Immigration From Paraguay

During the Stroessner dictatorship, thousands of Paraguayans went to Argentina. Also, thousands of Paraguayans went to the United States and there is a huge community in New York City. In 1979 around 11,000 Paraguayans came to the United States. Alost of these came for political reasons (Stroessner) but many were young people in search of job or study opportunities. There is also a large Paraguayan community in Brazil.

In recent times, nothing is changing for the normal or poor people of Paraugay. The president before Lugo was a Colorado named Nicanor Duarte. During his presidency (2003-08) there was a little bit of growth that reached 6.8% in 2007 but this was largely due to soybean agriculture and exportation expansion and meat production, (Nickson, 2008).

Because most of the land is privately owned, normal people or poor farmers see very little or nothing of this small economic growth, this is well explained with, “However this faster economic growth was built on one of the most unequal structures of land tenure in the Americas and so its benefits were captured by a small elite of soybean farmers, cattle-ranchers and corrupt politicians." The National Statistical Office reports that 35.6% of the 6.2 million Paraguayans were still living in poverty in 2007 and Paraguayans living in extreme poverty has increased from 15.5% in 2005 to 19.4% in 2007.

When it seems that it is a time of small growth or optimism, there are mass migrations from Paraguay. The value of exports has gone from US$1 billion in 2005 to US$3 billion in 2007. Because people in the country, especially young people and rural people in 2002 the mass migration started. There were around 100,000 Paraguayans living in Spain in 2007 with only 11,000 being there legally.