People are leaving Guatemala because life is getting better
Here’s the surprising truth behind the fact that 250,000 Guatemalan migrants have been apprehended at the southern U.S. border since October 2018: The mass exodus reflects the tremendous social and economic progress that the Central American country has made in the past half-century.
Life is still hard for most people there, much harder than it is in the United States, so it’s understandable that Guatemala’s poverty and violence figure prominently in the usual explanations for the northbound movement.
Yet the necessary condition for mass migration is sustained population growth, enough to produce a critical mass of youthful would-be emigrants. Guatemala’s 2018 population of 17.2 million represents a quadrupling since 1960, according to the World Bank.… Seguir leyendo »