deportees to build new lives in their home countries, they
need more long-term reintegration assistance.
One of the major barriers to reintegration is the attitude
of Northern Triangle societies to returnees. “They don’t
have a chance,” Sister Valdette Wileman said. “First of
all, Honduran society doesn’t accept the deportees. Most
people think that the deportees are criminals.” Cecelia
Ramirez, who started a program for returnees with Catholic Relief Services in El Salvador, said that people who
have been deported—some of whom left their native country as children—experience reverse culture shock upon return. “Sometimes they deport people that have been in the
United States for 25 years,” Ramirez said. “The country
[El Salvador] has changed so much.” Honduran and Guatemalan returnees experience similar vertigo. “Those that
come back are not American but they’re also not [Guatemalan],” Guatemalan analyst Pedro Pop Barillas said.
“They’re a hybrid.”
Many returnees left before completing their studies in
their homeland and immediately began working in the
United States. Ironically, this means that they may both lack
the educational qualifications to find jobs and, at the same
time, be unable to use the skills they learned working in the
United States. “There are many people that worked there
[in the U.S.] for 20 years, 15 years [in building trades] with
technology they don’t even have here,” said Jorge Pineda,
who works for the Salvadoran government’s migrant return
program. Pineda also said that coyotes usually give migrants
two or three opportunities to cross into the United States if
they are caught and deported. He said it costs Salvadoran
immigrants about $6,000 to illegally enter the United States,
half of it to be paid upon arrival. Therefore there are incentives for both the coyotes and the migrants to try again to
reach the United States, particularly if migrants cannot find
opportunity back home. “The great majority of people try
to return,” Pineda said. “People always have the hope to get
there and reach their dream.”
The Migrant’s Friend
Like productive investment of remittances, long-term reintegration programs for Northern Triangle returnees are
rare. But also like remittances, there are incipient publicprivate partnerships seeking to provide returnees with alternatives to additional unauthorized journeys to the United
States. In 2011 the Honduran Association of Banking Institutions (known by its Spanish acronym, AHIBA) created a
program called “Friend of the Migrant” aimed at providing training and education to returnees. “We want them to
stay here and use everything that they learned in the United
States…as micro-entrepreneur so that they can generate jobs
for others too,” said Liana Fortin of AHIBA.
AHIBA is partnering with the Honduran National Institute of Professional Training (known by its Spanish acronym, INFOP) to offer training in auto mechanics, hospitality, carpentry, electrician skills, English, computer skills,
and customer service. All courses will be taught to returnees with the explicit goal of helping them find work in their
home country so they do not have to re-migrate to the United States. Fortin said the goal is to support small business
creation. “We want to teach them the entrepreneurs’ mentality,” she said. The courses will
be taught at INFOP and funded by
AHIBA. The agreement between
AHIBA and INFOP was signed in
May 2012 and is still untested. But
it is notable for its recognition of
the long-term problems facing returnees and the economic potential
they bring home with them because
of skills they learned as workers in
the United States.
iStock/John Moore
Settling Down
An Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer prepares an undocumented Salvadoran immigrant for
a deportation flight bound for San Salvador on December 8, 2010 in Mesa, Arizona.
www.bread.org
Without provisions for reintegration, Northern Triangle returnees face difficult futures. Some
returned migrants “end up in the
street,” IOM Guatemala attorney
Susie Mendia said. But there are
options for long-term reintegration
of returnees. Although it is not yet
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