While the Trump Administration has emphasized enforcement as the primary way to reduce immigration from Central America to the US, the Obama Administration had emphasized a combination of enforcement and development. An April 2019 Washington Post article featured a Guatemalan school, funded by an Obama-era development program, to see how effective it was at reducing migration. The school’s experience reveals how complex the immigration problem really is.
In the city of Santa Maria Visitacion, Guatemala, the Stay Here Center operates with funding from USAID. It provides training to teenagers in computer repair, hair cutting, or English so graduates can work at call centers or as tour guides. Its goal is to encourage young people to find jobs in the local area rather than migrate to the US. This particular center has been open four years and is one of several sites around Guatemala.
While the school has trained over a thousand students, it is unclear whether it has had much impact on migration. An estimated 10 percent of its graduates have gone to the US anyway, taking their newfound skills with them. This level is consistent with the overall estimate that 8% of 17-year-olds from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador have migrated to the US. The problem is that there aren’t enough jobs in the local area for young people—development simply has not taken off. In fact, some of the most prosperous people in the small village of Santa Maria Vistacion are families whose breadwinner migrated to the US to work in construction and now sends money back home. Such remittances from the US account for about 11 percent of Guatemala’s GDP.
Enforcement, development, and migration are just three of the variables in this complex problem facing North America. Long-term solutions will require new ways of thinking about our region and its challenges. Nations will have to work together to have any hope of addressing the issue.
References:
Washington Post, “With U.S. aid, a Guatemalan school battles to get its students to stay home,” 21 Apr 2019, A1.