Forty Bullets in the Head Shows Why Hondurans Fleeing for U.S.

[xchrom]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-31/forty-bullets-in-the-head-shows-why-hondurans-fleeing-for-u-s-.html


Heidy Cabrera, center, sits with son Eduardo, 8, right, and newborn Cristopher, left, at the Buen Pastor shelter

Heidy Cabrera said she was finishing her shift at a supermarket checkout counter in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, when her mother called to deliver the news. Her boyfriend, Diego, had been killed on the way home from his construction job -- shot in the head 40 times.

Seven months later, with his murder unsolved, Cabrera, 22, got on a bus and left Honduras. She had her eight-year-old son Eduardo in tow and was pregnant with Diego’s child, who was born after she crossed into Mexico.

“I no longer felt safe living in my neighborhood,” Cabrera said, sitting on a bed at a shelter for migrants in the southern Mexican city of Tapachula while cradling 16-day-old Cristopher in her arms earlier this month. “My friends have also had family members killed. These kind of things happen all the time. I want a good life for my children in the U.S., one without crime.”

Cabrera and her sons represent one of the biggest shifts in immigration to the U.S., one that has been overlooked in a debate about the arrival of unaccompanied children. The number of families apprehended at the southwest border, the primary point of entry for immigrants from Central America, surged sixfold this year, almost exceeding the number of unaccompanied minors, which doubled.

[madokie]

1. To me

it would be an honor to allow her and the rest of those fleeing, because of conditions in their own countries, to come to our country and be a part of us, to join us.
After all many of the problems in Central America and Mexico have been brought on by us to begin with. Our drug wars, our deposing of duly elected officials etc.
Open our arms and welcome these people so they can be like the rest of us, productive citizens who can't be exploited by the well connected and rich. Thats why the GOPpers don't want immigration reform it takes away their pool of low wage earners and people they can exploit for their own good

[TIMETOCHANGE]

2. We need to focus on integration and assimilation.

Having dealt with Mexican laborers in my law practice (I handle their personal injury cases and I refer out their Workers Comp cases) I can tell you that just letting these people in won't be a solution all by itself. We need facilities designed to help these people gain jobs, get medical care, and asses their needs. We need an immigration system similar to that of Norway with a little more tailoring for assimilation. If we want immigration to be fixed we need people to see that immigrants are a boon and blessing, not curse and millstone around the neck of our welfare system.

[jwirr]

3. As I read this I wondered what it is we can do to help these countries deal with the violence

without destroying them more? We will not be able to assimilate ever single possible victim into our system forever. So what can be done to stop the mess we have helped to create? Is the UN of any use in this kind of situation?

Even more relevant is what can the nations themselves do to end the violence?