asking prayers for family members are trying to reach the United States. Sometimes they are prayers of gratitude for having arrived there.

Radio Progeso recently reported that about 12 Hondurans leave each hour in hopes of reaching the US. Though the issue of migration is not as pronounced here as in other parts of Honduras, it is real.

When I speak with young people here I am sometimes asked about the United States and about migrating there. I always talk about the dangers of the route toward the US, the difficulty of getting jobs there, and the anti-migrant stance that is so strong in some parts of the United States. I also urge them to think how to improve their lives here in their communities, without leaving their families and friends.

This is not an easy discussion. I know that so many young people have little chance of finding meaningful work, even if they have a high school or college education. I see the problems of low salaries and increasing prices and taxes that most affect the poor and the lower middle class. I am deeply concerned about the drought and heat that have plagued farmers in the last months and may result in losses of more than 60% in basic grains in some part of Honduras.

In  the midst of this the US has been pressuring Honduras and providing money to curb migration, especially of the young. The US should be revising its immigration laws, but that’s another question.

I don’t know all that the Honduran government is doing but there is one that I have my doubts about.

The government is promoting August as the month of not migrating and to publicize this there are marches by children in the educational centers.

Last Thursday as I was leaving Plan Grande for a catechists’ workshop, two young people I know asked for a ride to the nearby town of Candelaria. They are taking Plan Básico (middle school) classes there in the afternoons and I was surprised to see them going in the morning. I saw two other young people on the road and gave them a ride. One had a wooden “rifle.”

When I got to the corner by the school I found some children lined up for a march – against migration.

The first group was of kindergarten kids who had signs that none of them could read. 

There were also a few dressed up for folk dances.

A few of the older students had handmade signs advising against migrating and calling for education and work as ways to stop this.

I don’t know why there were some students with toy weapons, as there had been in El Zapote a week ago. The presence of even toy weapons bothers me because of the message it gives. Weapons are needed. This is a very poor message to give folks, but the increasing use of the military by the Honduran government is, as I see it, only promoting this.

I see that it is important to provide incentives for the people not to migrate. But when the government raises taxes that affect the poor, when the price of basic goods and services increase, when there are not enough employment opportunities and when the government has them they are given to political allies, what are the people to do? They will think seriously about migration, despite the dangers and the costs.

As part of my ministry here I would like to find more ways to help the people, especially the young, find ways to live meaningful and dignified lives in the countryside, with sufficient work and remuneration to feed their families.

That’s the challenge.

More on the children and adolescent migrants in the US

Yesterday I read an interesting blog entry on the “surge” of Central American child and adolescent migrants in the US by a young man working and living in La Ceiba. Read it here. 

Mateo has first hand experience of the life of the poor there, especially the young, and provides an interesting perspective.

He notes that much of the commentary from the US concentrates on the high levels of violence in Honduras as the “push” for the migration. However, his experience and mine (albeit limited to a barrio in La Ceiba in his case and to a rural area in my case) is that many young men (14 and up) leave mostly seeking for a better life. They experience life here – in their barrios (urban neighborhoods) or aldeas (rural villages) – as a dead end.

Yes, there is major violence in Honduras, especially in the cities of Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula. This does push many to leave and seek refuge abroad. They are truly refugees from violence, compounded by poverty.

But there are other causes.

One thing Mateo noted is that there are many families with one or both parents in the United States. Is it a wonder that children seek to connect with their parents, especially as economic and social conditions deteriorate in Honduras? As the numbers of adult migrants has increased, is it not understandable that many young people seek to connect with relatives who seem to have achieved a better life in the US?

The causes are many and complicated. Mike, on Central American Politics blog, summarizes an article on the complexity which has a fascinating graphic. Read it here. 

Yet as I reflected this morning on the situation I wondered whether reducing the causes to violence may be a way of avoiding a careful analysis of a crisis that is rooted in injustice and oppression, in injustice in which the US is complicit.

