“Who profits?” from the invasion of America?
The easier question to answer is, Who doesn’t? That answer is obvious: American citizens. For everyone else, it’s a win.
Everyone knows the U.S. Left expects to win when the illegals eventually are naturalized and given the vote. Likewise, the establishment Right hopes to continue benefiting from cheap labor. The New York Times, however, was interested in who might be benefitting up the chain, and so they sent a couple of reporters down to the Darién Gap in Panama, arguably the most difficult and dangerous part of the northward journey for South American migrants and extracontinentals from around the world.
The first paragraph of their report says it all, “Every step through the jungle, there is money to be made.”
- Boat ride to the jungle trailhead: $40
- Personal guide through the Gap: $170
- Porter to carry your backpack: $100
- Meals: $10/per
- All-inclusive package with tent, boots, etc: $500 up
These services are not being offered by shadowy cartel members, according to the NYT. Instead, they are provided by “politicians, prominent businessmen and elected leaders, now sending thousands of migrants toward the United States in plain sight each day — and charging millions of dollars a month for the privilege.”
The reporters spoke with some of these migrant facilitators. One such was Luis Fernando Martínez, the head of a local tourism association and candidate for mayor of Acandí, Colombia, near the southern trailhead. Martínez defended the whole business as the only profitable industry in a place that “didn’t have a defined economy before.”
Another local leader interviewed was Fredy Marín, who said he transports thousands of migrants every month. Marín, who is a mayoral candidate in his own hometwon of Necoclí, told the reporters, “This is a beautiful economy. What was first a problem has become an opportunity.”
Even officials nominally expected to enforce the relevant laws regarding the traffic reveal no inclination to do so. Col. William Zubieta, the top police official in the region, said it wasn’t his job to halt the flow. And the Colombian president, in spite of an agreement with Washington to do so, declared he “had no intention of sending ‘horses and whips’ to the border to solve a problem that wasn’t of his country’s making.”
Then there are the NGOs, in particular, the New Light Darién Foundation, which manages the entire route from Acandí to the border with Panama. The Foundation sets prices for the journey, collects fees and maintains campsites in the middle of the jungle. It employs more than 2,000 local guides and porters, organized into teams with numbered T-shirts of varying colors, such as lime green, butter yellow, sky blue — “like members of an amateur soccer league.”
Illegal migration is big business, and no one in control wants it stopped.
For more, see the NY Times.