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Why do so many families make the difficult and dangerous journey to migrate to the USA?
I have spent much of the last decade conducting on-the-ground fieldwork along the migration paths through Mexico, seeking answers to this question. The region‘s extreme poverty and violent impunity are central factors that drive migration.
Yet every migrant‘s story is unique. Some simply seek the chance to earn enough money to ensure a better future for themselves or their children. Others flee persecution at the hands of gangs, organized crime or corrupt state officials. For others, insecurity and poverty are so intertwined that drawing them apart becomes impossible.
"Falling deeper into debt‟
Extreme poverty and inequality haunt the region. Today, about half of all Central Americans – and two-thirds of the rural populations of Guatemala and Honduras – survive below the international poverty line.
Meanwhile, throughout the 21st century, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador have consistently counted among the most murderous nations in the world. Many Central American migrants are simply desperate to find work that pays enough to feed their families. U.S. asylum law provides no relief for these "economic refugees."
I met Roberto Quijones in a migrant shelter in the Mexican state of Tabasco, about 25 mile north of the Mexico‘s southern border with Guatemala. We spoke as he soaked his blistered feet and tried to mend his busted shoes with duct tape.
Roberto is from a rural town in northwestern El Salvador near the border with Honduras and Guatemala, and had been out of work for two years. For more than a year, he and his wife and their 2-year-old daughter had been living with an aunt. Their welcome had worn thin.
And even for those who can find work, extremely low wages cannot cover families‘ basic needs, destroying hope for a better future.
Ethics and survival
The images and stories of Central Americans caged at the border awaiting processing expose how the U.S. immigration system was never designed to deal with this many people fleeing these kinds of problems.
In the hopes of getting better treatment at the border, some migrants have resorted to pretending to be part of family units, or lying about their age. This kind of "gaming the system" may be ethically questionable, but viewed from the perspective of survival, it makes perfect sense.
Such strategies speak most of all of collective desperation, begging a question posed by many of the Central American migrants I have met over the years: "If you were me, what would you do?"
Disponível em: https://theconversation.com/migrants-stories-why-they-flee114725. Acesso em 21 Mar. 2022.[Adaptado]
The author of the text questions why so many people take the risk to migrate to the United States. One of the reasons he mentions is to:
