Honduras News - Daily News about Honduras

While attention is focused on the U.S. battle to stem the tide of illegal immigrants from Mexico, a federal effort to crack down on Hondurans is threatening the Honduran economy and sparking a crisis in U.S.-Honduran relations.

Honduran President Manuel Zelaya visited Washington on Monday to lobby Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for a moratorium on what he called “massive and selective” deportations of Hondurans in the U.S. illegally. He promised that the Honduran government would strenuously defend the rights of Honduran immigrants, without elaborating.

Deportations of Hondurans are expected to reach 40,000 this year if the current pace holds, a sharp increase since 2005, when fewer than 19,000 were deported.

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Despite the request of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya that US authorities stop the massive deportation of Hondurans, another two flights with over one hundred people arrive in the country Thursday.

As many as 108 Honduran nationals are expected to be returned from different US cities today, official sources informed.

So far this year Washington has deported 16,000 Hondurans, including 1,500 women and 195 minors, sustained Ramon Valladares, the Foreign Ministry director for consular affairs.

Valladares noted that most of the deported Hondurans are from Columbus, Cleveland, Chicago, Kansas, Dallas, Los Angeles, and Houston.

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Stricter U.S. border
controls and a housing slump are cooling the once red-hot
growth in remittances migrant workers send to Latin America,
challenging economies to cut their dependence on the money
flows.

Cash sent home by Mexicans living abroad fell 5.5 percent
in May, the first fall since 1999, and countries across Latin
America forecast that the growth of remittance flows will slow
substantially this year.

“Remittances will definitely suffer a slowdown. We cannot
depend only on remittances. We must increase our productive
base, especially our exports,” Honduras’ central bank
president, Gabriela Nunez, told Reuters this week.

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President Manuel Zelaya will travel to the US with an agenda in favor of his deported fellow citizens and also will tackle issues of bilateral interest dealing with security and investments.

The presidential House reported the Honduran dignitary will meet Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Monday and later will be received by John Negroponte, Washington ex ambassador in the Central American nation.

The leader has also foreseen a meeting with Stephen Hadley, President George W. Bush’s National Security Advisor and several US congressmen to whom he will give his point of view on legalizing his country’s migrants.

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