Honduras has the second highest murder rate in the world. There are 63.75 homicides per 100,000 people and most of this violence is concentrated in the city of San Pedro de Sula. Honduras also has the highest incidence of firearm-related deaths in the world.
For years, I have heard Hondurans speak of the violence that has overtaken their country. Horror stories of murder, kidnapping, suffering, and loss. Conditions have continued to worsen. Thousands find no other choice other than to leave everything behind to seek something better elsewhere.
I understand and identify with the plight of those who feel their lives threatened and will do anything to get out of that environment. Even if it means leaving your country. Even if it means losing everything. Even if it means leaving behind everything that is familiar.
There is no time to wait for another day. There is no time to wait for some government program to be enacted or for the government to change. When the moment comes, you leave. This was the situation my family faced in April of 1991. If we had waited another day, my father could have been killed. One of us could have been kidnapped. My dad could have ended up shot dead and on the 10 o’clock news like some of his colleagues.
We had the ability to come to the United States by airplane. It was an American Airlines flight from Lima to Miami. I watched the movie Home Alone, it had come out the previous year. My father had the money to buy airplane tickets quickly, we already had a tourist visa to enter the US, and he had the funds needed to rent a house as soon as we arrived.
I came by airplane, but thousands due to their condition in life cannot do the same. They find themselves in the same circumstances my family did, but they cannot come by airplane, so they come by foot. They come in a caravan. They do whatever is necessary to preserve their lives.
The caravan currently crossing Mexico started in San Pedro de Sula, the most dangerous city in the second most dangerous country in the world. These people are desperate. They have nothing to lose, so they come seeking a better life for their families away from the violence.
Every country has a right to defend its border and determine who is allowed to enter.
Every country has an obligation to respond to the suffering of fellow human beings.
Shutting the door on their faces may be judged by history in the same light as the rejection of the ocean liner filled with German Jews that arrived to the US in 1939. Many of those on board died in the Holocaust during the years that followed.
I earnestly pray that those who reach the border with legitimate refugee claims will be welcomed. That the men, women, and children be evaluated fairly. Those without a case or those inciting violence should be turned away.
I do hope that those who are true refugees will be welcomed, for their good, and for our own.
Picture is in the public domain.
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