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Tegucigalpa, 5 Jan (EFE).
A new caravan of Honduran immigrants to the U.S., scheduled to leave on January 15th, is being promoted on social networks, hoping to arrive in the country when Joe Biden takes office as the new U.S. president.
One of the alleged promoters of the caravan told journalists on Tuesday that they have “the hope” of arriving in the United States when Biden is already occupying the White House, which is scheduled for January 20th.
The caravan began to be promoted on the 1st, despite the fact that two attempts by two others that left from San Pedro Sula, in northern Honduras, were frustrated at the end of October 2020. On that occasion, the few who managed to enter Guatemala were not able to pass through that country.
“Caravan January 15, 2021 We left San Pedro Sula terminal (of buses),” says the call on Facebook, which isn’t attributed to anyone in particular.
The Guatemalan government warned today that it is preparing a strategic plan in view of the possible arrival of a new caravan of Hondurans to the United States next week.
In a statement, the Guatemalan Migration Institute informed that the plan seeks the “containment, control, attention and humanitarian assistance” of the caravan, whose arrival date would be around January 15th.
The immigration agency stressed that people seeking to enter the country from Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua are required to present a PCR test or negative COVID-19 antigen and a valid passport or identity card.
Mexico in the way
The Mexican Consulate in San Pedro Sula has also warned that the government of that country “will continue to act responsibly, in accordance with its immigration law and the health measures implemented to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.”
The Government of Mexico has asked Hondurans who intend to go on the caravan to “do so regularly, with full respect for immigration regulations and established health protocols.”
To enter Guatemala legally, Hondurans can do so only with their identity card, which isn’t enough to enter Mexico, where a passport is required.
Until before March 2020, Honduran immigrants who left in several caravans in previous years claimed that they were leaving their country because of criminal violence and unemployment.
Now the reason they argue the most is unemployment, which has been exacerbated in the Central American country by the COVID-19 pandemic, which began to spread in March of last year.
According to sources from the Honduran Council of Private Enterprise (Cohep), the confinement for more than three months due to covid-19 has left around 600,000 people unemployed due to the partial or total closure of many micro-, small- and medium-businesses.Until the COVID-19 pandemic, poverty affected around 60 percent of Honduras’ 9.5 million population.
