29 March 2021 – by Evelyn Workman
Migration north to the USA from Central America has been driven over the past by many factors including government corruption, high levels of poverty, and violence. However, over the past few months, another factor has caused an increase in the number of people migrating north: hurricanes.
In November 2020, two hurricanes made landfall within two weeks, causing devastation across Nicaragua, Honduras, and Guatemala. Hurricanes Eta and Iota brought flash flooding and landslides to these regions, and resulted in more than 200 deaths and another 5.3 million in need of assistance, according to estimates by Unicef. The Covid-19 pandemic had already left these regions in economic downturn, and the destruction the hurricanes have brought have only exacerbated issues created by the pandemic. Severe damage has been caused to homes and hospitals, resulting in increasing the transmission of COVID-19.
Recovery in these regions has been slow since the hurricanes, living conditions and access to services and income have declined. More people have been pushed into poverty and children are likely to become malnourished, as agricultural communities have been hit and damaged by the storms. These factors are helping push migrants out of their home countries, and a change of administration in the US has made the move north more attractive, due to Biden’s more humane approach to migration. We can expect to see cases like these becoming more frequent in the future, as climate change will make extreme weather events, such as hurricanes, more commonplace and more intense.
Sources
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2021/3/22/22335816/border-crisis-migrant-hurricane-eta-iota
