The Solution to the Caravan Crisis Is in Honduras
Reihan Salam
The Honduran government briefly considered creating a “charter city†to which migrants could freely move. They should have gone through with it.
There is something poignant about the fact that the migrant caravan that has so transfixed President Trump, and that has dramatized America’s stark immigration divide, has its origins in Honduras. It wasn’t so long ago that it seemed faintly possible this impoverished republic would itself become a beacon of hope to migrants from throughout Central America, and perhaps even the world. It’s a reminder that there was nothing inevitable about the recent Central American migrant wave. There was an alternative available to us, if only we had been willing to seize it.
The present caravan began when Bartolo Fuentes, an activist who has devoted much of his life to helping would-be émigrés seeking a better life abroad, decided to do what he could to help a few hundred migrants make their way to the United States, a journey he knew to be perilous. As The Daily Beast recounts, as word of the caravan spread, other Hondurans who had contemplated making the same journey saw it as a rare opportunity. Rather than pay coyotes to secure their passage at a going rate of $7,000, a staggering sum for all but the wealthiest Hondurans, they would find strength in numbers, and guidance from volunteers who knew the route well.
Read more at: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/solution-caravan-crisis-honduras/573832/
This is interesting per the article, the emboldened part above. At least, in this case, the migrants are not going to be shelling out big bucks to those who do the human smuggling.
