June 18, 2019
AS IT WAS A DUTY FOR ALL OUR FAMILIES:
Migration to US is a family 'duty' for many Guatemalans (Emily Green, 6/18/19, PRI The World)
In the village of Comunidad Agraria Emanuel, a coffee-growing region in western Guatemala, Fernando González Hernández watches as his nephews saw wood. They're building a cabinet for his new home.González helps by straightening out old nails with a hammer so that they can be reused. The home is a work in progress -- thanks to one person: González's eldest son.He states his son's name with pride: "Federico González Morales. He's in Indiana."His son works in construction and sends home remittances, or cash, every month. It's money that's helping build this home, which is bare-bones but comfortable: a big living room, small kitchen, two bedrooms, a concrete floor. The roof is mostly tin shingles roped together -- but González says it's better than it was before."When it rained, the wind blew off parts of the roof. We had to go run and fetch it," he said, laughing at the memory. So far, the new house has cost around $6,500 -- far beyond what the family here could save without help from their son's remittances.González makes around $4.50 per day as a coffee farmer in Guatemala, which isn't enough to pay for basic expenses. It's a situation many families face here, especially since coffee prices have crashed in recent years.Today, around one in four Guatemalan families receive remittances -- mostly from the US -- and those remittances account for roughly 50% of their income. The reliance on family remittances in Guatemala started around 15 years ago, said Manuel Orozco, director of the Migration, Remittances and Development program at the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington, DC-based think tank. The average remittance is around $300 per month, he said.One of the first things migrants do is send money to family members to invest in a new home, or fix up their old one. [...]As more Guatemalans migrate, new houses are going up every month in Comunidad Agraria Emanuel with money from remittances. But the tradeoff is an exodus of people. Since October 2016, more than 800,00 unaccompanied minors and parents traveling with children have turned themselves in to US Border Patrol agents. Guatemalans make up 40% of them.Overall, Guatemala has seen "over 1% of its total population migrate to the US in the first seven months of this fiscal year," according to acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan.
Living conditions in Ireland were deplorable long before the Potato Blight of 1845, however, and a large number of Irish left their homeland as early as the 1820s.
In fact, Ireland's population decreased dramatically throughout the nineteenth century. Census figures show an Irish population of 8.2 million in 1841, 6.6 million a decade later, and only 4.7 million in 1891. It is estimated that as many as 4.5 million Irish arrived in America between 1820 and 1930.
Between 1820 and 1860, the Irish constituted over one third of all immigrants to the United States. In the 1840s, they comprised nearly half of all immigrants to this nation.
Posted by Orrin Judd at June 18, 2019 6:30 PM