Hunger, not violence, fuels Guatemalan migration surge, U.S. says

[Eugene]

Source: Washington Post

Hunger, not violence, fuels Guatemalan migration surge, U.S. says

By Nick Miroff and Kevin Sieff
September 22 at 8:00 AM

Homeland Security officials have for the first time offered an explanation for a puzzling increase in the number of Guatemalan families showing up at the U.S. border this year seeking asylum.

Rather than a spike in violence, the families appear to be fleeing a hunger crisis in Guatemala’s western highlands, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, citing U.N. and USAID food insecurity data as well as the agency’s own intelligence assessments.

Years of meager harvests, drought and the devastating effects of “coffee rust” fungus on an industry that employs large numbers of rural Guatemalans is speeding up an exodus of families from villages bereft of food, CBP officials say.

It also explains why large numbers of indigenous villagers who speak little or no Spanish have arrived with their children to turn themselves in to U.S. border agents, creating communication challenges for enforcement officials and immigration courts.

The CBP assessment posits more traditional “push” factors — poverty and lack of opportunity — as a major driving force behind the latest migration trend, rather than an uptick in crime. Such an analysis challenges the claims of advocacy groups and lawmakers that Central American asylum seekers are primarily fleeing violence, but it also suggests the root causes of emigration could be alleviated by reducing hunger and creating jobs.

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Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/hunger-not-violence-fuels-guatemalan-migration-surge-us-says/2018/09/21/65c6a546-bdb3-11e8-be70-52bd11fe18af_story.html

[Wellstone ruled]

1. This is the main reason

for all the hostility in the Mid East as well. And we have not seen anything yet,only going to get worse.