Immigrate To America

Everyone has hopes and dreams for a better future. We all want to live a happy life, where we are surrounded by our loved ones and can work to make our dreams a reality. This is why the idea of the American Dream appeals to so many people — it sparks a sense of hope and a new beginning for those who have nothing left to lose anymore in their own country. People from all over the world leave their native country to immigrate to the United States. Anything from personal to economic to political reasons drive people to leave their native country and immigrate to the United States. Immigration is and will continue to be a big part of the United States history, since it is what has made the US diverse; however, the sudden increase in unaccompanied

Central American children migrating to the United States is concerning. The aim of this essay is to investigate what has caused this sudden increase and the political impact that it has had on Latinos in the United States.
Children have been migrating alone to the US for decades, but this sudden increase of accompanied children migrating is a sign of the distress occurring in Central America. In the article, The Central American Child Emigration Crisis, Carlos Vargas-Ramos calls the surge of unaccompanied minors crossing the US Border a crisis because “in fiscal year 2014, the apprehension of unaccompanied alien children increased by 88 percent compared to the previous fiscal year, growing from 35,200 to 66,120.” In the course of a year, the number of unaccompanied minors were twice as much as the prior year. But why? What has driven the sudden increase of Central American children leaving their native country and enduring a dangerous journey to the US? The answer: violence, poverty, and a sense of loneliness and despair. These factors have led children to try their luck in the United States, where they hope someone will help them.
The majority of the migrant children are from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador but “Honduras and El Salvador are the countries with the largest proportion of unaccompanied girls trying to cross the border between Mexico and the United States, representing around 40 percent of those unauthorized unaccompanied minors encountered by U.S.

immigration authorities” (Ramos). The amount of girls fleeing from Honduras and El Salvador correlates with the profound gang violence that exists in those countries. According to Women's Refugee, “gangs and drug traffickers in Central America are increasingly recruiting girls to smuggle and sell drugs in their home countries, using gang rape as a means of forcing them into compliance. Gangs also use the threat of rape as a tactic to gain money through extortion and kidnapping.” Girls of all ages are sexually harassed, even girls at the young age of 9. Everyone knows that the journey to the United States is dangerous, but girls would rather risk getting raped on their journey to the United States, rather than get raped continuously in their native country. If 40% of the unaccompanied minors are girls, than 60% of the minors are males. The reason for this is also gang violence. While girls are getting sexually harassed, boys are always getting recruited to

join.
Youth is always said to be the best time of ones life, but if you're young and living in Honduras or El Salvador, this is defnifielty not the case. Gangs are always harassing young boys to join and now, it is worse, because they have decided to “operate under a ruthless ‘join or die’ policy (Womens refugee).” Today, gangs are giving ultimatums to young boys, either they live and become a member of the gang, or they die. Fleeing their country is their basic attempt to survive. At such young ages, their innocence has been ripped away and they have to face the realization that if they still they will die, and if they leave, they might die too, but theres also a chance that they won't. They are willing to die for this little hope that they still have. As Ramos put it “these children exhibited both an urgent need to escape and an incredible will to survive. Most of them expressed a “necessity” for leaving their home, indicating more “push” than “pull” factors for their decisions to migrate. All of them are looking to the United States for refuge and hope for a future.”
The 18th Street gang, also known as Barrio 18, and their main rival, the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) have existed in Honduras and El Salvador for many years.

They are the major gangs, or “Maras”, that create havoc and civil unrest in these countries. According to Oscar Martinez, “when President George W. Bush signed the TVPRA into law in 2008, there were fifty-two murders per 100,000 people in El Salvador. The number shot up to seventy-one in 2009 before plateauing at sixty-five. Then, thanks in part to a truce between the government and the gangs, it dropped sharply in 2012.” Unfortunately, this truce did not last long and the homicide crimes have increased since then. According to Wolf, “in recent years the group has acquired a reputation for extreme brutality and has ostensibly mutated into a fast-expanding, transnational organized crime network with possible ties to international terrorists.” Although, there are many children who refuse to join gangs, a large amount of the youth decide to join as a way of overcoming “conditions of poverty, family disintegration or separation, neglect, violent domestic environments, unemployment, scarcity of educational and developmental opportunities, and [gaining] family membership in gangs” (Fogelbach). This in part is due to the lack of socioeconomic conditions present in Honduras and El Salvador. It can be seen that the dominance that gangs have is a result of the poverty and lack of opportunities to prosper that are

