Why so many Central Americans risk detention, child separation and even death for a chance to enter
CBC · February 1
Thousands of Central American asylum seekers languish on the Mexican side of the United States border, where they still await processing by American officials, months after making their epic journey through Mexico as part of last fall's so-called migrant caravan.
That has not deterred thousands of people from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador from travelling together in the longest caravan yet, now wending its way north toward the U.S.-Mexico border.
U.S. President Donald Trump has fulminated against the caravans, claiming they're rife with criminal gang members, opportunists who want to exploit Americans' generosity, and even terrorists. The president has used the alleged threat posed by the migrants as an argument for building the border wall on which he's staked so much of his political career.
But according to Elizabeth Oglesby, an associate professor in the School of Geography and Development and the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Arizona, migration to the US from Central America is not new. In an interview with Sunday Edition host Michael Enright, she pointed out that vast numbers of people fled the civil wars and dictatorships that plagued El Salvador and Guatemala in the 1980s and 1990s.
Today, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala are riven by gang violence, political instability, corruption and desperate poverty -- conditions that are in large part the legacy of American foreign policy that fomented civil wars and installed and supported repressive dictatorships in Central America during the Cold War.
More:
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thesundayedition/why-so-many-central-americans-risk-detention-child-separation-and-even-death-for-a-chance-to-enter-the-u-s-1.4998451
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