The US has been involved in Honduras economically and militarily for many years, going back to the banana companies and US military invasions in the last century and a half. It has included the establishment of a military base here in the 1980s (which now is claimed to belong to the Hondurans, though about 500 US troops are there and other troops arrive throughout the year). It has included aid to governments with very questionable human rights records. It includes aid which militarizes the police.

I also am concerned that reduction of the causes to violence deflects any consideration of the roots of the crisis in the policies and politics in Honduras where the police and justice systems are dysfunctional, to put it mildly. Calls by the president of Honduras for more aid to Honduras may hide the need for real reform of the political and economic systems of a country with one of the greatest indices of economic inequality in Latin America.

Furthermore, the emphasis on the violence of gangs and drug traffickers obscure the violence of daily life and the lack of a functional justice system, which I addressed a few months ago in a blog entry, available here.

Yes, the immigrants are fleeing violence, but they are also fleeing poverty. They are fleeing situations of injustice, of structural injustice that can only be dealt with by real changes in US and Honduran policies, not just about migrants but also about such issues as free trade, human rights, militarization, and more.

In the meantime, young people will leave, seeking a better life.

And so I will continue to try to dissuade them and work to find ways for them to live decent and full lives here.

I want these elementary school kids in Plan Grande in the photo below to grow up to a life which is full of love, in a community in which they can develop and use their God-given gifts to serve and build up a real community of solidarity and justice.

--- Slightly edited on August 12, 2014.

Children fleeing Honduras

According to a School of the Americas Watch report:

The number of children attempting to cross the border into the United States has risen dramatically in the last five years: In FY 2009, roughly 6,000 unaccompanied minors were detained near the border. Credible estimates project that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will detain as many as 74,000 unaccompanied minors by the end of FY 2014. Approximately 28% of the children detained this year are from Honduras, 24% from Guatemala, and 21% from El Salvador. 

People asked me about this several times during my visit in the US. I do not have a simple answer.

A bishop testifying before congress proposed violence as a major cause. I think this is partly true – especially in migrations from urban centers where there is intense violence, for example in Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula here in Honduras. But I think poverty is also a major cause.

Some US conservatives blame Obama, claiming that he’s soft on undocumented migrants. (Note that I do not talk about “illegal immigrants.” As Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel has stated: “No human being is illegal.”)

Someone I know in the US claimed that Obama policy is giving assurances that children who return will not be deported. The truth is that two years ago Obama policy of non- deportation of minors who came was only for those who arrived in the US before 2007.

One morning in the US I heard a commentator on NPR speak and he made the most sense as he spoke of the growing poverty in Central America. He also noted that the coyotes  who contract the transit of people from Central America to the US have twisted US policy and told people that minors will not be deported. “Why?” the reporter asked. It’s the money! Each person using a coyote pays a fee often between $5,000 and $10,000 – with no guarantee of arrival in the US.

But a short good analysis can be found by the Sisters of Mercy here. It's probably one of the best available. 

I have many questions about this recent phenomenon.

For example, I would really like to know the ages of the child immigrants. The US considers minors any person under 18. But here in Honduras, where most of the children only have access to grade schools, there are many children and young people above 12 years of age who are working (or looking for work). In the countryside there is very little access to the equivalent of high school. Some work during the week (often in the family’s fields) and go to school in nearby cities on the weekends. So, I consider the case of 15 to 18 year olds very different from those under 15. I don’t know how many young people under 18 have asked me about going to the US. How many are between 15 and 18?

I would also like to know how many have parents or close relatives in the US. Sending for children because of fear of violence or poverty is very different from children being sent from her or leaving from here on their own.

It would also help to know where the young people come from. There is a map and some statistics in a Mother Jones article.

But even these need more careful analysis. According to Home Land Security figures, there are more than 200 unaccompanied minors from Santa Rosa de Copán. But do these young people and children come from the city or from the many outlying villages?

There are so many questions and so simplistic responses do not serve the interests of the young people involved.

I do however believe that poverty and violence, together with the lack of decent police and justice systems, are major contributing factors.