Foot-in-mouth disease

A couple days ago I asked my host Aunt (of the Dear Host Aunt Crazy fame) if her son (he’s 17) could cut my hair again – he had done it about 2 months ago.

Her reply: “He left my house a month and 3 days ago”.

I really like this Aunt – she is probably my favorite person here – so obviously I felt bad for making her feel bad.  I knew her son has had some problems – conflict with his dad, increasing use of drugs, fascination with gangs etc (just like every teenager right?)  He had joked to me that he was going to go to the US, but I never really took it seriously.

Later I found out that on August 9th (thanks for keeping me in the loop host family) he left with 3 others.  A couple nights before he left, he stole some kind of appliance (think it was a weed whacker or something) and brought it to the capital to sell.  They used this money to get started.  Since then, there hasn’t been much communication.  He called home once to ask for money – and his family sent him about $200.  A few days later he called again and they sent another $200.  The third time he asked they finally said no – that if he wanted money that he should find a job.  So they are not really sure where he is now – they get vague reports from the parents of one of the others that he is in a certain town in Mexico.  Meanwhile the fact that 72 or so immigrants were killed in Mexico (some were from Honduras) was big news here in the last few weeks – I had to tell more than 1 person that it happened in Mexico and not the US.

What is weird about this is that he is from a (relatively) rich family here and is smart if a little misguided.

I’m not sure that I had really strong feelings about illegal immigration before I came here.  Sorry to rant-and-rave a little bit, but I think I do now.  I’ve heard a statistic that remittances from the US make up something like 25% of GDP here.  So people here in Honduras aren’t particularly motivated to fix their own country when they can depend on money coming from the US.  And those in Honduras that have a lot of ambition leave the country.

On the US side, I’ve heard people say that these are jobs that Americans don’t want.  I read something recently where a group decided to field applications to be a day-laborer in the fields.  Despite how bad unemployment is in the US, few applied.  But I think this misses the point.  Using Hondurans (and others) allows us to avoid facing our own problems.  Rather than figuring out a way to make these jobs attractive for (some of) the millions of unemployed people in the US, we use illegal immigration as our own crutch.  And if we truly couldn’t make these jobs attractive to Americans, then why not at least expand the visa process so that they (and we) have some documentation.

If you see Heber Emanuel Enamorado sometime soon near you he gives pretty sweet haircuts.

*UPDATE: Since I write this a couple weeks ago there has been new . . . news.  Apparently he was caught trying to cross the border in Texas.  I guess the border patrol thought he was Mexican, so they mailed him off to southern Mexico.  So now he is living in Chiapas – neither Honduras nor the US – although I assume once he has the money to try again he will.