(The New York Times)
Hoping
to stem the recent surge of migrants at the Southwest border, the Obama
administration is considering whether to allow hundreds of minors and
young adults from Honduras into the United States without making the
dangerous trek through Mexico, according to a draft of the proposal.
If
approved, the plan would direct the government to screen thousands of
children and youths in Honduras to see if they can enter the United
States as refugees or on emergency humanitarian grounds. It would be the
first American refugee effort in a nation reachable by land to the
United States, the White House said, putting the violence in Honduras on
the level of humanitarian emergencies in Haiti and Vietnam, where such
programs have been conducted in the past amid war and major crises.
Critics
of the plan were quick to pounce, saying it appeared to redefine the
legal definition of a refugee and would only increase the flow of
migration to the United States. Administration officials said they
believed the plan could be enacted through executive action, without
congressional approval, as long as it did not increase the total number
of refugees coming into the country.
By
moving decisions on refugee claims to Honduras, the plan aims to slow
the rush of minors crossing into the United States illegally from El
Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, which has overwhelmed the border this
year. More than 45,000 unaccompanied minors from those three nations
have arrived since Oct. 1, straining federal resources to the point that
some agencies will exhaust their budgets by next month, the secretary
of Homeland Security has said.
No comments:
Post a Comment