Blood upon the Soil
Blood upon the Soil
The Tragedy of Honduras
by Joseph Grosso / August 13th, 2014
When President Obama requested $3.7 billion from Congress in early July he returned the issue of border security to the forefront where it had faded since the days of large scale Mexican migration a few years ago. The exodus from Mexico stemmed from the signing of NAFTA in 1994 which pitted Mexican corn farms, long a staple of the Mexican economy, against an influx of heavily subsidized corn inputs from the U.S. Over two million Mexicans left agriculture and many headed north, drawn by the Sunbelt building boom. It is quite easy to recall the hysteria of that epoch: the Minutemen, fear of Requista by increased numbers, illegal aliens bankrupting taxpayers, etc. And it wasn’t only the rabble raising the alarm. Here was renowned scholar Samual Huntington writing for Foreign Policy in 2004:
Unlike past immigrant groups, Mexicans and other Latinos have not assimilated into mainstream U.S. culture, forming Instead their own political and existing enclaves — from Los Angeles to Miami — and rejecting the Anglo-Protestant values that built the American dream. The United States ignores this challenge at its peril.
Yet it wasn’t long before the housing crisis brought down the U.S. economy, ravaging the Sun Belt with foreclosures, and reduced migration from Mexico to a trickle, even causing many to trek back across the border.
The current crisis surrounds the flood of children coming across the border from Central America’s Northern Triangle (El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras). So far this year over 50,000 have been apprehended trying to cross (in 2011 there were few than 4000 such apprehensions). The $3.7 billion Obama requested includes $1.8 billion to better house and care for children and families caught, $1.3 for the Departments of Homeland Security and Justice for border security (including crews to operate drones) and speed up deportation hearings, and $300 million to improve security in Central America. As of now Obama’s request is stalled in Congress.
While the President did correctly label the crisis a humanitarian one, predictively he failed to describe the scope, nor offer an inkling of a relevant solution. Even given the self-centered American punditry with its endless pontificating about the “land of opportunity” and the glories of lawful immigrant toil and advancement, to go with the tedious immigration debate, it is striking that one would have to look hard to come across the fact that the other countries bordering the Northern Triangle including very poor Nicaragua, along with Belize, Costa Rica, and Mexico have seen a 432 percent increase in asylum requests. The children are not fleeing to the promise-land of America as fleeing the desperate, deadly environment of their homelands.
More:
http://dissidentvoice.org/2014/08/blood-upon-the-soil/