Reports are that a new caravan is going to be leaving Honduras soon in a few weeks. It’s supposed to be much bigger – about 15,000 strong – and is expected to get even larger as it picks up people from Guatemala and El Salvador.
LA TIMES – Another migrant caravan — this one estimated at 15,000 people — is preparing to leave Honduras on Jan. 15, according to migrant rights advocates and Spanish-language media.
“They say they are even bigger and stronger than the last caravan,” said Irma Garrido, a member of the migrant advocacy group Reactiva Tijuana Foundation.
Here’s the good news:
Garrido said this new, larger caravan will probably be joined by more people in El Salvador and in Guatemala, but she said they don’t plan on coming straight to the Tijuana-San Diego border, where resources are already stretched nearly to a breaking point.
“They will stay in the south of Mexico in Chiapas and Oaxaca. Their aim is to request work there,” she said.
The government of Mexico is already pledging to help them find work and even create special projects to aid them:
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has pledged visas and work in Mexico for Central American migrants. In his inauguration speech, he pledged public works projects such as planting 2 million trees and construction of his Maya Train, which will link cities in the three Yucatan peninsula states as well as Tabasco and Chiapas.
The $8-billion project is expected to create hundreds of thousands of jobs in the southern states of Mexico.
Of course that isn’t sitting well with the people of Chiapas and I can’t blame them for that:
On Facebook, reaction in Chiapas to news of a second caravan was not all favorable.
“Well, now the government does something. That work is for Mexicans that need it,” said Anna Pérez from Palenque, Mexico, on Facebook. “Opportunistic people who just want to take advantage of the Mexicans.”
Finally, here’s the bad news about this caravan:
The El Diario de Chiapas newspaper reported that even though Tijuana would not be the newest caravan’s initial destination, some of the participants plan to eventually make their way north to the city to try to enter the United States.
Of course they are coming here.
Perhaps Tijuana needs to build their own wall to stop this insanity.