YALAMBOJOCH, Guatemala (February 10, 2020) – A new Center for Immigration Studies video report highlights the impact house envy plays in the mass exodus from Yalambojoch, a highland Guatemalan village of indigenous Mayan descendants. The desire for a bigger and better house is a common primary motivation for sending family members to work illegally in the United States; this same pattern is suggested throughout Huehuetenango province.
Hearing that bringing a child would enable quick release into the United States under the Flores legal loophole, triggered the massive emigration, which has left behind only an estimated 300 of Yalambojoch's 1,500 residents. The desire for more house than needed as a common primary motivation stands at sharp variance with "push factors" most often cited to explain and justify the mass U.S.-bound exodus of at least 300,000 Guatemalans during 2018 and 2019, the majority of them indigenous peoples from this mountainous region.
Hundreds of thousands of U.S. asylum petitions filed by Guatemalans claim government persecution and imminent bodily harm. However, the mayor, vice mayor, and every villager interviewed during a two-day visit in January told CIS that violent crime was nonexistent, so absent in fact that police are not necessary; informal local civil patrols take care of any petty crime issues. Government persecution hasn't occurred in decades either. This means there is a high probability of large-scale asylum fraud, and that Guatemala is a safe third country for migrant nationals to be deported to apply for asylum.
Todd Bensman, the Center’s senior national security fellow and author of the report, said, “The media has ignored the impact big-house status plays in families sending members to spend years working in the U.S. – even when the El Salvadoran father and child drowned in the Rio Grande in 2019 in route to the U.S. for this purpose, it was not mentioned as part of the story. ‘House envy’ does not qualify any of these individuals for asylum and only delays the processing of applicants who truly are fleeing violence and/or persecution.”
Bensman cites two academic sources who have been calling for additional focused study of this house envy phenomenon.
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