A Deep Migration Survey With Surprising Results: The Border Chronicle

Melissa del Bosque, The Border Chronicle, Dec. 7, 2021

"Much has been written recently about the number of migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border, but there’s been very little in depth information about people’s complex motivations for leaving home. With a global pandemic still devastating communities and economies, growing poverty and hunger are spurring more citizens from El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala to consider migrating north. Ariel Ruiz Soto, with the Washington, D.C.–based Migration Policy Institute, is the lead author of a new report, which surveyed 5,000 households in the three countries in the spring of 2021. ...  If you put all the Central American survey participants together, 43 percent of them say that they want to migrate internationally as compared to migrating internally. But that quickly drops to 6 percent of those who actually make plans to do so. And then out of that 6 percent, only 3 percent actually make preparations to go. So about less than 5 percent of people who say they want to migrate actually prepare to do so. ... So the desire does not reflect what people actually do."  [Emphasis added.]