Migration and Development

4/28/2010
Issue Update: Migration is a right linked to development
For Guatemalan Migrants, “American Dream” Ends in Frustration
By Oscar Rene Oliva
http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=355628&CategoryId=23558
GUATEMALA CITY – The hopes of most of the thousands of Guatemalans who daily set off in search of the “American dream” end in frustration, with the migrants deeper in debt than they were before they left their country.

“We have seen some very sad cases (of immigrants forcibly repatriated from the United States) who have taken out loans that they can’t pay back since after being deported. Many have been bilked and lost all they owned,” Erick Maldonado, secretary of the government council charged with looking out for emigrants, known as Conamigua, told Efe.

He said traffickers charge each migrant between $4,000 and $6,000.

“It’s a profitable business, but it’s hard to detect the traffickers because they’re often camouflaged among the migrants,” Maldonado said.

The Conamigua official said he was worried because “more and more of the people who emigrate are very young, above all women” who become potential victims of organized crime.

Women, he said, “are highly vulnerable to sexual exploitation and white slavery.”

“Children are taken to serve as beggars, gum vendors or clowns, and Guatemala is not free from that kind of exploitation,” he said.

A recent study by Mexican authorities revealed that 80 percent of Central Americans who go through that country en route to the United States are exploited, Maldonado said.

Another negative aspect of this phenomenon is having families disintegrated and culturally uprooted, he said.

“We as a government cannot tell people not to migrate, because it is a right that is linked to development,” he said, while complaining that emigrants do not invest their earnings but use them for the subsistence of their families and to buy luxury goods.

“This is evident when you go out in the countryside and see little adobe huts with television sets getting programs on Sky and Direct TV, which loses sight of the effort people have made to go to the United States and send dollars back home,” he said.

Unfortunately now the (emigrant’s) family expects remittances to be sent and that creates a certain dependency, because they’re just waiting to get that $100 or $200,” Maldonado said.

The remittances, according to the Conamigua secretary, don’t go to pay for children’s education because once kids are big enough to work, “they don’t study any more because their expectations are to follow in the footsteps of mom or dad” by emigrating.

Despite the risks and the constant deportations in handcuffs, during the flight, Guatemalans will not stop pursuing the “American dream,” Maldonado said.

In 2009 alone more than 27,000 undocumented immigrants in the U.S. were deported and “unfortunately we ascertained that all came back in handcuffs, which were removed shortly before landing,” he said.

The sending of remittances from the United States, which last year reached $3.9 billion, benefits more than 30 percent of Guatemala’s 13 million people.

Reshaping Civil Discourse Online

4/25/2010
Issue Update: Comment review, editing, or learning civil discourse?
Reader comments: Can't live with 'em ...
by Rob ORegan
http://emediavitals.com/blog/17/reader-comments-cant-live-em?utm_source=ABM+Vital+Guide&utm_campaign=bcd800e5a7-nl_vg_abm_04222010_user-generated-content&utm_medium=email
Allowing site visitors to add comments to articles, blogs and other digital content has become accepted practice for most digital content publishers. Reader comments are an effective way to engage a community and increase site “stickiness.” But they can also become, as blogger Peter Scheer notes, a “cesspool” that is “stuffed with the rants and invective of people who have too much time on their hands (and too little gray matter between their ears.)”
Particularly vexing to publishers are comments from readers who flame behind a cloak of anonymity. This is why many media sites are considering new ways to encourage (or require) registration for anyone wishing to add their two cents to an online discussion. (I've been pushing to ban anonymous comments from our site.)
“Anonymity is just the way things are done. It’s an accepted part of the Internet, but there’s no question that people hide behind anonymity to make vile or controversial comments,” Huffington Post’s Arianna Huffington told the New York Times. “I feel that this is almost like an education process. As the rules of the road are changing and the Internet is growing up, the trend is away from anonymity.”