Honduras is bringing out a plan that could slash poverty in the country within five years and see a reduction of around fifty percent in the number of undocumented immigrant minors heading to the United States, President Juan Orlando Hernandez announced during an interview on Fox News Latino.
The scheme, called “Honduras 2020”, wants to create up to 600,000 new jobs and give a sharp boost to exports with the expansion of adding of extra value to the key business sectors of textiles, tourism, business services and manufacturing. Global consultant McKinsey was partly responsible for the drafting of the development plan. Approximately 100,000 undocumented immigrant minors, including teenagers and children, came to the United States between the years 2013 and 2015 from the impoverished “Northern Triangle” of Central America, which compromises of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, according to Hernandez.
Hernandez claims that the problem is being tackled successfully by his administration, with a dramatic fall in the number of Honduran minors heading to the United States via the Mexican border over the course of the last two years. Hernandez adds that a greater number of immigrant minors are now coming from Guatemala and El Salvador than Honduras, and that they want to cut the figures recorded in 2014 further by as much as 90 percent.
However, his claims are disputed by the executive director of Casa Alianza, Guadalupe Ruelas, who insists child immigration is not falling and believes the new job creation scheme will fail to address the real issues in Honduras such as crime, insecurity and lack of opportunities.