the “push factors” or “root causes” driving child migration. The three countries that are the source of the majority of the unaccompanied child migrants—El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras—are all poor and have high rates of unemployment. They are also experiencing appalling levels of violence, higher than any other region of the world, outside of war zones. Gangs and drug cartels are responsible for much of this violence, but state security forces have also played a role, according to human rights groups [PDF]. The confluence of these two factors—economic turmoil and violence—appears to be decisive in driving increasingly desperate citizens of these nations to the United States. Tellingly, the adjacent country of Nicaragua—though the second-poorest nation in the hemisphere—has relatively low levels of violence and few of its inhabitants are leaving the country. On the contrary, large numbers of Salvadorans, Hondurans, and Guatemalans are now also migrating to Nicaragua, as well as Mexico, Panama, Costa Rica, and Belize. cepr.net/index.php/op-eds-&-columns/op-eds-&-columns/the-central-american-child-refugee-crisis-made-in-u-s-a
Posted on: Fri, 01 Aug 2014 09:25:57 +0000
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