Yahoo News – by Gustavo Palencia
TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) – Top Honduran officials on Wednesday called for U.S. aid to Central America to reduce violence that has fueled a surge of child migration to the United States, with the foreign minister calling for a “mini-Marshall plan” to attack the broader underlying problems.
Honduran President Juan Hernandez said Washington should help Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras fight gangs with a plan similar to U.S. anti-drug programs in Colombia and Mexico, as well as funds to lift growth in the impoverished region.
“One has to recognize that our countries can’t do it alone,” he said at a conference about the unaccompanied minors fleeing for the United States. “We need help from the United States, from Mexico, because this is everyone’s problem.”
Honduran Foreign Minister Mireya Aguero told the conference that efforts to step up security at the U.S. border were not working and that U.S. aid would be better spent in Central America.
“It’s much more practical for the United States to launch a mini-Marshall plan, as they did after World War Two, to create opportunities and really get to the root of the problem in Central American countries that is fueling migration,” she said.
Named after top U.S. general George Marshall, the Marshall plan was a U.S. aid program to help rebuild shattered European economies after the destruction wrought by World War Two.
Hernandez, who took office in January after pledging to crack down on crime, said U.S.-backed battles against cartels in Colombia and Mexico have pushed drug traffickers into Central America, increasing violence, which is causing the exodus.
Yet he underlined the success of U.S. efforts in Colombia.
“Today, for example, Plan Colombia is showing major success. It was worked on together, those generating demand for drugs in the north and those producing drugs in the south assumed joint responsibility and it was effective,” he said.
Honduras now has the highest murder rate in the world.
Gang-related killings have increased in recent years since Mexico’s drug cartels expanded into Honduras, enlisting local street gangs and using the country’s Caribbean coast to transport South American cocaine to the United States.
Thousands of Central American migrants have been streaming into the United States through Mexico, and those caught are being held in overcrowded detention facilities.
President Barack Obama has asked lawmakers for $3.7 billion to pay for more border security, temporary detention centers and additional immigration court judges to process asylum cases and speed up deportations.
A local U.N. official who also spoke at the conference in Honduras said that U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is “deeply concerned” about the child migrants. He urged the governments involved “to urgently protect the human rights of migrant children.”
(Reporting by Gustavo Palencia; Editing by Leslie Adler)
http://news.yahoo.com/honduras-seeks-u-aid-migrants-suggests-mini-marshall-202914516.html
“We need help from the United States, from Mexico, because this is everyone’s problem.”
You must have bumped your head, moron, ’cause it damn sure ain’t OUR problem.
Deal with it, d#ckwad.
No shit. These bastards need to clean up their own damn homicidal country and take back all of their runaway peasants. We don’t want them.