“I Love the Smell of Deportations in the Morning.”
Referencing Apocalypse Now, President Trump continues his war on “enemies” who harvest our food, build our homes, and do other essential low-paid jobs. Working for 50 years in rural Honduras, I came to know those who the president calls our enemies. From them I learned why they risk all to get here.
The most powerful of those lessons was in 1995 when I saw a baby die on a bus in rural Honduras. Deaths in childhood from curable diseases are becoming all-too-common in Honduras. Such suffering, with deep roots in Honduras’ past, drives migration.
For five centuries, the powerful and wealthy profited by extracting cheap raw materials, produced by underpaid labor, from the country. Revenues from exports such as bananas and coffee continue to enrich foreign investors who pay little or no taxes.
Lacking tax revenues, Honduran governments borrow from foreign banks and agencies to fund basic services. These lenders determine what services Honduran governments provide.
By the 1980s, foreign meddling took the form of neoliberal “structural reforms” (https://harvardpolitics.com/neocolonialism-imf/). Continued access to credit depended on Honduras conforming to loan stipulations including: reducing government-run social and medical programs; drastically cutting public-sector payrolls; encouraging foreign investments through even more generous tax incentives; and promoting free trade.
For example, the Central American Free Trade Agreement required that Honduras end tariffs and the food and fuel subsidies that kept prices of essential goods affordable for most citizens.
Because Honduran farmers no longer benefitted from tariffs, corn imported from U.S. agribusinesses subsidized by our taxes cost less than that raised locally (https://coyotelegal.com/2014/07/16/cafta-dr-part-1-poverty-and-immigration-implications/#:~:text=For%20the%20United%20States%2C%20removing,sector%20compared%20to%20the%20U.S.). Cheap U.S. corn flooded the market, benefitting exporters but bankrupting Honduran farmers.
Forced to sell their land, they fled to cities where the available jobs paid poorly. Most Hondurans now make $6.85/day, many barely survive on $2.15 even as the cost of living rises (https://documents.worldbank.org/en/publication/documents-reports/documentdetail/099119501062532130).
These are among the reasons why the baby died. Government clinics charge very little but are now underfunded, understaffed, and few in number. Private clinics are beyond the means of 52% of the population who live in poverty.
Like the mother on the bus, they must seek care at affordable government-run hospitals located far from their homes. By the time they can make the trip, it is often too late.
Financial and trade policies promoted by this and previous administrations created conditions in which Hondurans could no longer support their families and so must migrate (https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/blog/immigrants-do-not-commit-more-crimes-in-the-us-despite-fearmongering/).
Rather than getting rich or stealing from us, they send most of what little they make home to keep their children alive and in school (https://storyteller.iom.int/stories/remittances-offer-hope-struggling-hondurans).
Controlling immigration starts with knowing what makes people risk all to come to a place where they are vilified. The real threat to our borders are not those who cross them. The wealthy and powerful who benefit from promoting the misery immigrants are fleeing are the real threats.
Memes, walls, and ICE raids will not solve the problems our politicians and the corporations they serve have created. We need public servants who, regardless of party, treat immigrants humanely and immigration’s causes seriously, and we need them now.
Edward Schortman
Granville, Ohio