Border policy is getting more & more convoluted, giving migrants false hopes
Posted May 14, 2021, 12:27 pm
Lomi Kriel ProPublica
This story was originally published by ProPublica.
No matter how hard he tried, Jonatan Garcia said, he couldn’t find steady work in Guatemala. He dabbled in construction, and on some days picked beans, after losing his sales job at a TV station a few weeks after the pandemic shuttered businesses and further stifled employment in his country.
Desperation quickly mounted for Garcia. He struggled to make enough money to provide food for his wife and two small children, and they faced eviction from the three-room house they rented in the mostly indigenous and impoverished rural state of Baja Verapaz.
Then, Garcia said, smugglers falsely told him that President Joe Biden had signaled during a television appearance that migrants would be allowed to enter the United States. The new administration has been trying to combat such misinformation as it seeks to rein in the influx of migrants at the southern border of the U.S.
http://www.tucsonsentinel.com/nationworld/report/051421_border_policies/border-policy-getting-more-more-convoluted-giving-migrants-false-hopes/
