The Americas | A fearful welcome

How will El Salvador cope with deportees from America?

The United States wants to expel up to 200,000 Salvadoreans. Both they, and their home country, will struggle to adjust

|LOS ANGELES AND SAN SALVADOR
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LUCIEN MARISON LANDAVERDE is feeling glum. Her father left El Salvador to “search for a better life” in the United States. He now lives in Virginia with three daughters who were born in the country and works as a cook. Ms Landaverde remained in San Salvador, El Salvador’s capital, putting in long hours at an ice-cream shop to earn $100 a month. Every month her father sends her double that amount.

On January 8th he called to say that he would soon return to El Salvador. That morning the United States’ Department of Homeland Security had announced that it would end temporary protected status (TPS) for nearly 200,000 Salvadoreans who got permission to live and work in the country after a pair of earthquakes struck El Salvador in 2001. Ms Landaverde’s father was among them.

They have until September 2019 to find another legal way to remain in the United States. Those who do not face deportation. Ms Landaverde has mixed feelings about her father’s return. She would like to see more of him, but “it’s going to be very difficult,” she says.

The Salvadoreans are not alone. Smaller numbers of Hondurans and Nicaraguans were granted TPS after Hurricane Mitch wreaked havoc in 1998 (see chart). Citizens of all three Central American countries had their status renewed every 18 months for nearly two decades. Donald Trump, who promised to get tough on immigrants when he was campaigning for president, has found TPS a convenient way to keep that pledge. His administration has stripped Nicaraguans of their status, as well as Haitians who were stranded after an earthquake in 2010. Hondurans may be next. (Citizens of other disaster-struck countries, such as Rwanda and Liberia, were sent home more quickly.)

El Salvador is in shock. If all the Salvadoreans in the TPS programme were to come back, which is highly unlikely, the country’s population would swell by 3%. It is in no state to receive and reintegrate them. “It’s going to make a dent,” says Mari Aponte, a former American ambassador to El Salvador.

That will be apparent to returning Salvadoreans as soon as they arrive at the country’s main repatriation centre in La Chacra, a gang-ridden suburb of San Salvador. Some 200 orange plastic chairs are arranged in rows in the waiting room. A light-studded Christmas tree sags in the corner. Down the hall is a playpen for deported children.

Pamela Chacón Rodríguez, who works at the centre, explains that El Salvador has an agreement with the United States that limits the number of deportation flights to eight a week, each carrying no more than 135 people. Under their agreement, the United States cannot send home more than 56,000 Salvadoreans a year. But even that, combined with people expelled from Mexico, would stretch the centre’s resources, Ms Rodríguez says. The United States has sent home 39,000 Salvadoreans in the past two years.

Shockwaves would ripple out from La Chacra. Remittances from Salvadoreans living in the United States account for a colossal 17% of GDP; those from people with TPS send over an equivalent of 2% of GDP. Total remittances from the United States jumped by more than 10% in the first 11 months of 2017, possibly because many Salvadoreans feared that their dollar-earning days might be numbered under Mr Trump. Any decline caused by deportation will reduce consumption and increase poverty, says Carmen Aída Lazo of ESEN University in San Salvador.

Nor can the labour market easily absorb tens of thousands of returnees. Although the official unemployment rate is just 7%, more than 40% of workers are underemployed and two-thirds are in the informal sector. The economy creates 11,000 jobs a year for the 60,000 people who enter the workforce, reckons Fusades, a think-tank. Employers will not welcome the typical TPS holder, who is 40-something and used to much higher wages than they can pay for menial work.

An even bigger problem will be readjusting to life in El Salvador, says Hugo Martínez, the foreign-affairs minister. The average Salvadorean with TPS has spent 21 years in the United States. Nine in ten have jobs and a third are homeowners. Their families include 192,000 children born in the United States. Most Salvadoreans who emigrate have rural roots. When they return, many will face an unpalatable choice between moving to the countryside, where their relatives are, or staying in the cities to seek employment.

El Salvador’s horrific levels of crime will be another shock. Although the murder rate dropped slightly in 2016, the country remains one of the world’s most violent places. San Salvador’s murder rate in 2016 was 30% higher than that of any other city outside Venezuela. Returning migrants are targets for extortion by gangs such as MS-13, whose American branch Mr Trump has denounced as “vile”. The gangsters see people with American connections as rich and ripe for robbing. Many deportees will look for ways to get back to the United States, joining the 250 Salvadoreans who leave the country every day.

The point of no returning

Just how many the United States will deport is unclear. Roberto Lorenzana, chief of staff of Salvador Sánchez Cerén, El Salvador’s president, estimates that around half of the 195,000 Salvadorean TPS holders will be eligible to apply for permanent residence. Many will do almost anything to avoid returning to their birthplace, including moving to Canada, which has an “express-entry” process for skilled workers. César Ríos of the Salvadorean Migrant Institute thinks no more than 15% of TPS holders will return to El Salvador and that virtually none will do so voluntarily. Many will stay in the United States illegally, even if they lose their jobs and homes.

The United States government knows where to find them, notes Tom Jawetz of the Centre for American Progress, a leftish think-tank. They are thus easier to deport than the vast majority of the 11m migrants who are in the United States illegally.

Many Salvadoreans are praying that the United States Congress will intervene to stop expulsions. Four proposed bills would offer permanent residency to TPS holders from El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras and Nicaragua. Some of those have bipartisan support.

Mr Trump startled Americans (and Salvadoreans) on January 9th when, in a televised meeting with Republican and Democratic lawmakers, he suggested that he would support a comprehensive immigration reform that would allow many illegal immigrants to stay. Knowing his anti-immigrant political base would not like the idea, he promised to “take the heat” for an ambitious reform. No one knows whether to take him seriously. The Salvadorean government will lobby hard for relief of any sort from Congress. But Salvadoreans with temporary protection have been around long enough to know that the United States’ dysfunctional legislature is unlikely to save them.

This article appeared in the The Americas section of the print edition under the headline "A fearful welcome"

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