'It’s not as simple as telling us all to stay and fix our own country, when you played a role in breaking it. When you can’t see a future for your family, is leaving really a choice?' (via latimesopinion)
I recently went to a parents’ meeting at my children’s elementary school in the rural town of Aguacatán, Guatemala, a few hours from the Mexico border. As usual, I was one of the only men there.
Although I have gone legally on tourist visas to visit family in the north — a brother, two aunts and three uncles, some of them in the U.S. legally, some not — I haven’t even considered staying on without papers because I want to stay on the right side of the law.Now, however, for the first time my wife and I are considering trying to get to the United States, too. We wake up early most mornings and watch our three young kids sleeping, wondering what future awaits them here.
There’s corruption like this in any country, but in Guatemala, there’s little risk for lawbreakers. Officials have embraced corruption as simply part of life here and do almost nothing to stop it. The tolerance extends to the highest levels of government. Our outgoing President Jimmy Morales moved to shut down a United Nations-backed anti-corruption commission after it investigated his son and brother, as well as the financing of his campaign.One core problem here is massive inequity.
With farms failing, people in rural areas rely on remittances from the U.S. to put food on the table. Money from relatives working in the States is the one thing that has enabled families like mine to stay in Guatemala. The remittances pay for roads and infrastructure in towns the Guatemalan government ignores. We head to the U.S. in part to save the places we came from.
Now Morales is trying to do Trump a favor in return, by striking a deal to designate Guatemala as a “safe third country,” meaning that other Central American migrants who pass through Guatemala to get to the United States will be required to stay here while their asylum claims are resolved.
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