Complex factors driving dramatic rise in migration from Central America

Corn farmer, Guatemala. By Tomas Castelazo (Wikimedia Commons)

Aug. 11, 2019
Catholic San Francisco

Migration from Central American is on track to more than double this year, as refugees primarily from Guatemala and Honduras move northward in response to a complex set of factors including scarce jobs for the region’s large population of young people and the impact on crop yields of erratic rainfall linked to a warming climate.

Data and reports from the U.S. government, NGOs and media show the larger story behind such dramatic developments as last year’s U.S.-bound migrant caravan from Central America through Mexico, crowds of refugees at the Southwest border seeking asylum in the U.S. and humanitarian concerns about conditions at detention centers set up north of the border to handle the influx. 

Three factors together explain the story of the border crisis today: A change in the country of origin of northbound migrants from primarily Mexico 20 years ago to a balance of Mexico and the Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras today; a shift from primarily individual migrants on the move to a mix of individuals, unaccompanied children and families; and a variety of regional factors driving the movement.

Unaccompanied children and family groups accounted for more than a half-million undocumented people apprehended at the Southwest border from October 2018 through July 2019, nearly double the number of individuals detained during the period, U.S. Border Patrol data show.

The El Paso, Texas, border sector showed the largest increase, from less than 8,000 to nearly 125,000 in a year.

The numbers dropped significantly in July in contrast to the previous two months, a change the Border Patrol attributed to stepped-up actions by U.S and Mexican authorities to stem the flow from Central America. The New York Times reported Aug. 8 that President Trump’s anti-immigration policies mean that more migrants can go no farther than cities on the Mexican side of the border. The Los Angeles Times reported Aug. 12 that Mexican authorities are blocking many routes used by undocumented migrants attempting to enter from Guatemala.

Still, a Congressional Research Service report described migration from Central America as a longterm trend that is likely to continue.

“According to estimates from the digital publication Lawfare, approximately 265,000 people, on average, have left the Northern Triangle … in each of the past five years, with the majority bound for the United States,” the service said in a June 13 , 2019, update. 

“More than twice as many people may leave the region this year, however, as an estimated 508,000 Salvadorans, Guatemalans, and Hondurans left their homes and headed north during the first eight months of FY2019,” the research service said.

The International Organization for Migration estimates that some 40 per cent of all irregular migrants in the United States, or about 6 million, were born in either Central America or the Caribbean.

The organization said the growing number of immigrant children, especially unaccompanied and originating in Central America, is “particularly alarming.”

Job prospects are dim for these children in their countries of origin: In 2017, for example, the Northern Triangle’s labor force increased by more than 353,000 people, but fewer than 35,000 jobs were created in the formal economy, the Congressional Research Service said.

“The vast majority of new workers were left to work in the unregulated informal sector, without job protections or benefits, or search for opportunity elsewhere,” the service said.

The region of the Northern Triangle known as the Dry Sector, where many subsistence farmers struggle to survive, is prone to natural disasters because of extremes of heavy rainfall and drought. A warming climate -- more than 1.5 degrees C. higher over land since 1980, according to the latest data -- has worsened the erratic pattern.

“The phenomenon of El Niño has aggravated the climatic conditions limiting the capacity for livelihood recovery across the Dry Corridor, which has now accumulated impacts of prolonged periods of drought over a five-year period (2014-2018),” the World Food Programme said. “Despite government assistance, through WFP and other actors, 1.6 million people in the Dry Corridor continue to experience moderate or severe food insecurity.”

Prolonged droughts and heavy rain have destroyed more than half of the maize and bean crops of the subsistence farmers along the Dry Corridor, leaving them without food reserves and affecting their food security, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Food Programme said in April. 

The International Panel on Climate Change said drylands and areas that experience desertification are more vulnerable to climate change and extreme events including drought, heat waves, and dust storms, with an increasing global population providing further pressure.

“Food security will be increasingly affected by future climate change through yield declines – especially in the tropics – increased prices, reduced nutrient quality, and supply chain disruptions,” said Priyadarshi Shukla, co-chair of IPCC Working Group III.

“We will see different effects in different countries, but there will be more drastic impacts on low-income countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean,” he said.

Drought, famine and the battle for dwindling natural resources “are increasingly being recognized as major factors” in the exodus from Central America, The Guardian newspaper reported July 29, 2019.

International charities and advocacy groups in Africa and Central America say millions in rural communities are threatened by destitution, ill health or outright famine, the Christian Science Monitor reported Aug. 8, 2019.

“Some want the United Nations to endorse the idea of adding a new category of internationally accepted refugee: ‘climate refugees,’” the newspaper said.

A UC Berkeley doctoral student who is doing field research in Guatemala says global climate change is likely to worsen the ongoing immigration crisis in the United States, the university said in a July 8, 2019, news release.

Michael Bakal said that in the first three weeks he spent in the small town of Rabinal in central Guatemala, during what is usually the rainy season, rain fell on just three days. He predicted that if the drought doesn’t abate, the push of Guatemalans heading toward the U.S. will increase markedly.

“With rising sea levels and rising heat, the major impact is that (Guatemalans) are in crop failure,” Bakal said. “It’s not talked about, but there is no doubt in the mind of any farmer here that climate change is manifesting itself in more heat, less rainfall and longer times between rains. Corn is the basis of the diet here; corn and beans allowed civilization to form here. It’s all in jeopardy now.”

More extreme weather is having a major impact on economic opportunities and food security throughout the Northern Triangle, according to the Climate Reality Project.

“More than 30 percent of jobs in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras are in agriculture,” the organization said. “So changes in climate trends and increasingly frequent and intense extreme weather events hit residents of these countries especially hard.”