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GUATEMALA: Population
Growth Impacts Migration
By Danilo Valladares
GUATEMALA CITY (IPS) - Marco Tulio Guerra went
to work as usual that morning at the meatpacking
plant in Postville, Iowa. But his life was turned
upside down when immigration agents swept into his
workplace and arrested him along with another 388
foreign workers. Their crime: using false Social
Security numbers
More than eight months have passed since Guerra and
286 other Guatemalans who formed part of that group
of undocumented migrants seized in the May 2008 raid
on the Agriprocessors plant in the Midwestern U.S.
state of Iowa were deported to their home country,
and most of them have not yet found a job.
"There are no jobs here in Guatemala," said Guerra,
who organised a committee seeking the social and
labour reinsertion of the group of deported
Guatemalans.
"We went (to the United States) with the dream of
having a little house and a car to get to work in,
because that's impossible here," he commented to IPS.
"But luck was not on our side, and we were unable to
stay longer," said Guerra, who was deported on Oct.
14, 2008 after spending five months in prison.
Guerra's story is a common one among Latin American
immigrants in the United States. So far this year,
29,515 Guatemalans have seen their hopes for a
better life cut short by deportation. Of that total,
14,141 were sent back by plane and the rest by land,
vía Mexico, according to Guatemala's General
Immigration Office.
A large number of people from other Central American
countries are also lured northwards: 12,594
Hondurans, 5,151 Salvadorans and 510 Nicaraguans
were deported to Guatemala vía Mexico as they tried
to reach the United States.
It is mainly poverty and the lure of the "American
dream" that drives Central Americans to leave. But
population growth is another factor that inevitably
has an effect, although it is not often discussed.
Guatemala has one of the highest demographic growth
rates in Latin America. The World Bank put this
Central American country's projected population
growth rate for 1998-2015 at 2.1 percent, only
behind Nicaragua's 2.2 percent.
According to the National Statistics Institute (INE),
the Guatemalan population will climb from the
current 13 million to 28 million by 2050 – compared
to just 3.1 million in 1950.
Of the more than one million Guatemalans living
abroad, 96 percent are in the United States.
Ana María Méndez, defender of immigrant rights in
the Office of the Human Rights Ombudsman, told IPS
that the main reasons people leave the country are
economic, impacted by population growth because
large families increase the pressure on scarce
household resources.
"There are large families that fail to achieve
minimal or decent living standards here and decide
to leave," she said.
Florentín Martínez, a researcher at the Centre for
Urban and Regional Studies (CEUR) of the University
of San Carlos in Guatemala, said population growth
translates into labour power, but also into higher
demand for services.
For that reason, he said, governments must undertake
actions to guarantee social rights by facilitating
access to education, health care, employment and
housing.
A similar view was expressed by Luis Linares, an
analyst at the non-governmental Association for
Social Research and Studies (ASIES).
"One of the challenges faced by the state is to not
only secure the resources to provide basic services
to a growing population, but also to generate
conditions for better-paid employment and keep
people from being forced to leave the country," he
remarked to IPS.
"The problem is that Guatemalans see an opportunity
for earning money in the United States that they
could not earn here. Immigrants there can send home
500 dollars a month relatively easily, while here
you can't make that much with two minimum wage
jobs," said the analyst. The minimum wage here is
6.5 dollars a day.
Linares acknowledged the importance of the law on
social development that has promoted and regulated
reproductive health policies since 2001, although he
said economic issues should be addressed in an
integral manner.
According to the World Bank, approximately 75
percent of the population lives below the poverty
line, defined as an income that is insufficient to
purchase a basic basket of goods and services, while
nearly 58 percent of the population have incomes
below the extreme poverty line, defined as the
amount needed to purchase a basic basket of food.
And poverty rates are higher than average in rural
indigenous areas in northern, northwestern and
southwestern Guatemala, along the Mexican border.
Among indigenous people – who make up a majority of
the population – the poverty rate stands as high as
90 percent.
In the northern provinces of Huehuetenango and San
Marcos, between 25 and 39 percent of the population
receive remittances from family members in the
United States.
These are two of the four provinces that will have
the largest populations in 2020 - more than one
million people each - according to the United
Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Human
Development Index 2007-2008.
Catholic priest Mauro Verzeletti, assistant
secretary of the Pastoral de Movilidad Humana, which
works with migrants, said the high population growth
rate is a reality in many Latin American countries
plagued by high poverty rates that force people to
seek opportunities abroad.
However, he said migration cannot be analysed from
the standpoint of population growth without taking
into consideration the high levels of poverty and
the responsibility of those who hold economic and
political power.
Verzeletti, a Brazilian who lives in Guatemala, said
it is necessary for the elite to exercise social
responsibility towards the poor in order to boost
equality, since this is one of the most unequal
countries in the world. For example, around 80
percent of the farmland is in the hands of just five
percent of the population, according to the UNDP.
"We do not have the impression that the powerful are
interested in sharing their wealth so that people
can develop, and we know that where development
exists, families control their birth rates and
migration rates go down," the priest told IPS.
Saturday, Jul. 11 is World Population Day, and
Guatemala and other countries in the world are
facing new challenges in the fight against poverty,
and against high population growth which is linked
to large-scale migration. |
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