Young migrants from Honduras could receive refugee status as part of the Obama administration's plan to slow the influx of unaccompanied minors arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border, White House officials said Thursday. Since Oct. 1, more than 16,000 unaccompanied children from Honduras have been caught crossing the Mexican border illegally, with more than 30,300 Hondurans being arrested while traveling with families.
Similar to in-country screening programs that were set up in East Asia after the Vietnam War and in Haiti in the 1990s, the government is thinking about screening youths in Honduras, one of the world's most violent nations, to determine whether they could qualify for refugee status, the Associated Press reported. However, the proposal is just among a list of ideas that the White House is debating, with no final decision on the matter having been taken yet, officials said.
The entire controversy plays out against the backdrop of "an unfolding crisis on the Southern border, where unaccompanied Central American children have been showing up by the thousands, fleeing violence at home - an unforeseen development that both sides are trying to use to score political points," ABC News reported. "Obama says the flood of children at the border argues for the need for overhauling immigration laws while Republicans claim Obama's policies caused the problem."
For months, the United Nations has been pushing the U.S. to consider children arriving at the southern border as refugees displaced by armed conflict. Since last October, at least 57,000 unaccompanied minors, mostly from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, have been caught illegally crossing the southwest border of the United States, with officials expecting at least 150,000 more to do so next year. Additionally, since Obama unilaterally enacted his temporary amnesty act in 2012, the number of illegal immigrant children unlawfully entering the country has increased.
With a five-week recess beginning at the end of next week, the refugee proposal was suggested since Congress seemed to be deadlocked on reaching any solution of its own on the border crisis. "I think it needs to be resolved. That's why we're continuing to talk to our members about how to resolve it," House Speaker John Boehner said. "But as I said before, the White House needs to get its act together or it's not going to get resolved."
Kevin Appleby, director of migration policy for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said the refugee proposal would be welcomed by the advocacy community as long as there was no attempt by the administration to pair it to changes to the trafficking law, according to the AP. "It cannot substitute for providing full asylum rights for kids who have arrived in the United States," he said. "There is no quid pro quo."
The New York Times first reported that the White House was considering the refugee program for young people in Honduras.