present.
Poverty and lack of opportunities have not only facilitated gang dominance, but it has also led children to migrate to the United States. Although, most children are fleeing from violence, in certain areas, they are fleeing from poverty too. Accodring to NO CHILDHOOD HERE, in the most imoveirshed deparemtnes in El Salvador, Ahuachapán, Cabañas, and Chalatenango, more children leave with the ambition of living a better life, than for violence. More than 40% of the children, mostly males, leave El Salvador to find a job in the Unisttes States. They hope to work and study, while still sending money to their families in El Salvador. Their desire for a better life is not suprisinsg, since even the “national educational systems are inadequately funded, with many children only advancing to 6th or 7th grade” (migration policy). When a child makes the decision to not join a gang, its usually because they want something better for themselves. But, if theyre own country does not offer them this opportyniy, what other option do they have than to look for it elsewhere. Furtheemore, a lot of childrne also choose to immigrate because they want to reunite with their family. The number of parents that leave their children behind and immifrate to the Unites States in order to provide for them from afar is high. As a result, children migrate because they miss their parents. Migration due to this reason can have alternate processes though, since sometimes children migrate without telling their parents and other times it is the parents who tell their childrent to migrate to the United States. CHILDREN WILL KEEP ON COMING offers a scenario that represents how this could be a cause for the increase in unaccompanied children migrating to the US because they state that “If a mother in Los Angeles sees that her neighbor’s children have made it into the States, she will want her own kids to come as well; then another mother will do the same, and then another and then another, until you have 52,000 children crossing the border.” This can very accurate since many parents don't leave their children behind by choice, they do it out of necessity, so once they realize that they're not going back to their native country and that they aren't going to be able to file for residency either, they want their children with them.
The states are basically being run by gangs because the government has no way to stop gang violence and diminish the fear that it creates in society (migration policy). El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras have struggled to protect the public from violent crime and gang activity. Two major problems hinder the security forces' ability to control gangs: (1) a lack of resources and (2) corruption. The public, consequently, has lost confidence in the government's ability to protect them from criminals and gangs. According to the Immigration Policy Center, “even the U.S. government concedes that these countries have abysmal human rights conditions. U.S. State Department Reports on Country Conditions show that while the particularities may vary, each of these countries suffers from widespread institutional corruption; police and military complicity in serious crimes; societal violence, including brutality against women and exploitation of children; and dysfunctional judicial systems that lead to high levels of impunity.”
I agree with the MIGRATION POLICY when they make the statement that “children flee, as a strategy to escape the gangs, to help support the family, and to reunify with their parents or other loved ones, from whom they have been separated for years”; however, violence is still the overall culprit because a country cannot propser when there is violecen present. The United States does not know how to go about with the surge of unaccimpined minors crossing the border, but it neglects the fact that it is in part repsosnivile for the chaos that is present in Central America. “It is important to remember the role the United States has played in creating this mass migration. In the 1970s and ’80s, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras were in the midst of either bloody civil wars or fierce government repression in which the United States played an iron-fisted role. Fearing the spread of communism in Latin America, the United States supported the autocratic military governments of these three countries, which in turn generated thousands of northbound migrants. Some of these migrants went on to join gangs in California. The 18th Street Gang and the Mara Salvatrucha were not formed in El Salvador, Honduras or Guatemala but in the United States. Some fifty years ago, the 18th Street Gang splintered off from Clanton 14 in Southern California. The Mara Salvatrucha formed in Los Angeles in the late 1970s. At the end of the ’80s and the start of the ’90s, the United States deported close to 4,000 gang members. When they arrived back in Central America, they found fertile conditions in which to increase their numbers: countries devastated by war and poverty, with thousands upon thousands of corruptible and abandoned children” (children will keep on coming). Furthemore, gangs have become even more brutal due to the “Mérida Initiative, a plan to combat dmg traffieking and increaase cooperation primarily between Mexico and the United States, [which] has caused Mexican dmg cartels to spill over into Central Ameriea. According to El Salvador's defense minister, "The more pressure there is in Mexico, the more the dmg cartels will come to Central America looking for a safe haven” (Fogelbach). Unconsciously, the United States has played a fundamental part in creating violence in Central America.
Now, that we have examined the reasons for why children are migrating, although some may say fleeing, to the United States; I will discuss the political impact that it has had on Latinos in the United States. The United States is filled with different types of Latinos, ranging from ethnicity to generation; however, every Latino feels compassion for this phenomen. Why? Because children are the ones who are migrating to the US. Almost everyone has a soft side for children and knowing that these children endured a dangerous, possibly deadly journey to the United States, makes people want to help them. Furthermore, “the recent influx of child migrants raised the importance and urgency of the issue of immigration generally, with more than a majority of respondents now opening that it is more important to pass significant immigration legislation” (carnegie council). Moreover, people have began to associate and mobilize in response to this issue. This is because the government can't just simply deport these children back to where they came from. The video of “Entre el abandono y el Rechazo” demonstrates how inhumane it is to send back these children, who came here to the US searching for help. The US has a responsibility of helping these children because they are children – children who have experienced hardship way too young, causing them to lose their innocence, but nevertheless children who still have a long life to live. Latinos have had a common collective conscious thats led them to unite for a cause and to demonstrate that “the power of the people is stronger than the people in power.”
Overall, “while poor economic conditions may serve as the backdrop that frames the potential desire to emigrate, violence is a more immediate cause, certainly in the case of this influx of unaccompanied minors. Violence or the threat of violence has historically been a prime motivator of emigration” (caregie council). Honduras and El Salvador face poverty, which combined with the struggle between gangs and the presence of drug cartels, is a recipe for disaster (Washington Post). Being young in these countries is deadly. At this point, they have a simplified way of thinking : either you're in a gang, or you're against them. Whichever stanza one chooses, puts them in danger and ultimately, gets them nowhere. Desperation due to the gang violence in Central America has led hundreds of children to migrate unaccompanied. Childhood should be a valuable thing because it is the one instant where everyone is innocent, but these children have lost their innocence, thus also losing their childhood.