THE ENTREMUNDOS REPORT ...FROM PAGE 15 Parents understand migration to be a natural choice, considering that the living conditions in their places of origin are even more hazardous and bleak than the prospect of migrating to the United States without documentation. Although parents may understand the implications of the trip north, minors do not have a complete view of these risks and see migration primarily as the real possibility for an improved quality of life. Still, the dangers that young migrants face range from armed robbery to human trafficking, coercive labor and slavery, sexual exploitation and organ trafficking. Migrants also risk death by asphyxiation when traveling in inadequate forms of transportation, such as in overloaded trucks without ventilation, and while crossing rivers and deserts, and many are left physically mutilated when travelling on cargo trains. Even the children that do make it to the United States don’t have a better situation. In recent years, the Associated Press reported that due to the rise in child and youth immigration, many of those children have been found in homes where they were sexually assaulted, malnourished, or forced to work without compensation. Many of those children were Guatemalan, and were left stranded after being captured. It is significant, then, that the most wide-ranging treaty on children’s
rights, the International Convention on the Rights of the Child, was not ratified by the USA, despite having participated actively in its creation by the United Nations.
Something has gone very wrong in a country whose children flee in search of a better life.
Those who are deported, on the other hand, live a different ordeal: being repatriated by the Secretary of Social Welfare (SBS) and the Attorney General’s Office (PGN), they return to their homes to only be exposed again to the conditions from which they fled in the first place. Others stay in shelters and orphanages unequipped for the influx of so many children. Even in light of the situation, there are no clear steps the Guatemalan government can take to confront this reality. The response by the United States has come in the form of the Alliance for Prosperity
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Plan in the Northern Triangle, which covers Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. The Alliance for Prosperity, however, has been critiqued by various organizations, including the the online publication Plaza Pública, which called the US approach to immigration a “project of the elite” and suggested that rather than attempting to solve the problem of migration, the Plan “in essence is nothing more than a business plan whose ultimate objective is to propel and consolidate private investments friendly to the United States.” After children are repatriated, the cycle of poverty and neglect will continue. Despite this fact, thousands of boys and girls keep trying to cross the border. The logic of the situation, for them, is simple: Guatemala failed them, paradise lies in the United States, and they are willing to cross the gates to get there. DIANA PASTOR, ENTREMUNDOS MAGAZINE EDITOR ANTONIO HERNÁNDEZ HE HAS WORKED FOR SEVERAL YEARS WITH YOUTH AND CHILDREN COORDINATING WITH DIFFERENT ONG’S. ONE OF HIS MAIN DREAMS IS BUILDING A BETTER PLACE FOR NEW GENERATIONS
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