More and more Nicaraguans are leaving their country and remittances are increasing

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Every month, Antón Martínez sets aside $200 of his dishwasher salary in the United States to send to his mother in Nicaragua.

Martínez, 38, wishes it was more, but is still trying to find a place in his new country and pay off his immigration debt.

His monthly contribution to the family was part of a 50% increase in remittances to Nicaragua in 2022, a massive jump that analysts attribute to the thousands of Nicaraguans who immigrated to the United States in the past two years.

This migration has occurred as the government of Daniel Ortega has intensified the repression of opposition voices since the beginning of 2021. In addition, high global inflation is hitting families’ purchasing power and job opportunities. remain limited in the Central American country.

This wave of Nicaraguan migrants heading to the US is part of why the Joe Biden administration announced in January that it would start turning them back at the border unless they first register online to apply. of asylum. Since then, their numbers have dropped sharply.

But Martínez, who arrived in late 2021, and others already there, are keeping Nicaragua’s economy afloat with the more than $3.2 billion they sent home last year.

This huge increase “can only be explained by the disproportionate increase in emigrants,” Nicaraguan economist Enrique Sáenz told The Associated Press.

Emigration “has become (Ortega’s) main macroeconomic policy and its main social policy”, he added.

Ortega’s increasingly authoritarian government received sanctions from the US and European governments, but the measures were directed against those around him and members of his administration to avoid worsening the economic hardship of the average Nicaraguan.

Yet in the fiscal year that ended last September, US authorities recorded more than 163,000 encounters with Nicaraguans, more than triple the number in 2021. Encounters peaked in December at more than 35 000, then fell to 3,377 in January.

The reasons range from lack of economic opportunities to direct persecution of political opponents and dissenting voices. Ortega has violently crushed social protests since April 2018 and increased repression in 2021, ahead of elections where he was re-elected for a fourth term, with no real opponent.

Earlier this month, the Sandinista government sent 222 freed opponents on a plane to Washington, saying it was sending “terrorists” and “mercenaries” back to their foreign boss.

Until 2022, Costa Rica was the main destination for Nicaraguans in recent years. But the small neighboring country’s asylum system is overwhelmed, the wait has dragged on for years and its economy is struggling to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves tightened the generous asylum system in December, arguing that economic immigrants were abusing it.

These factors have made the United States a more attractive destination despite the distance. Ortega blamed the emigration on Washington sanctions.

In Martínez’s case, he left because he participated in anti-government protests in 2018 and feared arrest at any moment. “I miss my mother and I love Nicaragua, but there was nothing else to do. It was either go or go to jail at some point,” he said.

Many others have made the same decision.

The Nicaraguan government released data which revealed that between September 17 and October 7, 2022, 20,192 new passports were issued. In the capital, residents camped out on the sidewalks just to get one of the limited numbers to process a passport application.

Sabrina Gazol Moncada, a 28-year-old university student who had to drop out to look for work, left Nicaragua in October, a month after her husband also traveled “wet” to the United States.

“It’s a really tough decision to make because at the end of the day, you’re leaving your country, your family, the people who support you and love you,” he told the AP.

Gazol traveled north by bus, on foot and in vans with around 200 other people. After three weeks of an often difficult and terrifying journey through Central America and Mexico, Gazol crossed the Rio Grande River near Eagle Pass, Texas, surrendered to Border Patrol and began his process. asylum application.

In Nicaragua, “people who are not with the Ortega regime are threatened and persecuted, there is no freedom of expression,” he said.

He has not been able to send money home since arriving in the United States as he is still awaiting permission to work while seeking asylum.

“In Nicaragua, the government does what it wants and everyone is looking for a way out,” he said. “In the end, Nicaragua will be left without young people, it will be a ghost country.”